MPs from both the government and opposition benches have spoken in support of increasing funding for colleges and sixth-form colleges.
Speaking in a Westminster Hall debate on FE funding on Tuesday morning, the Conservative MP for Truro and Falmouth, Sarah Newton, raised the issue of teacher pay at Truro and Penwith College, which she said had not been able to give its staff a pay rise for eight years. This was making it hard for them to recruit and retain staff, she added.
The convener of the Westminster Hall debate, Richard Graham, Tory MP for Gloucester, said in response: “I think it is something that we can all agree on that it is time that core funding allowed for a decent increase in salaries for staff.”
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Later in the debate, he said that the pay disparity of £7,000 between what a teacher earns in a college compared to what their colleagues in schools earned “implies that we are valuing teachers in colleges less than those in schools, which cannot be right.”
The calls for a college teacher pay were echoed by other MPs, including Labour’s Paul Blomfield, who said it was “unfair that the government did not underpin a college pay rise” as it had done for schools.
Shadow FE minister Gordon Marsden called on his opposite number to make teachers pay in colleges “a red line” for the Department for Education as part of its negotiations with the Treasury in the upcoming spending review.
Second debate on FE funding this year
Responding to the wider debate, skills minister Anne Milton did not comment on staff pay levels in colleges. However, she did say she would make the strongest case for better funding for the sector.
The Westminster Hall debate on FE funding was the second to be held since the start of the year, following a debate that was sparked by a petition set up by students at Brockenhurst College in Hampshire, which to date has garnered more than 72,000 signatures in its call for fairer funding for the FE sector.
A report by the IFS published last September showed that real-terms funding for colleges has fallen by 10 per cent in 10 years, while funding for adult education has fallen by half since 2010.
