Colleges Week

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Colleges Week 2024.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Robert, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate during Colleges Week, which runs from Monday until tomorrow. I should also point out that I chair the all-party parliamentary group for further education and lifelong learning, the secretariat for which is provided by the Association of Colleges, to which I am grateful, among others, for the briefings and support they have provided ahead of the debate.

This debate essentially falls into three parts: first, celebrating the great work that colleges do all around the country; secondly, highlighting where Government policy and support are working; and thirdly, pointing out the areas where more work and attention are required so that colleges can realise their full potential for the benefit of the people and the communities they serve.

It is important, first, to celebrate the great work that colleges are doing. All around the UK, they are an essential part of our education system. They are firmly embedded in their local communities, where they are fully cognisant of the opportunities and challenges and the strengths and weaknesses of their local economies. They enable people of all ages and backgrounds to realise their full potential. They are key players in boosting local regeneration and levelling up and in eliminating the gaps in skills and productivity, which are in danger of ever widening. They also play a vital role in preparing people for the jobs of tomorrow, which, all of a sudden, are with us today in areas such as digital, artificial intelligence and the low-carbon fields.

Colleges touch all our lives. English colleges educate 1.6 million students every year and employ approximately 103,000 full-time equivalent staff. Some 925,000 adults study or train in colleges, and 608,000 16 to 18-year-olds study in colleges. The average college trains 950 apprentices, and 100,000 people study higher education in a college. Twenty-three per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds and 27% of adult students are from minority ethnic backgrounds. Twenty-six per cent of 16 to 18-year-olds in colleges have a learning difficulty or a disability, and 58,000 college students are aged 60 and over. In summary, colleges do their job very well. Ninety-two per cent of colleges were judged to be “good” or “outstanding” for overall effectiveness at their most recent inspections. At times, however, colleges feel that they are doing their job with one arm behind their backs, and I shall touch upon that shortly.

I will briefly highlight the great work that East Coast College does in Waveney. It now operates from two campuses, in Lowestoft in my constituency and in Great Yarmouth in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Great Yarmouth (Sir Brandon Lewis). It fully understands the challenges of coastal communities, the communities in which it is deeply immersed, and works very closely with local authorities, local businesses, the James Paget University Hospital, CEFAS—the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, where the Government’s marine scientists are based in Pakefield next to Lowestoft—and the two universities that cover the area, the University of East Anglia in Norwich and the University of Suffolk, which has its headquarters in Ipswich but operates across Suffolk.

In Lowestoft, East Coast College is an active member of the place board, of which I am also a member, which has overseen the projects carried out as part of the town deal. Its work focuses on two areas: first, the need in the health and care sector to support an ever growing elderly population. It has put in place the Apollo project —not a journey to the moon, but a two-year workforce programme designed to address recruitment and retention challenges in the health and social care sector. Secondly, opportunities are emerging in the energy sector. Among other projects, there are the offshore wind farms anchored off the East Anglian coast and the Sizewell C nuclear power project just down the coast.

In recent years, significant capital improvements have been carried out at East Coast College. Those include the Energy Skills Centre in Lowestoft and the eastern civil engineering and construction campus at Lound, midway between Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. At present, the college’s challenges centre more on revenue funding, and its needs mirror those of the rest of the sector, to which I shall now turn.

The good news is that, in recent years, there has been a realisation of the vital role that colleges play in providing people with the skills they need to realise their full potential, to address regional inequalities and to ensure that the economy fires on all cylinders. Some good initiatives have been put in place, such as the lifelong learning entitlement, and funding has improved, albeit from a low base. That said, significant challenges remain; some are structural and long term, and others derive from the cost of living crisis and the long and sharp tail of covid.

The Local Government Association points out that

“the national employment and skills system is too centralised”,

“short-term” in outlook, and that

“no single organisation is responsible or accountable for coordinating programmes nationally or locally. This makes it difficult to plan, target and join-up provision.”

