Three cheers for colleges. Thanks to the unprecedented cross-sector love-in that is Colleges Week, we all (hashtag) Love Our Colleges and everything’s going to be fine. Look, even education secretary Damian Hinds is on board. He ACTUALLY VISITED a college last week (just before Colleges Week, by remarkable coincidence) and gamely wore a badge sporting the campaign logo.
Skills minister Anne Milton is apparently a paid-up supporter, too. FErret managed to sneak in to a fringe event at the Tory Party Conference the other week (all those years burrowing beneath Birmingham’s ICC to gain access to the Association of Colleges’ annual conference weren’t for nothing, you know) where she bemoaned the fact that FE gets “crowded out” of public discourse by schools and universities.
“I can only do so much as one person, and the minister of state who is passing through government, for however long it is,” Milton told the session, the poor little lamb (come on now, who was that at the back who said “not for long if you keep trashing your own flagship qualifications”? Behave). What the sector needed, said its minister, was a “tidal wave of opinion” in its favour. “It needs everybody to be talking about it,” she continued, “and that then gives me the tools to go to battle with the Treasury.”
Banging on the Treasury door
Notwithstanding the horrendous mixing of metaphors (FErret would rather go to war with a sword than a chisel, to be honest), as Ms Milton has pointed out in the past, this wouldn’t be the first time she’s been banging on the door of the Treasury demanding Philip Hammond and those big bullies share their sweets with the FE sector. Isn’t it great to have a minister fighting FE’s corner?
Well, not necessarily. There’s no surer way for a minister to line themselves up for the chop than by signalling that they’ve gone native. No Prime Minister wants a minister seen to be in thrall to the vested interests they’re there to keep in check. By being at pains to be seen to be standing up for the FE sector, what Ms Milton has done is expose the lack of influence she has with the real decision-makers at Number 10 and the Treasury.
Her boss appears to be faring little better. Education secretary Damian Hinds managed to rummage down the back of the Department for Education sofa to find enough coppers for a pay rise for school teachers, but he conclusively failed to wrangle any money from the Treasury to pay for it. And not a penny to fund a pay rise for college teachers was forthcoming either.
‘Sustained and systematic underfunding’
This is the real kick in the balls for the FE sector. While apprenticeships and T levels featured prominently in chancellor Philip Hammond’s conference speech, and Hinds reiterated his desire for an end to technical education being a second rate alternative to its academic alternative, what do all these fine words actually add up to? An extra £500 million a year for T levels (by 2022 at the earliest - by which time a different government will be in place. Isn’t it easy to send someone else’s money?). £170 million for institutes of technology. Plus a few other coppers (in the grand scheme of government funding) for training teachers, sorting out GCSE maths resits and buying a few new laptops. Whoop-dee-doo.
Contrast this with the sustained and systematic underfunding of the FE sector since 2010, with not a penny’s increase in the base per-student funding rate in this period. Little wonder the highly-respected IFS concluded that FE’s been the most under-funded sector of all.
Be in no doubt: the government’s rhetoric about the importance of skills, while all the while undermining it through a lack of proper investment, is rank hypocrisy. And it’s only been allowed to happen because ministers have known full well that they could get away with diverting funding to more headline-grabbing areas. The sector has been so badly abused in recent years that even keeping hold of its woefully-inadequate funding allocation was seen as a triumph.
Downtrodden no more
But no more. The AoC, unions and NUS deserve credit for awakening the FE sector from its slumbers. The lack of a pay rise was the straw that broke the camel’s back. PR-wise, FE has had an excellent few weeks. First, the IFS report made its case in a sensible, evidence-based way. Then even the cash-rich universities got worried, and started making the case for better investment in FE (as long as it’s not from their own overflowing funding streams, of course).
And now we have college staff and students, the life blood of the sector, making their case vociferously, through petitions and protest songs. Tomorrow, we could see as many as 5,000 people marching on Westminster to make their case.
The core mission of Colleges Week must be to expose the breathtaking double standards of government when it comes to the “fundamental” importance of the FE sector. Enough of the big talk: it’s time to put up or shut up.
The tidal wave of opinion Milton called for has washed up outside the Department for Education. Now it’s time for its ministers to do their job and make damn sure the Treasury gives colleges the funding they deserve.
