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16-18 education funding to stay 10% below schools, report says

16-18 education funding to stay 10% below schools, report says

Sixth Form Colleges Association says report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies is ‘further evidence of the chronic underinvestment in sixth form education’

1st June 2017, 1:21pm

Julia Belgutay

Funding for 16-18 education would remain around 10 per cent lower than that for secondary schools regardless of who wins next week’s election, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS).

In a report published today, which analyses party proposals for spending on 16-18 education in English sixth-form colleges, further education colleges and school sixth forms, the organisation says Labour’s proposals would increase 16-18 spending per pupil to £5,800, a real increase of 8 per cent over the Parliament. However, it adds this would still leave spending per student in 16-18 education about 11 per cent below that for secondary schools in 2021-22, which under Labour’s manifesto plans would be about £6,500.

More generous than plans for schools

“As with spending on schools, there is a clear difference between the Conservative and Labour plans. Labour propose an 8 per cent real-terms increase in funding per 16 to 18 year-old pupil over the Parliament, whereas the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats propose a real-terms freeze,” says the IFS.

However, it adds that both the Conservative and Labour parties’ proposals for spending on 16-18 year-olds are more generous than their plans for school spending, which “would go a small way to reversing the relative trends in spending on pupils of different ages seen over the last 30 years”.

James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, said: “This report is further evidence of the chronic underinvestment in sixth form education. We need an immediate uplift in funding to ensure schools and colleges can provide students with the support they need. This should be followed by a fundamental review of funding to bridge the growing gap between investment levels and the cost of delivering a high quality sixth form curriculum.”

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