Today, chancellor Philip Hammond announced that a further £500m will be invested into further education (FE). As a college student who has witnessed sustained cuts and closures of the services we rely on, surely I should be pleased? Well, in a word, no.
I am not pleased, because this funding is not to plug the 24% cut to adult learning made earlier this year. This funding is not to fill the £360m gap in maintenance support since education maintenance allowance (EMA) was cut. This funding is not to reimburse the 17% real-terms pay cut the staff who teach us have endured.
No – this is a redirection of funds, away from existing services and support, toward the government’s new gimmick that will only narrow our curriculum.
The announced funding will be ring-fenced – spent only on colleges delivering the 15 technical routes the government is championing, dubbed “T-levels”. These routes include engineering, accounting, marketing and hospitality. Instead of having longer to choose and explore before deciding our life’s path, students will now have to make a decision between an “academic” or a “technical” career aged 16.
Elsewhere, the decimation of FE is taking place right across the UK. According to the University and College Union, which represents teachers in FE, the government in Wales has imposed an average of 6% cuts across all colleges with funding for part-time courses reduced by a half. In Northern Ireland, the department for employment and learning, which funds further and higher education, has had a budget reduction of £48m – a 6.4% cut from the previous year.
Hammond says this is about putting technical education “on par” with academic education, but where does that leave us? Many academic subjects – namely arts and humanities – have been lost in FE due to the narrowing of the curriculum and the over-emphasis on Stem subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics). We’ve seen a 33% fall in the number of young people choosing art and design at AS-level alone.
This isn’t new – the technical agenda has already manifested in the form of university technical colleges. These are colleges not run not by local authorities, but by private corporations. They are doing so badly that seven have already closed. Sadly, this is where that extra money will be going.
While public funds are pumped into these failing, corporate-sponsored institutions, other colleges remain under-funded, and in the area reviews process face further cutbacks. The government must stop pushing a failing agenda of backdoor privatisation and instead invest in public education.
Of course we should welcome stronger support for alternative and technical studies, but we must reject the false choice this government gives us between funding colleges and funding poverty-waged apprenticeships.
We should absolutely reject a plan that the chancellor’s press release boasts as something that will “better suit the needs of businesses”.
Instead, we must fight for an education system that suits the needs of the students it serves and the staff who deliver it.
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