In the middle of the recent flurry of government announcements on public sector pay it wouldn’t be surprising if most people missed the biggest announcement on Further Education funding for many years. Amazingly, it was good news.
Although colleges are outside the pay review body framework, it was announced that the Department for Education is pumping in nearly half a billion pounds of extra funding over the next two years, £185 million in 2023-4 and £285 million in 2024-5. The aim is to give colleges enough money to match the 6.5% pay award offered to school teachers.
It’s now clear that after months of the Association of Colleges and others pressing the case, Gillian Keegan and Robert Halfon have managed to persuade the Treasury to use underspends in other Post-16 budgets to shore up collapsing college finances and take the steam out of the pressure cooker of threatened union strike action which looked set to boil over next year.
Thank you, ministers. At last, you have turned all the rhetoric about the vital role of FE Colleges in tackling Britain’s skills crisis into something real. A proper funding boost for a sector that has been living on starvation rations for years.
