Following the well-supported Colleges Week back in September, and the petition created by a college sixth-former for the government to increase college funding, MPs finally debated the issue of our sector’s neglect in Westminster Hall on Monday. Well…mostly Labour MPs debated it, with a few notable Conservative appearances.

“I think we can all agree that securing a debate in Parliament is a pretty impressive piece of A-level project work,” joked skills minister Anne Milton, uncomfortably highlighting in the process that she had not been able to do so herself.

Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee, was on fine figurative form, deploying imagery from student “butterflies” to “economic trampolines”, but he struck the most powerful, truthful chord when he identified the attitude of those who would divert our funding elsewhere: For our students, it’s “too late” anyway.

Sir John Hayes was moved to the poetic too: “We plant trees for those born later.” Iain Duncan Smith made a surprise cameo and then that was about it for the blue corner. The debate was dominated by Labour.

Strong and compelling

It was also dominated by cringingly time-wasting name checks of each speaker’s constituency college, rather than staying focused on a strong and compelling case for better funding. And what’s the point? Is it really likely that one of the other MPs is sitting there thinking “Well, I never knew that Chestersworth-upon-Sands College had an outstanding engineering faculty”? Or are they imagining a critical swing contingent of constituents poring over Hansard for shoutouts?

I will grant you that there might be some slight bitterness and hypocrisy creeping in there. I am embarrassingly proud of my own exceptional college and we never got one bloody mention. Now, humour me a moment, but, like many colleges, mine serves a huge area with significant numbers of students drawn from four counties. That got me thinking, not about a lack of explicit mentions of my college, but about lack of representation of colleges altogether.

There are over 40 parliamentary constituencies in our wider region, yet only a tiny number of our MPs participated in the debate. The great majority failed to represent the tens of thousands of their constituents who learn or work in colleges.

I’m not just proud of my college, I’m proud of all colleges because of the enormous scale and impact of what we do. In order to achieve a real change, we will need to look further than our own immediate self-interests, as we did so stirringly back in Colleges Week.

Joint working

In her best moments, Anne Milton recognised it. “Divisions in society underlie this whole debate,” she said, and “joint working is critical.” But sadly joint working will be impossible while nearly all of her party, and a good portion of the other, choose to be somewhere else. On Monday, they chose to be in the main chamber at Westminster where the topic was Brexit.

For the “woke” virtue-signalling MPs of the left, it was more important to be seen piling in on May. For the swivel-eyed moneybags of the right, it was more important to engage in some Francophobia and have a good laugh posturing absurdly. And sadly it seems that for the hand-wringing middle classes the Brexit debate is played to, it’s more important to find out whether the 29th March will see them forced to break their BMW addiction or whether the flights for their spa weekend in Milan will be cancelled. Other people’s children just aren’t a priority.

The wording of Charlotte Jones’ petition is excellent. She calls for “immediate parity with recently announced increases to school funding.” There’s no moral case for anything else, but Brexit is a convenient distraction.

Fairness in funding

Those politicians who supported Brexit on the principle of sovereignty have now given up that same sovereignty to the throne of Brexit itself when they prioritise it over the education and future of our young people in this country.

More than 70,000 people - students, teachers, governors, parents, support workers, communities - all united under a petition for the simple and reasonable goal of fairness in education funding. We petitioned for a debate that would convince the government. Like me, you might have imagined something different from the parish-council meeting we saw on Monday. If so, I would urge you to write to your MP to find out what they chose to prioritise that day over the sustainability of the sector that is the engine of social mobility.

Andrew Otty leads 16-19 English in an FE college. He is an ambassador for education charity SHINE