Colleges week
Date published:
Colleges Week has allowed us to celebrate our region’s excellent colleges and the important role they play in the North East. Colleges are engines of opportunity and offer people in our region the chance to reach their full potential. What is more, they help ensure that our region’s workforce have the skills that businesses need to succeed.
Whilst this week has shone a spotlight on the important role further education colleges play in our local community and economy, we have a long way to go in ensuring that the importance of colleges is recognised by policymakers. In the last decade, per-student funding has fallen by 12% in colleges, whilst funding into adult education has fallen by 45% in real terms. Successive years of disinvestment in the sector has disproportionately impacted people in the North East, with 50% of pupils in the region progressing into an apprenticeship or learning at a further education college, compared to just 26% of pupils in London.
The pandemic has highlighted the vulnerability of young people and less qualified adults in economic downturns, as well as the important role colleges will play in the economic recovery from Covid-19. Colleges will be instrumental in supporting school-leavers into their first jobs, helping redundant workers back into the workplace or into new careers and ensuring that the skills needs of our rapidly changing economy are met.
This Government has been vocal in its support for colleges and its desire to see renewed focus on the further education system. Whilst the Government’s recent announcement of the Lifetime Skills Guarantee and £1.5bn cash injection for capital improvements are a start, much more needs to be done level up the further education system. With the FE White Paper on the horizon, now is the opportunity for Government to put its money where its mouth is and outline increased and long-term college funding agreements, more power for regional authorities to target local skills needs and a real commitment to life-long learning and training.
We must ensure that the further education system is fit for purpose and able to deliver the upskilling and reskilling of the workforce needed for the North East to truly “build back better”.