A singing science lecturer from Middlesbrough College is in the running for a $1m first-prize after making the top ten of finalists for a competition to find the best teacher in the world.
Dr Richard Spencer is the only teacher in Europe to make the shortlist for the $1m Varkey Foundation Global Teacher Prize.
The A-Level biology lecturer will be flown to Dubai, along with the other nine finalists, for an award ceremony taking place on Sunday (March 15) at the Global Education and Skills Forum.
He was chosen at random as one of three of the original 50 shortlisted candidates to meet Pope Francis at the Vatican in Rome on February 5, at the IV Scholas Occurentes World Educational Congress.
Dr Spencer, who encourages learners to join in science-inspired role-playing, YMCA-style dance routines and reworkings of popular songs with lyrics including ‘Don’t blame it on the phosphate’, said: “I still can’t quite believe that I’ve been shortlisted. I keep pinching myself.
“It’s a great honour to be chosen as one of the final ten candidates, all of whom are doing incredible things in the world of teaching and learning.
“I’m very mindful that the whole purpose of the global prize isn’t to make a celebrity out of a teacher, but to celebrate the teaching profession and the importance of teaching.”
Dr Spencer who has previously won the Salter Prize for Teaching Chemistry and two national STAR awards (Further Education Teacher of The Year and Outstanding Subject Learning Coach), studied for a PhD in molecular biology before becoming a teacher.
He was awarded an MBE in 2010 for services to science communication and was named as one of the UK’s Leading 100 Practising Scientists in 2014.
He is a member of three UK science committees — Science on Stage UK, Nuffield Bioethics Education Advisory Group and Commemorating Biology Working Group —and involves his students with presentations at conferences and festivals across Europe.
Dr Spencer, known to his students as Doc, said: “What I love about teaching is the privilege of working with young people, to fire their passion and reciprocate their energy.
“The buzz of seeing those ‘light bulb’ moments when challenging topics start to make sense for students makes you realise that the hours of planning innovative learning experiences were worthwhile.
“Seeing my students develop in confidence, knowing that I have helped to prepare them for future success way beyond their time with me in the classroom is hugely rewarding.”
The competition, which was launched in March 2014, is widely referred to as the Nobel Prize for teaching.
The other teachers that have made the top the ten are from Afghanistan, India, Haiti, Kenya, Cambodia, Indonesia and the United States.
Zoe Lewis, Middlesbrough College principal, said: “It’s amazing news, we’re thrilled for Dr Spencer and for the college.
“Doc is an inspiration to staff and students and we wish him the best of luck when he travels to Dubai for the final.
“Of course it will be marvellous if he wins, but just getting to the top ten is a magnificent achievement and he’s already a winner as far as we are concerned.”
Main pic: Dr Richard Spencer dancing in the classroom with students. Inset left: Dr Spencer meeting the Pope. Inset right: Dr Spencer
A Labour government would protect 16 to 19 education as part of plans to protect the entire Department for Education (DfE) budget, party leader Ed Miliband has announced.
Mr Miliband set out his party’s policies on education for the May 7 general election in a speech at lunchtime today at his old school — Haverstock, a comprehensive in Camden, north London.
He raised sector hopes through the speech, in which he also said that a Labour government would address poor careers advice at schools and bring about a “revolution in apprenticeships”, that Labour was going protect the entire FE budget including adult skills.
However, this turned out to be untrue.
Mr Miliband said: “If we are to act on the principle that education is a passport to success in life for individuals and our nation’s economy we must be willing to invest in the early years, in schools and in FE.
“The next Labour government will protect the overall education budget, rising budgets protected in real terms every year, not cut as they will be under the Conservatives.”
But a Labour spokesperson later said that Mr Miliband only meant that Labour planned to protect the entire DfE budget, including 16 to 19 education.
He was not, the spokesperson said, referring to Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) education funding.
Mr Miliband’s spending commitment was still welcomed by FE sector leaders.
Martin Doel, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, said: “Ed Miliband’s announcement that a future Labour government would protect education funding right the way through from 0 to 18 years old will be immensely reassuring and encouraging to young people and those charged with providing their education.
“Education and training of 16 to18 year-olds is too important to leave to chance.
“College and sixth form students have unfairly borne the brunt of funding cuts for far too long.
“Labour has recognised that in order to sustain and grow the economy our young people need to be supported in developing skills for the global workplace and be protected from future cuts.
“However, education funding still needs to be put on a more rational and stable footing and that’s why the next government of whatever hue needs to prioritise a once in a generation funding review of how money is spent at each stage of education to ensure we can adequately educate and train all children and young people.”
