There were some brave, if overdue, points made in education secretary Damian Hinds’ speech on social mobility this week. He admitted that the record number of disadvantaged students going to university doesn’t look quite so impressive when you examine which universities they’re going to. He acknowledged that there are different interpretations of social mobility; an intelligent counter to the vogue of perverse arguments that if you can’t help everyone you shouldn’t help anyone. Much was made of him addressing “the last taboo in education”; that parents also have a responsibility and a role to play. However, the blind spot in the secretary of state’s vision was his failure to recognise the role of colleges as the true engines of social mobility.

In his speech, Damian Hinds mentioned apps three times, nurseries and early years 10 times, he mentioned parents 20 times, universities 26 times, and schools no fewer than 30 times. He mentioned colleges just once. It’s therefore little surprise that FE is first in line for the budget cuts announced by the Treasury within a day of his speech.

‘Ignoring the facts’

A recent report by the Education Policy Institute showed that there are 25 per cent more disadvantaged students in colleges than in school sixth forms, and that colleges are disproportionately serving the most disadvantaged. To omit FE from the narrative of social mobility is to wilfully ignore the facts of who is actually working with economically-disadvantaged young people. It also highlights the inherent bias in the political class that will see them forever flogging retrograde solutions based on their own nostalgia rather than celebrating and embracing the exceptional dynamism of colleges.

Taking cash away from us to fund a sepia-fantasy of grammar schools might win the Conservative Party votes from wealthy parents who save on private-school fees and instead treat themselves to a Porsche, but it will kill my last hope that this government actually believes in social justice.

Need to restore trust

To be fair to Hinds, there were some mentions of things that colleges do in his speech, he just couldn’t quite say the actual C-word. He reaffirmed the government’s commitment to T levels and assured parity with A levels. Given last week’s slip by minister Anne Milton, undermining the 50 colleges working hard to prepare for the launch of T-levels by admitting she would advise her own child against them, Hinds will need to do more to restore trust. He also made a throwaway reference to the “number of 19-year-olds without GCSEs in English and maths” being at “a record low”. I guess a word-count-conscious intern might have cut the bit that thanked college English and maths resit teachers for their efforts helping with that despite being less-well resourced, having less curriculum time, and being paid less than schoolteachers.

That was it though and I was left with my head spinning to think of all that we do that wasn’t mentioned. It’s colleges working with Neets. It’s colleges nurturing disadvantaged students who left the school system with neither a single qualification nor the least spark of confidence, until thanks to our work they walk taller, look you in the eye, become employable, and engage with the world around them. My region suffers from the lack of drive and aspiration that Ofsted’s Amanda Spielman identified recently, but I see our vocational tutors teaching our students not just subject-specific knowledge and skills, but also the deeper values that will help them to seize opportunities and break free from limiting circumstances. It’s colleges that are there ready if that drive doesn’t emerge until a student is 20 or 70.

A fresh start

At colleges, academic, disadvantaged students can thrive with a fresh start where nobody remembers that they used to have to borrow pumps for PE in Year 7, and where they weren’t persecuted over the fabric of their skirt in Year 11 because they had to buy it out of their own money so chose a cheaper option. And it’s colleges that can offer a truly broad and specialist academic curriculum facilitating disadvantaged students to pursue their dreams and ambitions without the arbitrary limitations of a small school sixth form that can’t afford to employ a law specialist or that doesn’t want its best maths teachers distracted from pivotal GCSE groups.

Hinds claimed that T-levels will be “on a par with A levels” and I really hope he is right, but I’m not convinced it’s possible to achieve parity between the qualifications while colleges receive less funding than schools, while college teachers are paid less so that school teachers can be paid more, and while in such a wide-ranging speech on the mission of social mobility the secretary of state could barely bring himself to mention the sector that supports it the most.

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