With funding for 16 to 18 education lower now in real terms than it was in 2010 you’d imagine that any new investment would be welcomed by college leaders with open arms. Well think again, because the government has found a way of making new money feel like a wholly backward step by imposing unnecessary, unhelpful and unworkable conditions for a modest amount of extra funding. And worst of all, conditions that will have a wholly negative impact on students’ chances of success.
Back in October, the prime minister launched his vision for a new 16 to 18 phase of education with more hours, more breadth and more support for those who the system has failed by age 16. In a very welcome but unusual step, he pledged more funding for the 40 per cent of young people who do not achieve a grade 4 in English and/or maths at age 16 and who are required to resit as part of their study programme. Nearly all of the re-sitters are in colleges, around 200,000 each year.
Extra funding to support their learning has to be a good thing, and nobody argues that carrying on learning to become proficient in English and maths is not a good thing, too. So what, then, is the problem?
Put simply, some busy officials somewhere in the Whitehall machine have devised a set of new rules which go alongside the modest funding of £375 per learner. They’ve done this with no engagement with colleges and they’ve got it wrong.