James Kewin, deputy chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association said: “This is an extremely welcome announcement that could throw a lifeline to the Sixth Form College sector. The Labour party has responded to the deep concerns of students, teachers and parents that sixth form funding has been cut to the bone over the past five years. Without real terms protection, some Sixth Form Colleges will close and others will only be able to provide an impoverished educational experience to students.
“This is an important step towards addressing the chronic underfunding of sixth form education. As young people are now required to participate in education and training until the age of 18, the current policy of ending funding protection at the age of 16 is absurd. As the Prime Minister confirmed last week that a future Conservative government would continue this policy, there is now a stark choice between the two main parties on sixth form education.”
A spokesperson for the Association of Employment and Learning Providers said: “Apprenticeships, traineeships and study programmes for 16 to 18-year-olds are very important for producing the skilled young workforce that employers are now demanding, so we would be very pleased if the DfE’s budget for these programmes was protected.”
It came on the same day that the Liberal Democrats announced the party’s five priorities for the next five years, which included guaranteeing education funding from nursery to 19-year-olds.
Sally Hunt, the University and College Union general secretary, said: “For too FE has had to bear the brunt of funding cuts. We are pleased that Ed Miliband has pledged the sector will not suffer the same plight under a Labour administration.
“The Liberal Democrats have also put further education at the heart of their election pledges and we now need to see more details from all parties on their plans for education.”
The Conservative Party, which has so far only pledged to ringfence school funding, declined to comment on whether it would extend its commitment to 16 to 19 education.
Picture: Hannah McKay/PA Wire/Press Association Images
The government should top-slice from skills and careers budgets to pay for coaches to help people out of low-paid jobs, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) has said.
In the first of its Policy Solutions reports, No Limits: From Getting By to Getting On, Niace calls for £100m of existing funding to be diverted to pay for careers coaches and personal budgets for those trying to improve their employment opportunities, all through a proposed National Advancement Service.
The organisation claims the new service, which would be managed by cities and Local Enterprise Partnerships (Leps) could help 500,000 families and reduce the number of children in poverty by 150,000 by 2020, and could be cost-neutral if money for it comes from existing adult skills budget and National Careers Service funding.
The report says: “Britain faces a wages crisis, underpinned by low productivity. For the last seven years, people’s wages have risen more slowly than the prices in the shops. By 2020 people’s real incomes will still be 5 per cent lower than in 2008, a lost decade.
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“People also often become ‘stuck’ in low pay and cannot advance their careers: three in four people in low pay in 2001 were still low paid a decade later.
“This paper argues for a new National Advancement Service, providing people in low paid work a career coach and personal budget to put together a personalised package of support to build their career and boost their earnings.
“It would give low paid workers a place to go for help to get on. And it would help to rebuild the link between doing the right thing, and getting the help you need.
“This new service would be an engine of deficit reduction, helping people boost their wages and so increasing income tax receipts, a vehicle of public service reform, helping to maximise the impact of investment in skills and a supporter of aspiration helping individuals to achieve their ambitions and get on in life.
“It would be managed locally by cities and Leps, where they agreed to top up support through, for example, European Social Fund or Growth Deal monies.
“Local areas would also need to integrate support through the new service with measures to promote the living wage and boost economic and business development. This would help to integrate support with other local services, such as money advice and business support.”
Labour leader Ed Miliband is set to stand by his party’s controversial pledge to scrap apprenticeships of less than two years’ duration and below level three in a speech today.
Mr Miliband will set out his vision for education if Labour wins the general election on May 7 in a speech this afternoon at his old school — Haverstock, a comprehensive in Camden, north London.
He will reiterate a series of proposals already set out by his party for FE, including raising “the quality” of apprenticeships so they all last a minimum of two years and are at least a level three standard.
He will also say that a Labour government would ensure that all young people studied English and maths until they are aged 18 and introduce a new technical baccalaureate for 16-18 year olds, including an employer accredited vocational qualification, English, Maths and work experience.
As part of a package of proposals which Labour claim would “prioritise the forgotten 50 per cent of young people who do not go to university”, Mr Miliband will also say that his party would launch new technical degrees as a next step for young people who “excel” in vocational studies at college and school.
A Labour government, Mr Miliband will claim, would also back new Institutes of Technical Education linked to local industry and charged with delivering its technical baccalaureate and revamped apprenticeships.
