Tag Archives: colleges

More thoughts on funding schools, ahead of the spending Review

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Yesterday, I published a post about my initial thoughts on the forthcoming spending review, due next week, and how saving might be made in the education sector.  For a more detailed analysis at the macro level there is also the Institute for Fiscal Studies review Schools and colleges in the 2025 Spending Review | Institute for Fiscal Studies that lays out the options for the government against the background of falling rolls and the challenging economic situation, and now The Defence Review, and all that entails for government spending priorities.

My guess is that the government will direct any extra funding in education to skills and the college sector, especially where it is related to spending on training for employment, and let the schools sector sort out its own future. One exception to this general thesis is SEND, where the government will have to take some action. Sadly, without yet a Report from the Select Committee that has been looking at SEND for the past sixth months.

The nuclear option on spending open to the government, and one that local authorities might have used in the past when they controlled the financing of the schools’ sector, would be to top slice the Schools Block and transfer that funding to the High Needs Block, used to fund special needs, and leave the schools sector to sort out the consequences.

Afterall, education is low down in the polling pecking order for national elections. This also makes sense with the supposed reorganisation of local authorities making the issue of the SEND balances and off-balance sheet deficits being carried by local authorities more of a challenge to fund in the future. However, my bet is that local government reorganisation will be off the agenda while Reform is riding high in the opinion polls. As a result, a top slice this year could be an option.

The Secretary of State has also solved the issue of how to deal with the underachievement of poor White families, by setting up an inquiry. In my view that approach is just kicking the can down the road to avoid taking difficult decisions in the Spending Review. Everyone in education knows the issues, and probably the answers as well: bring back Sure Start or something like it for the under-5s, and focus on making the secondary school curriculum more meaningful for those pupils not heading for higher education at eighteen, and who will probably leave school for college at sixteen.

The Spending Review also needs to come clean on what the pledge around the 6,500 extra teachers means, and how they will be paid for? The IFS makes the point that the college sector needs more than 6,500 extra lecturers to cope with the fact that rolls there won’t be falling over the next few years, and any added working in adult learning will put up the demand for lecturers even more. Switching funds to the college sector solves the issue of how to pay for these extra staff, but will leave the secondary sector with a pupil-teacher ratio in many areas little different to what it was 50 years ago. Hard times for schools ahead?

FE: too often forgotten

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This blog is as guilty as many in education of too often overlooking the further education sector. Despite its status of something of a poor relation to both higher education and the school sector, further education has an important part to play in developing the economic activity of our nation. One of my regrets about the Coalition government was that it allowed the further education sector to be excluded from the funding deal for schools. That deal may not have been perfect, but it has left schools, and especially those secondary schools without 16-18 provision, relatively much better off than the further education sector. The oft quoted number is that a lecturer in the FE sector earns around £7,000 less than a school teacher when teaching the same age group.

One has to ask, is it rational to be thinking of cutting fees for higher education without also considering the funding of further education, where a portion of higher education work also takes place. I suspect that a significant amount of the work on FE funding assumed that further education could subsidise expensive practical subjects from the assumed cheaper to deliver classroom based education. Such a view is both short-sighted and not, I suspect, based on much in the way of evidence. I guess that when general studies was taught to classes 100 or more day release students, such subsidies were possible: but mostly, I suspect, that was a long time ago.

Teaching English and Mathematics, both classroom based subjects, to those that failed to reach a satisfactory level at school cannot be done in large classes. It also cannot be done properly by those without sufficient knowledge and skills of teaching.  Practical subjects whether construction or hairdressing need both small groups and often expensive equipment. The Treasury doesn’t seem to realise this fact. Government also doesn’t seem to realise that students often have to travel significant distances to attend colleges offering subjects they are interested in learning.

We have already seen a couple of universities flirt with financial issues and there must be a risk as the number of 16-18 year olds reduces for the next couple of years that further education as a sector will experience the same sorts of serious financial problems.

Once the agony of the Brexit saga is finally resolved, one way or another, then British industry and commerce must step in to support the development of the further education sector as a means of creating talent for our wealth generating industries, whether old manufacturing skills or modern IT related skills or those that have yet to be fully understood around the applications of AI across the workplace.

Now is the time to review the economics of the whole 16-18 sector. Schools are able to support small sixth forms, especially where pupil numbers are growing at Key Stage 3. Colleges don’t have this luxury and it is a false economy to under-fund them when we need a more productive and skilled workforce at all levels. Those that don’t go to university are as important in our economy as those that do and much less of a burden on the public purse.  They deserve a better deal.