It also identified that

“poor-quality, insufficient and fragmented CEIAG”—

careers education, information advice and guidance—

“is a persistent and key barrier to youth employment”,

notwithstanding the introduction, finally, of the Baker clause in the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022.

The Edge Foundation focuses on the problem that is all around us: the skills shortages that are getting worse. The shortages are numerous and have grown significantly. The rate of skills investment is in decline, and skills shortages have significant costs for UK businesses, the economy and the environment. The engineering sector is important to me locally, as engineering skills will be much in need to fuel the transition to a low-carbon economy. EngineeringUK, in its “Fit for the future” engineering apprenticeships inquiry, has highlighted the variability and quality of training provision and the problems in recruiting teachers and trainers.

Colleges Week normally takes place in the autumn. This year, however, for good reason, it has been brought forward to the spring—not only so that it takes place in advance of the general election campaign, to provide the sector with every opportunity to set out its stall, but so that urgent representations can be made ahead of next week’s Budget to meet many of the challenges that I have highlighted.

I confess that I was expecting the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), to be here, but it is great to see the Minister for Schools in his place, because he and I have discussed this issue a great deal. I would be most grateful if he conveyed some of these asks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in advance of his Budget statement next Wednesday.

As I have mentioned, there are skill gaps across the country in all sectors of the economy. To eliminate those gaps, I urge the Government to invest the extra money raised from the immigration skills charge to enable colleges to tackle the urgent priorities identified by employers in the local skills improvement plans that are now being rolled out across the country and those that are found in relation to the increased number of skills shortage vacancies revealed in the latest Department for Education employer skills survey.

At the Conservative party conference in Manchester in October, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister rightly announced a 10-year plan to give young people a better start in life through the advanced British standard, with more hours, a broader curriculum, and extra help for those who have struggled up to the age of 16. Those ambitions are the right ones, but if they are to be achieved —if there is to be any chance of having the teachers, the trainers and the facilities in place to deliver them—we must start investing now. To do that, three issues need to be addressed.

First, the pay gap between those teaching in colleges and those teaching in schools must be closed. It has been widening in recent years and now stands at £9,000 per annum. That pay gap cannot persist if the advanced British standard is to be a success.

Secondly, colleges are disadvantaged when it comes to VAT. Unlike for schools, VAT is not reimbursed for colleges—it cannot be recovered. Colleges in England were reclassified as public sector organisations back in 2022 and are now subject to all the controls that apply to academies, but, unlike academies and schools, they are unable to reclaim VAT under the refund scheme in section 33 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994. That could be addressed by amending that Act. The funds that would be released, totalling around £210 million, could then be reinvested, helping colleges to deliver the improvements to the school system that the Government seek.

Thirdly, as I mentioned, covid has had a long and sharp tail, impacting harshly on young people’s education. The Government recognise that and are providing funding for tuition support to help those with the greatest need to obtain the necessary grounding in English and maths and to catch up on the vocational courses where assessments were deferred. That is good news, but the indications are that the demand for those lessons and courses is still growing. It is estimated that approximately 40,000 more students than last year need to resit their English GCSEs, with 20,000 needing to resit maths. I therefore urge the Minister to do all he can to ensure that the funding for that tuition support is extended.

I am reaching my conclusion, Sir Robert. I am sure that others in this debate will refer to FE and colleges as being the Cinderella of the education system. Indeed, that was right in the past, but my sense is that all parties across the House have recognised the error and folly of that. We are now, after a long time, travelling down the right road, with the importance of vocational learning as provided by colleges being acknowledged and accepted by all. However, we are driving down this road in third gear and we now need Government to provide resources, support and more policies so that we can quickly and seamlessly move into top gear. If we do that, we shall provide opportunity for many and eliminate all those stubborn gaps that I have referred to a great deal during this speech.

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this Backbench Business debate and on marking and celebrating Colleges Week.

I want to speak in support of the colleges of our nation, which are such a significant part of our education system. My hon. Friend outlined some powerful statistics when he was making his case so eloquently a moment ago, but one in particular jumped out at me, which is that more than 1.5 million students—1.6 million, in fact —are educated at colleges in England every year.