Labour lost a House of Commons vote on February 4 on its plans to scrap apprenticeships of less than two years’ duration and below level three.
A vote on a motion calling for the new standards was defeated 294 votes to 218, following a heated opposition day debate in Parliament.
The motion, submitted in Mr Miliband’s name and supported by Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna and Shadow Skills Minister Liam Byrne, was criticised by government ministers and MPs who accused the opposition front bench of “dismissing” level two apprenticeships.
But Mr Umunna said: “It is not to devalue them, it is frankly to bring them up to the same benchmarks as our competitors who are more productive than us.”
The policy was unveiled in September last year by Labour’s Skills Taskforce.
Its report, A revolution in apprenticeships: a something-for-something deal with employers, said: “To protect the apprenticeship brand, level two training should be renamed as a traineeship or similar.”
It proposed that apprenticeships be level three or above and last a minimum of two years for level three (equivalent to A-level) and three years for level four (university level).
However, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers urged Labour to scrap its policy three months ago, as it said the changes would stop employers from taking on an apprentice where they only had level two positions available.
The deficit will be a central feature of the general election debate – Labour will claim the government hasn’t cut the deficit as fast as they said they would; the other parties will claim Labour would spend too much. The deficit, however, is a symptom of economic problems. Low pay is one of the causes.
Five million people in Britain are low paid – that’s 1m more than the international average. Their living standards have fallen in the last decade and will take until 2020 to recover. And too many people get stuck in low pay – three in four people low paid ten years ago are still low paid today.
This failure of pay to rise is part of the reason for the stubbornly high deficit – when earnings don’t rise, neither do income tax receipts. And behind the blizzard of statistics lies the human cost: of people struggling to make ends meet, a rise in food banks, young people not able to get on the housing ladder.
For too many people it feels like prices rising faster than wages is simply the new normal.
The role of learning and skills in tackling this fundamental challenge is too often underplayed. Many of those in low paid work have relatively low qualification levels and get relatively little training at work: those with already high skills are four times as likely to get training as those with low skills.
We know too that, in order to progress, people need additional support on top of training – whether that’s mentoring, confidence building or signposting to new opportunities. The very best learning and skills provision builds this in already.
Yet whatever the result of the general election, funding for people in work is likely to be cut still further. Unless you are young, have few previous qualifications, or are out of work, there is likely to be little support available to you. The main offer is likely to be taking out a loan. Yet we know that since the introduction of these loans in Further Education, there have been dramatic falls in the number of adults learning.
It is perhaps only a slight exaggeration to suggest we are heading to a cliff edge in adult learning.
Niace believes that a new National Advancement Service could help to square this circle.
It would offer a free career check to everyone in low paid work, the chance to sit down with a qualified career coach to talk about your goals and how best to achieve them.
You would agree an action plan with your career coach – which could include on-the-job training, further qualifications, work shadowing, networking etc – which would be part funded by a personal career account. Data on how successful the service was at helping people advance their career and boost their earnings would be publicly available.
The new service would be funded by refocusing part of the current National Careers Service budget and adult skills budgets. Local areas would be encouraged to top this up using European Social Fund and other funding.
It is simply not realistic to call for additional funding in the current climate, so this is about better integrating together existing funding, tailoring it to individuals, and focusing on the outcomes desired rather than what it takes to get there.
The idea is to free up providers to build tailored packages of support and study programmes for individuals, based on the outcome of higher earnings for that person.
More than 70 MPs have written to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan calling for sixth form colleges to be exempted from paying VAT.
The government’s controversial policy of continuing to charge sixth form colleges VAT while schools and academies are entitled to a refund of the 20 per cent tax has sparked a campaign by the Sixth Form Colleges Association (SFCA), backed by sector leaders, MPs and celebrities.
Now 76 MPs from across the political divide, led by Commons education committee chair and Tory MP Graham Stuart (pictured), have put that support on paper. Other notable names on the letter include former Education Secretaries Alan Johnson and David Blunkett, public accounts committee chair Margaret Hodge and the influential sole Green MP Caroline Lucas.
In the letter, welcomed by the SFCA, the MPs warned that “the VAT anomaly threatens the success of a high performing sector”.
Mr Stuart said: “MPs across the House feel strongly that it is wrong that sixth form colleges still have to pay VAT, when schools and academies can reclaim those costs. Young people should receive the same level of investment in their education, irrespective of where they choose to study.
“It would cost around £30m per year to ensure students in sixth form colleges are treated fairly, a comparatively modest sum for central government that would make an enormous difference to the education of these young people. I would urge all political parties to commit to addressing this anomaly.”
