This week’s Department for Education announcement about education recovery funding contained the interesting news that the 16-18 catch-up fund will continue for another three years, until 2023-4. In our sector, something that lasts four years almost becomes part of the furniture. The DfE first launched the fund in July 2020 with £96 million. In February it was extended for a year and increased to £102 million. Now, thanks to this week’s announcement, there’s £220 million for a further two years.
The tuition fund is part of a bigger education recovery package that had a “could do better” feel about it. Someone had briefed journalists that the bid was for a three-year package costing £10 billion to £15 billion, so today’s £1.4 billion looked modest. It comes on top of the £1.7 billion announced back in February, with £1 billion allocated for tutoring. The trouble, sometimes, with education spending announcements is a cycle in which a sum of money is publicised, explained, distributed, not fully used and taken back. Whether or not this is the case for the overall programme, the fact that there’s now a three-year budget should mean it’s not the case with the tuition fund.
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June is the month when colleges work out their budgets and staffing plans for next year. The question most college leaders will want answered is what the tuition fund allocation will be for 2021-2. They’ve been asking this question for months and hopefully there’ll be an answer soon because it helps to know what you can afford before you start any project, whether that’s redecorating your flat or organising catch-up classes. But the bigger issue is not really the fact that this announcement is late - we’ve become used to that in the past 15 months - it’s that’s it’s little.
Too little Covid catch-up funding for colleges
Presented as a single figure, £100 million a year is a large sum but spent on support for hundreds of thousands of young people, it’s not so much. We don’t yet know the exact terms and conditions for the second year of the fund but the focus is likely to continue to be on English and maths. Government has missed the opportunity to increase overall teaching hours or extend the pupil premium beyond the age of 16. After the age of 16, young people in England have fewer contact hours than their counterparts in other Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development countries. This will remain the case in the 2021-22 academic year while the DfE carries out yet another review of the evidence so that it can satisfy Treasury tests.
AoC carried out its own, quick, review of the education situation in colleges a couple of months ago. Principals responding to our survey reported that the pandemic and shutdowns had had a significant impact on progress made by all students, including 16- to 18-year-olds. Although colleges scaled up online teaching very quickly last year, there are some subjects where this does not work as well. Remote education doesn’t work well in practical subjects such as construction, motor vehicle and hair and beauty. Students on lower-level courses and with limited access to home IT also struggled. Overall, the learning loss is measured in months whereas the recovery package announced today is equivalent to a few weeks.
This is not to say that the tuition fund won’t help. Colleges made good use of the money they were given last August to spend from September, and they’ll make good use of a second round to build on round one. Most colleges ran a combination of small-group tuition, mentoring and additional online classes. The rules were a bit inflexible first time around, so hopefully the DfE has made some tweaks. Adult learners and apprentices are - again - excluded from this initiative, but it’s something to build on. As Sir Kevan Collins said this week: “More will be needed”.
Julian Gravatt is deputy chief executive of the Association of Colleges