Colleges play a critical role in delivering the skills that our nation and our economy need. I visited many colleges some years ago when I worked on apprenticeships, and they were great visits. However, there is one feature from them all, which I want to draw out and comment upon: the links between colleges and local employers. Through those links, colleges not only provide the workforce that companies need now, but develop the skills programmes for the future.

We are seeing huge changes in the global economy, as countries face the challenges of sectors and routes to market that are going digital. There is also the overarching challenge of net zero and the consequent decarbonising, and how that is creating new skills, new industries and a requirement for significant training. Colleges are at the forefront of meeting those challenges through skills, based on partnerships and local insight, through apprenticeships, with each college training 950 apprentices, as my hon. Friend mentioned, and through professional development, as careers change and people of all ages need to reskill as industries develop. Further, colleges are training tens of thousands of people aged over 60. It is therefore important to keep investing in these areas for our future national prosperity.

The UK has not valued colleges enough over past decades. There has been some kind of underlying assumption that the system should really be focused on university degrees, which are right for so many but not the only definition of excellence. I see opportunity and excellence much more widely; I see it in our college network. Spreading the word about the range of choices that people have is one of the benefits of Colleges Week.

I should also congratulate the Minister on a policy change that has quite recently put apprenticeships on the UCAS website. That is a game changer. The feedback I have had from school and group visits in Harrogate and Knaresborough is that that has been a highly successful initiative and people have become aware of apprenticeships. It has almost been like giving them a parity of esteem, which has not been present before. It has certainly boosted knowledge in a very positive way.

We now move to the Front-Bench wind-ups, starting with the Opposition spokesman.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert, and to speak in this debate.

It is right that we pay tribute to the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) for securing this debate. I know that he is incredibly passionate about further education and the skills sector, and he has raised a number of very important issues, which I will address. I also acknowledge his work on the all-party parliamentary group on further education and lifelong learning—I am a passionate supporter of that group—and work of the Association of Colleges, as the secretariat to the group.

I thank all our colleges up and down the country for the vital contribution they make to our national skills system, and to young people and adult learners across the country. In addition to noting the support and advice from the Association of Colleges, it is worth our reflecting on the support and advice that comes from the Sixth Form Colleges Association, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, and our qualification providers, including City & Guilds and others, which have also played an important role in the Future Skills Coalition. In addition, this week, FE Week and City & Guilds put on the annual apprenticeships conference, which played an important part in pulling everybody together during this important week.

I acknowledge the contribution made by the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), who made important points about engagement with employers and about how Harrogate College is helping to meet local skills and workforce needs. That is a story that all our colleges could share, so it was good to hear those examples.

The hon. Member for Waveney said that colleges play an important role around the UK in our skills system and are firmly embedded in our communities. They understand the needs of our local economies, and have played an important role in the development of our local skills improvement plans. Like many other college leaders, Tracy Aust, the principal of West Thames College in Hounslow, who also oversees the Feltham skills centre, has been pivotal in pulling together those voices so that we can better match the skills needs in our local economy with the provision coming through our colleges. That also helps local authorities and other players to develop a deeper understanding of the community learning requirements.

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I apologise to the Chair, as I will not be able to stay to the end of the debate as I have a meeting with the head of the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service to talk about progression and issues of this sort.

With apprenticeships, it is very important that we compare like with like. It is a great thing that all apprenticeships now involve a year of work and a qualification. That was not the case under the last Labour Government.

I want to put on the record my tribute to the Heart of Worcestershire College and the Worcester Sixth Form College, for the fantastic work they do. I commend to both Front Benches the report from the Education Committee on post-16 qualifications, which made a number of recommendations, including increasing the number of youth apprenticeships and setting a target for the proportion of apprenticeships that lead people into work.

I thank the hon. Member for his contribution and for sharing the work of the colleges in his area, with which I know he is well connected. I acknowledge his work as Chair of the Education Committee, including on that report.

