Gillian Keegan has rehashed the government’s previous skills investment pledges after FE was ignored in the chancellor’s education funding boost last week.
The education secretary wrote to the whole education sector today and claimed that Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement “underlined the government’s commitment to education as he seeks to restore stability to the economy”.
Despite the autumn statement not mentioning the word “colleges” once, Keegan said it was “great to hear him [Hunt] acknowledge the massive contribution our heads, teachers and classroom assistants make to our national life and his statement reinforces our mission to drive up standards and give every child or learner an excellent education”.
The autumn statement announced that schools will receive £2 billion in extra funding in each of the next two years, which is the “biggest injection of funding ever”, allows schools to return to at least 2010 levels in real terms, and is “what the sector said it needed”.