The SFCA is running a campaign to push for the 93 sixth form colleges in England to have the same rights over VAT as schools and claims the average sixth form college has to redirect £335,000 of its annual funding away from the front line education of students to pay the tax.
James Kewin
SFCA deputy chief executive James Kewin said: “We are delighted that so many MPs from across the political divide are supporting our campaign to drop the learning tax.
“The money sixth form colleges pay in VAT would be better spent on the front line education of young people. Students in sixth form colleges deserve the same investment in their education as their peers in school or academy sixth forms.”
It comes after Skills Minister Nick Boles said he was willing to begin discussions with the “fierce” Treasury over whether sixth form colleges might be allowed to change their status if they link up with schools, but the SFCA has called for clarity over the policy.
A Department for Education spokesperson said: “Our plan for education means thousands of students are staying in education or training after the age of 16, giving them the skills and experience they need for life in modern Britain.
“This is a long-standing issue – and we are looking at how we can help sixth form colleges. We have already ended the historic and unfair funding difference between post-16 schools and colleges by funding them per student, rather than discriminating between qualifications.
“We have also increased funding for those that successfully study four or more A levels and large TechBacc programmes, giving schools and colleges the green light to further help their most able students.”
Volunteer work has paid off for West Cheshire College 19-year-old Lois Muir with two awards and a newfound confidence despite a difficult school background, writes Billy Camden.
Just over 12 months ago Lois Muir thought a troubled school life would be repeated at college — but she was pointed towards the Prince’s Trust and volunteering and has not looked back since.
The 19-year-old West Cheshire College learner did 400 hours’ volunteering as part of the programme and is now team leader for youth volunteer organisation vInspired and a youth worker with a local club.
Lois Muir in her role as a volunteer officer at West Cheshire College
She is also a volunteer officer at the college, where she is doing a level two BTec certificate in business.
The result has been double award joy with a Volunteer of the Month honour from vInspired and Volunteer of the Term from the college.
“If someone told me a year ago I would be volunteering I would have laughed at them because I didn’t even believe in it,” she said.
“For the first time in my life it feels like I’ve achieved something and I’m proud to help others as well because I know what it is like because I was in similar situations. I can now, for the first time ever, see a future for myself.”
And it was a future that appeared bleak until a West Cheshire College adviser helped.
“Ever since I was younger I’ve always been that misbehaving and attention seeking child. I just wouldn’t respect anyone,” said Lois.
“I’ve always struggled with undiagnosed depression and my behaviour problems have always been bad. I mainly put my past down to me as an individual.”
She added: “A year ago I went on the Prince’s Trust team programme after it was suggested to me by an adviser from the college, Lorraine Murray.
“Once I finished the course I turned my life around after tallying up nearly 400 hours of volunteering work.”
Lois Muir (left) with college adviser Lorraine Murray
The Prince’s Trust, a programme supporting 13 to 30-year-olds who are unemployed, struggling at school and/or at risk of exclusion, was completed by Lois as a 12-week course ending mid-April last year.
“I wasn’t that keen on it, and once I started, after getting through a few ups and downs, by the end of it I realised how much it had helped me,” said Lois.
“It not only changed my life but it saved my life.”
Since completing the programme, Lois has continued helping others and now works mainly with young people.
In her role at the college she goes around campus promoting volunteering as well as being involved in community meetings.
Lorraine Murray, team leader for the careers, finance and welfare team at West Cheshire College, said: “I have seen an amazing change in Lois over the past year. Following her time with the Prince’s Trust Programme she has turned into an inspirational young lady.
“I am immensely proud of her, she has a new-found confidence and self-belief that drives her to help others while achieving her own goals.
“I am delighted that her hard work and commitment has been recognised and I wish her all the success and luck for her future adventures.”
Main pic: From left: Lois Muir being awarded her volunteering awards by Caroline Fidmont, Vice Principal of Quality and Purpose at West Cheshire College
College catchment areas can owe as much to constituency borders as they can to the routes of local buses clad with enrolment day advertising.
But it was far simpler for Professor Ed Sallis when he was principal of Highlands College — his catchment area limits were the Jersey seashore.
“There wasn’t the level of competition because we were the only college, and we had potentially a finite number of learners,” he says.
“We had to think of ways of being relevant for the whole community.”
Sallis put on honours degrees with Plymouth University because “what people wanted was not just to foundation degrees but to do honours degrees because even if they couldn’t get off the island they wanted the whole thing”.
