The government is being urged to increase funding for 16- to 18-year-olds ahead of this year’s autumn statement, as two thirds of sixth form colleges report dropping courses due to cost pressures.

The worrying figure is a key finding of the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association annual funding impact survey, the results of which are published today.

It is based on responses from 80 out of 90 of all SFCs, 53 (66 per cent) of whom said they had dropped courses as a result of funding cuts and cost increases.

The majority of SFCs (58 per cent) have also reduced or removed extra-curricular activities available to students including music and drama, sport and languages.

SFCA chief executive Bill Watkin (pictured above) called the findings a “wake-up call” to the government and urged ministers to take action.

“The message from the most effective and efficient providers of sixth form education is clear – more investment from government is essential if sixth form colleges, school and academy sixth forms are to continue providing young people with the high quality education they need to progress to higher education and employment,” he said.

The SFCA’s report comes ahead of the autumn statement on November 23, which will set out the government’s spending plans over the coming months.

The Association of Colleges has also called for greater funding for 16- to 18-year-olds in its autumn statement submission, published earlier this month.

An increase in the base rate for 16 and 17-year-olds, currently £4,000, was further needed to “avert a funding crisis in academic and technical education for that age group,” the AoC said.

The 2015 spending review and autumn statement was less damaging for the FE sector than previously feared.

Former chancellor Mr Osborne said at the time: “We will not, as many predicted, cut core adult skills funding for FE colleges – we will instead protect it in cash terms.”

“We will maintain the current national base rate of funding for our 16 to 19-year-old students for the whole parliament.”

The SFCA report said that last year’s funding impact survey had been “influential” in securing this commitment from the government, which it said was “clearly preferable to a further cut”.

But it noted that the funding freeze came after three rounds of funding reductions, which left SFCs particularly hard-hit.

It said: “While the underfunding of 16-19 education affects all providers, the impact on SFCs is particularly acute as they enrol more disadvantaged students and cannot cross subsidise from 11 to 16 funding as many schools and academies do.”

The report also noted that one “glaring inequality” between SFCs and other sixth forms was the “absence of a VAT refund scheme”, which meant that SFCs had on average £385,914 less to spend on education over the past year.

The announcement in last year’s spending review that SFCs could convert to academy was intended to address this VAT issue.

And according to the SFCA survey, 69 per cent of SFCs are now actively exploring academisation.

The AoC also addressed the VAT issue in its autumn statement submission, and pressed for VAT to be “removed from all publicly funded education” for 16- to 18-year-olds “on the day that the UK leaves the EU”.

When invited to respond to the SFCA survey findings, a DfE spokesperson said: “Every young person should have access to an excellent education and we have protected the base rate of funding for all post-16 students until 2020 to ensure that happens. We’ve also ended the unfair discrimination between colleges and school sixth forms and we now ensure funding is based on student numbers rather than discriminating between qualifications.

“On top of this we are providing more than half a billion pounds this year alone to help post-16 institutions support students from disadvantaged backgrounds or with low prior attainment.”

The reversal of government plans to reduce subcontracting through its new Register of Apprenticeship Training Providers has been welcomed by Association of Employment and Learning Providers boss Mark Dawe.

A guide to the new register was unveiled by the Skills Funding Agency today.

It was supposed to be more rigorous than the existing SFA provider register – which will continue for non-apprenticeship provision.

The proposals when published in August said the main provider would need to deliver at least half the training for each apprentices themselves.

But little appears set to be changing now, with the new document stating: “At the employer’s request, and subject to their agreement, main providers will be able to bring in subcontractors to deliver whole, or parts of, frameworks or standards.”

It added: “We appreciate that maintaining the ability to subcontract will, at least for a transitional period, be important for employers and providers.

“Therefore, we will require that all approved ‘main’ providers will need to directly provide training for each employer’s apprenticeship programme that they deliver, but we will not require the main provider to deliver a significant majority of each framework or standard they contract with an employer to deliver.”

The government claimed in August the clamp-down on subcontracting was to foster direct relationships between employers and training providers.

However, the proposals produced a concerned reaction from sector bodies who argued strongly for maintenance of what many felt was a productive relationship, between prime and subcontractors, for learners and providers.

Mark Dawe, chief executive of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers, told FE Week today: “We are pleased that the government was true to its word and treated the apprenticeship consultation as just that – a consultation.

“While there are clearly still areas of concern, significant steps have been taken to respond to the key matters raised by AELP and its members and we welcome that.”

He added: “With regard to the provider register, sense has prevailed with a proposal around subcontracting that is actually deliverable, removing the ability to just tout funding around the system, while leaving enough flexibility to provide employer focused partnership solutions for delivery.

“The decision to exclude providers with contract values below £100k from having to join the register (they still can apply if they want to) in order to deliver apprenticeships is good news, demonstrating the true benefit of a proper consultative approach and in direct response to representations from AELP.”

At the moment, subcontractors which deliver less than £100,000 of SFA-funded provision each year do not need to apply – and, as Mr Dawe recognised, plans to change that also appear to have been dropped.

The document stated: “For the time being, we will retain the threshold, which means that organisations who want to deliver less than £100k of apprenticeship training per year as a subcontractor will not need to apply.”