Member News
By Nic Dakin MP - 1st February 2011
Cuts in funding will leave sixth form colleges in danger of becoming "nothing more than exam factories" unable to spend time on developing the whole student, warns Nic Dakin MP.
As a Sixth form college principal before being elected as an MP at the last election, I am a bit of an anorak when it comes to the funding of 16-19 year olds education! I began to receive phone calls and emails from former colleagues concerned about the proposals coming out of the Young People's Learning Agency (the YPLA) that landed in colleges just before Christmas. And in many cases after the start of the Christmas break. The YPLA is imitating its flawed predecessor, the Learning and Skills Council, in the way it is communicating with others.
TheYPLA is proposing is a cut in the funding of 'entitlement' from 114 guided learning hours to 30 guided learning hours (guided learning hours are what YPLA funding 'buys'). This will effectively be a 12 per cent cut in funding for sixth form colleges, in what currently provides the money for the pastoral care systems in colleges, the careers support, other targeted support for weaker learners and health advice. It also pays for those non-examined activities such as sport, drama and music that broaden the educational experience of young people. Many sixth form colleges are now telling me that if this goes ahead it is likely to mean a severe reduction in the amount of tutorial, guidance and enrichment currently available. It will probably be reduced to less than one hour's tutorial session a week for students, with nothing else being able to be resourced. Sixth form colleges will be in danger of becoming nothing more than exam factories unable to spend time on developing the whole student –
a job they are recognised as doing extremely well at the moment.
It is likely that colleges will now struggle to offer a broad range of extra-curricular activities that have for so long been a key characteristic of sixth-form education. Team sport, orchestras, drama productions, sign-language, community volunteering, rocket science and magazine editing will all be put at risk. I fear that without the provision of culture and sports in post-16 education, students will only access these pursuits if they or their parents can pay for them.
In my view the size of the cut is unfair in comparison to the cut in funding per learner in primary and secondary education. It is also quite amazing that sixth form colleges – applauded by education secretary Michael Gove and widely recognised as one of the most efficient parts of the education system - should be hit so badly. Surely this is yet another unintended consequence of ill thought out policy.
Nic Dakin was elected as Labour MP for Scunthorpe, Yorkshire and Humberside in 2010. A former sixth form college principal, he currently sits on the House of Commons education committee.
Article Comments
Another day, another case of the left hand saying 'blimey I never even knew you existed' when it encounters the right hand from the coalition government.
Cutting funding for sixth forms to the point where pastoral care, extra curricular activities and just about anything apart from cramming for exams art little more than a fond memory is par for the sorry course they have set regarding education policy. Praise a service to the skies one day and cut it to the bone the next; Alice in Wonderland couldn't have come up with better.
It would be almost funny to watch their pre election rhetoric about bringing about bold reforms founder on its own impracticability and obsession with returning to a rose tinted version of the past, were it not for the small fact that a whole generation of young people will have their life chances ruined as a result.
Adam Colclough
1st Feb 2011 at 4:05 pm
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