He adds: “We developed one or two of our own quals that were specific to the finance industry in Jersey, particularly around the issue of trust companies which don’t really exist anywhere else in the UK. So it was a lot of that type of thing.”
Sallis’s wife Kate, Sallis and his niece Helen at the palace to receive Sallis’s OBE in 2010
Sallis, aged 66, came to the attention of England’s FE and skills sector in December when it was announced that he was to head the Education and Training Foundation ETF taskforce looking at the teaching and accreditation of maths and English —including Functional Skills but not GCSEs— for learners unable to reach D grade GCSE.
“At the moment we don’t have an answer to what employers really think of Functional Skills because it hasn’t been researched,” he says.
But what is clear, he says, is the importance of basic English and maths skills, in whatever form they’re taught.
“There are an awful lot of people in FE who do have a life-changing experience, but they can’t have it unless they’ve got the basics,” he says.
“To some extent getting a qualification, in level one Functional Skills or whatever, is a real achievement in a way that going from an E to a D at GCSE isn’t.
“Having said all that, I do very much agree with Professor Alison Wolf that GCSE is a gold standard, so you should give as many people as possible the opportunities to do it — but on the other hand, you need some stepping stones.
The difference in Jersey was that we weren’t funding for specific groups of learners — we just got a lump of money really
“What we need to do is to make certain that the stepping stones are as good as they possibly can be.”
Sallis’s own career stepping stones started at 16 having left school to train in chartered accountancy. But it lasted less than a month before he went back to school to differing reactions from mum Winifred and dad Leslie.
“My mother was a very interesting person who was a secretary in Churchill’s war room during the war,” he explains.
“She was passionately interested in education. She was one of these people who didn’t have the chance herself really, but later on in life she did a lot of Workers’ Education Alliance classes and began organising them.”
His father, a salesman from East London who became vice-president of an American multinational in London, was less sure.
“My father was a typical East End chap who made good. He was remarkable,” says Sallis.
“He thought I ought to do something much more business-orientated — qualifications that didn’t necessarily go somewhere wasn’t a world he understood.”
Sallis cooking on safari in South Africa
After sixth form and a degree in politics and economics at the University of London, Sallis found himself back in accountancy, and realising he didn’t really want a future as a tax inspector, he again took inspiration from a friend who worked at Peterborough College.
“He seemed to be having a far more interesting time of things than I was, so when I saw an advert in the paper for a lecturer in general studies, and I hadn’t a clue what it was about, I applied. I was interviewed, and I got a job in FE,” he says.
The job was at Acton Technical College (now part of Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College) where general studies was a newly-introduced subject at a college that hitherto only taught science and engineering.
“Today, you wouldn’t have a college that just did engineering and science — it’s interesting to see how FE has developed and matured over the years. And it was terribly small, but one of the good things about it was they did a lot of broadening studies, which included literacy and numeracy work and economics, with apprentices,” he says.
“And the great thing in terms of my career was that I did get to teach a whole range of people a feel of what was out there.”
The college had another long term benefit for Sallis’s career.
Sallis and wife Kate
“The principal at the time was a chap who gave me quite a lot of time and encouraged me to think about FE as a career,” he says.
“And although I thoroughly enjoyed working there, he said: ‘There comes a point where I’m not going to promote you, you’ve got to go somewhere else as it’s going to be better for your career’.”
And Sallis, a former director of the Centre for Excellence in Leadership who was awarded an OBE for services for education in 2010, says he “took that on board”, moving to Hackney in East London, to Slough, to Somerset, to Guildford and to Bristol before making the move to Jersey, where his experience was one that would likely turn principals in England green with envy.
“The difference in Jersey was that we weren’t funding for specific groups of learners — we just got a lump of money really,” he says.
He adds: “But we had to make sure that we offered qualifications sometimes where there were very, very few learners and the programmes weren’t particularly economic to run.
“There wasn’t a college down the road so you had to make certain that if there were three or four learners for something that employers wanted you could still offer a programme. You couldn’t say ‘sorry, it’s not viable’ — you had to do it.”
It was the uniqueness of the situation in Jersey that attracted Sallis to the role, although he says he’d always been “ambitious”.
“We don’t have an answer to what employers really think of Functional Skills because it hasn’t been researched”
“I’d always thought I could be a principal,” he says. “It was just waiting for the opportunity.”
Throughout though, he says he’s always been keen on “keeping a foothold in the classroom”.
“Because actually I think it’s important,” says Sallis.