It is important that we are clear about the figures, but it is also important to recognise that things have got harder, particularly for small businesses, since the implementation of the levy. We need to address those challenges. For level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships, the numbers are falling in proportion to apprenticeships as a whole—these are challenges that the Education Committee has rightly highlighted. It is important to make sure that there are pathways post-16 for those who may not have the same qualifications at GCSE. That is a point I will refer to further in my remarks.

It is also true that the Government are on track to miss the 67% achievement rate, with almost half of apprenticeships not being completed. There are a range of reasons for that. Level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships have seen some of the worst falls; there has been a 69% fall in the number of starts at level 2 and a 21% fall in the number of starts at level 3. In addition, too many young people and adult learners say they are not aware of the opportunities available to them. Colleges have also seen real-terms funding cuts under successive Tory Governments. Since 2010, spending per pupil has fallen by 14% in colleges and 28% in school sixth forms.

Labour will put colleges at the heart of our plans for breaking down barriers to opportunity and boosting Britain’s skills. Central to that is our plan to develop technical excellence colleges, enabling colleges in local skills improvement plan areas to specialise in the particular needs of their local economies and businesses, driven by LSIP priorities. We know that Whitehall does not have all the answers for what is needed in our local communities. That is why we will continue to build on the already begun process of devolving and combining power and budgets for skills and adult education to combined authorities and local areas, so that the right decisions and right priorities are led by those with the most local information, who are in the right places.

It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Robert. I join colleagues in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) on securing this debate in Westminster Hall on this important subject. He rightly mentioned that he and I have talked about these topics many times over—I think it is fair to say—many years. I know he has a fervent passion for and deep knowledge of the subject, and I thank him for what he does with the all-party parliamentary group on further education and lifelong learning. I join him in thanking and congratulating the Association of Colleges. Like many colleagues, I had the opportunity earlier this week to go over the road—the other side of Parliament Square—to the AOC awards event. It was great to meet an award winner from my local college in Alton and its other campus in Havant, but also to see the huge variety of people benefiting from all that colleges have to offer. Both my hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) spoke with passion about the importance of colleges and the great work they do in educating and training people of all ages and backgrounds, as well as the key role they play in communities. They rightly talked about the challenges they face, and I do not argue with any of that.

I am the Minister for Schools, but I still know there is no more important subject than colleges. I see every day that we have great schools educating our children, giving them a great education and grounding to take them on whatever path they choose at age 16. Of course, we also have strong higher education institutions, delivering world-class higher education to young people and equipping them with the high-level education and skills they need. We then have further education colleges, which are the filling—if you like—in the education sandwich. Like the best sandwich options, there is a variety to choose from because colleges do just about everything, including all the things I have just mentioned. They do basic skills, English and maths and so-called level 3 provision. More recently, there has been the introduction of T-levels. They do apprenticeships, as we have been talking about, and I will come back to adult learning. As my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney reminded us, FE colleges also do HE, as well as pre-16 provision for certain groups of young people. To cap it all, some colleges even have their own nursery—they are really providing the full range of education. We are not talking about jacks of all trades, because they do not just do lots of things; they do them very well. The latest figures show that approximately 92% of colleges were judged to be good or outstanding at their most recent inspection, which is quite an incredible figure.

I thank the Minister for his comments, and we do not need to get into a debate today—there are many other opportunities for that. He is right that it is important that we do not create dividing lines where we do not have them, in an area that needs both stability and long-term planning, but I want to challenge him on the point he has made. It is true that apprenticeships starts have fallen, and I am not saying that we have not also supported some changes through the passage of time. However, we all know that there are challenges, such as employer involvement in start-ups, employer fatigue due to the difficulties with the current apprenticeship system and the drop in SME engagement, and it is really important that the Government acknowledge those challenges.

It is also important not to misrepresent Labour’s call for a reform where employers, if they so chose, could spend up to 50% of their apprenticeship levy more flexibly. Too much of that levy is being returned to the Treasury because employers are unable to spend it on any learning. For most employers, the reform would not make much of a difference because they are only able to spend about 50% of their levy, and that would not change. Perhaps the Minister might also know that, if we see more growth in the economy, we will also see more of the levy coming in and greater apprenticeships there too.

Again, let us not have a party political debate—that is not the nature of this discussion today. I can absolutely assure the hon. Lady that I have not misrepresented the Labour party’s policy in the slightest. She then went on to repeat it, which is to say that there would be less money guaranteed to be available for apprenticeships. That would surely lead to a move away from those high-quality apprenticeships that I mentioned. I understand the attraction of voices saying that the levy is not a good way of doing things, but I have to tell the hon. Lady that it addresses a fundamental problem—

Will the Minister give way?

Absolutely, and I will come back to the fundamental problem in a moment.

I thank the Minister again, but I think he does not fully understand the Labour policy and that may be because he has not engaged with it in detail. The point on the growth and skills levy is that the opportunity to spend on more modular courses and more flexible learning, creating the opportunity to build qualifications through more modular approaches, could support more engagement with learning and contribute to a reduction in the early ending of apprenticeships, where the targets of apprenticeship completion are not even being met. That is a real issue.

I assure the hon. Lady that if there is any misunderstanding about the Labour party’s policy, it is not because people have failed to engage with it; it is because it is not clear—and one great benefit of our apprenticeship system is that it is clear. The approach of the apprenticeship levy resolves one of the fundamental questions of investing in human capital, training and people, which is the so-called free rider problem.

For many years, some employers invested strongly in their workforces and then some of the members of those workforces, after a couple of years of training, would get up and go to the competitor. The levy is precisely to make sure that the whole of our economy and the whole of industry has a like interest in developing those skills and developing investing in the potential of people. I advise the hon. Lady to be careful in deciding to get rid of that and replace it with a new and unneeded quango.

I turn to my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough, who also spoke about the centrality of apprenticeships and the quality of them. He spoke about the importance of colleges to the whole local economic area. I too represent an area with a particularly low level of unemployment, even though unemployment across the country is low compared with historical norms—it is at slightly less than half the level it was when I and my hon. Friends the Members for Harrogate and Knaresborough and for Waveney came into Parliament in 2010.

Particularly in areas of even lower unemployment, however, skills matching becomes vital for the local economy. I also join my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough in congratulating both Harrogate College and the Luminate Education Group on their work on the renewable energy skills hub. That is a great example of colleges being future-looking, forward-looking and innovative, making sure we are equipped with the skills for the future and creating facilities that contribute to that.

I am a shade disappointed, not by the quality of the debate but because there was high demand to take part and we have not had as many colleagues as I would have hoped for. There are loads of demands on people’s time. However, what we have lacked in quantity, we have made up for in quality. I am the odd person out in this debate; I am the only participant who has not had a Front-Bench role, so it has been interesting to hear the views of those on the frontline.

The three of us on the Government Benches—I, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones)—have all been here since 2010. Colleges are in a better place, generally speaking, than in 2010, particularly in terms of the quality of their estate. That has certainly improved, but we need to move on. While the shiny new buildings are important, we need the teachers and trainers to be able to help with the learning in those colleges. That is where we have a particular problem. Look at the energy sector that East Coast College is having to deal with: we have a crying need for welders and fabricators, but there is a real challenge in getting those teachers and trainers.

Lord Baker fought for the Baker clause for years. He took too long to get it, but he got it. At some stage, I would welcome some information on how it is going down in practice, because when I go around the community I represent, I cannot say, “Ah! That is a result of the Baker clause.” If we pull a lever in this place, it does not automatically lead to a gear change in the rest of the country.

The one disagreement we have had is on the issue of apprentices. If one looks at where we were in 2010 and where we are today, we are generally in a better place, but the journey has not been smooth—there have been ebbs and flows along the way. I am slightly confused by some of the statistics. It may be that we were in a better place two or three years ago than today. One of the challenges is to get SMEs properly involved in the apprenticeship system.