“It’s difficult, and it becomes, I suppose, in the end, an almost impossible thing to do, but I’ve always tried to be as close to the classroom and to be in it as much as I can.”
In all that moving around, in the early 90s Sallis also found time to do a PhD in quality management in education, something which at the time “was a strange new concept”.
But even today, he says, pedagogy in FE is “under-researched”.
“There’s a lot more going on than there used to be, but when you compare it with the amount of research into schools and higher education, really there is an awful lot of stuff we don’t know.”
Sallis’s ETF review is due to conclude next month.
It’s a personal thing
What is your favourite book, and why?
At the moment I’m reading Juliet Barker’s England, Arise. It’s a history of the peasants’ revolt of 1381. Medieval history is one of my passions
What do you do to switch off from work?
I walk on the beach — I’m fortunate enough to live in Jersey and the beach is just down the road. And I play a very bad game of golf. Basically, I like being out in the fresh air
Sallis playing guitar
What’s your pet hate?
People who are not genuine. Hypocrisy
If you could invite anyone to a dinner party, living or dead, who would it be?
I’d probably ask Sebastian Coe, because I’m very interested in athletics and sports, and I admire the work he did with the Olympics. I’d probably ask Winston Churchill as well. That would make a nice dinner party
With growing rumours that around 50 FE colleges are in financial difficulty, Lynne Sedgmore considers why the sector has been is so badly troubled while schools appear to be unaffected
Politicians of all parties regularly commit themselves to closing the academic-vocational divide or to raising the status of technical education to the level enjoyed by academic programmes.
They are no doubt sincere, but discrimination against the vocational route is so deeply ingrained that, without intending to they constantly act to reinforce it.
Two items of recent news illustrate the indirect discrimination that so often undermines our leaders’ fine aspirations.
The first piece of evidence is a rumour circulating in the sector that around 50 FE colleges are in serious financial difficulty.
If it were five colleges the responsibility would, in all probability, lie at the door of local management — for 50 colleges to experience serious problems at the same time, however, suggests a systemic problem.
College management has not suddenly deteriorated in dozens of colleges; something has gone wrong with the strategic leadership of the sector; leadership beyond colleges.
It is not difficult to find the major cause. Many colleges were encouraged by the Skills Funding Agency’s predecessor body, the Learning and Skills Council, to take on ambitious capital redevelopment programmes.
The very competitive environment set for the sector has been another spur to invest in improved buildings in order to maintain recruitment.
Since colleges have to finance a major part of their capital development themselves many have high borrowings and now face a ‘perfect storm’ as funding rates have been repeatedly cut for 16 to 19-year-olds in recent years and funding numbers slashed for adult provision.
It is the very students following the technical and vocational programmes that politicians say they want to promote who will bear the toughest consequences.
The second piece of evidence is that academy schools have been stashing away billions of pounds building up their financial reserves — £2.5bn that could have been spent on education according to the Guardian (Guardian online January 18).
School budgets are protected by a ring-fence which does not apply to those aged 16 and over and of course schools don’t have to contribute to capital development in the same way colleges do
Once again this is not a criticism of individual schools, but a system failure. For a local authority to hold a reserve in case one of its schools faces a catastrophe is prudent policy. For every single school to hold a reserve in case it is the one where the catastrophe happens is a gross waste of resources.
Such waste is of course only possible because of the more generous funding received for pupils under the age of 16 — some £5,600 for 15-year-olds compared to only £4,600 for 16 and 17-year-olds and £3,800 for those aged 18 according to the Association of Colleges.
School budgets are protected by a ring-fence which does not apply to those aged 16 and over and of course schools don’t have to contribute to capital development in the same way colleges do.
They also receive favourable VAT treatment denied to sixth form colleges for teaching exactly the same age group.
A common refrain from the political class is that the British public (though not they themselves of course) has a long standing cultural prejudice against the vocational route.
It could of course be that the public takes its cue from the politicians noting where they put their investment and which institutions they starve of resources as an indication of their true values.
Or it could be as simple as a canny preference for sending your children to a school that has cash in the bank rather than a college where the bailiffs are just around the corner.
If politicians and leaders of the skills and education system are genuinely serious about the importance of vocational education, we in FE want to see real evidence of sensible investment, within limited resources, for colleges.
Nothing can justify, other than ideology, billions of pounds effectively being stashed away from the students most in need.
“It’s a great honour to be chosen as one of the final ten candidates, all of whom are doing incredible things in the world of teaching and learning.
were worthwhile.
