Latest news from FE Week

Government should fund apprentice wages for SMEs, says Halfon

The government should pay apprentice wages and fund their full cost of training “for at least a year” if they work for a small or medium-sized employer (SME), an influential MP has said.

Robert Halfon, chair of the education select committee and a former skills minister, believes the chancellor’s extra investment for apprentice incentives and kickstart programmes should not have “been given so much to the bigger companies”.

Speaking at today’s Association of Employment and Learning Providers conference, Halfon said it would have been better targeted at smaller firms and went as far as to call for their apprentices’ wages to be funded.

It echoes a policy proposed by Labour, which wants unspent apprenticeship levy funding to subsidise apprentice wages.

Halfon said: “The number of apprenticeship starts has fallen steadily among all age groups since 2015/16, from 509,000 to 323,000 in 2019/20. That’s an overall decline of 37 per cent. This fall was particularly acute for the most disadvantaged young people aged under 25 who fell by 52 per cent.

“So to support SMEs, we should fund 100 per cent of training costs and salary, at least for the first year of an apprenticeship.”

He added that government should “try and ensure” that every person is given an “apprenticeship guarantee” and “strategically weigh the levy in favour of young people, especially those disadvantaged backgrounds to address the rising unemployment figures in this age group”.

Under chancellor Rishi Sunak’s plan for jobs, the government has offered apprentice incentive payments to all employers since August. The cash bonuses for starting new apprentices currently amount to £3,000 for any age at any employer.

And Sunak is also investing £2 billion in kickstart – a wage-subsidy scheme that allows people aged 16 to 24 who are claiming Universal Credit to take newly created six-month work placements with employers, who will also have their overheads covered.

Kickstart grants for employers can total £6,500.

‘Proposals from Halfon and others can make a difference’

Expanding on his call for apprentice wage subsidy for SMEs in a Q&A after his speech, Halfon said: “The money that government has given towards apprenticeships and kickstarter is going to every company whether they’re big or small.

“And I think, they perhaps should not have given so much to the bigger companies and given that money to smaller companies. You’ll be able to give those companies more money than the existing schemes and I think that would have been a bigger incentive for those smaller companies to employ young people and employ apprentices.

“I talked about an apprenticeship guarantee and I think if you gave that incentive to small businesses to do this I think it would make a huge difference. Huge difference. And I suspect that it would be very successful, and they would be able to employ a lot more apprentices than they otherwise might do.”

AELP chief executive Jane Hickie said: “AELP called for wage subsidies early in the pandemic and so we are pleased that the opposition and the education committee chair share similar views.

“We are concerned that young people on kickstart, for example, are not necessarily going to progress on to an apprenticeship and so proposals from Robert Halfon and others can make a difference in giving young people a proper career path instead of a welcome but short-term respite off benefits.”

Universal credit rules hold people back from training, warns report

Universal credit rules are excluding people from training and must be scrapped if the government is serious about its levelling up agenda, according to a new report.

The Association of Colleges has today accused policy-makers of creating an “education vs work” divide.

In a report titled ‘Let Them Learn: Further education colleges’ support for the unemployed’, the membership body warns that those receiving universal credit have obligations to prioritise job searches and take available jobs if able to do so.

This means that they “may be employed in the short term, but are prevented from developing skills that would allow them to get into better-quality, more stable, better paid employment over the longer term”.

In addition, the length of time that people can continue receiving universal credit while undertaking work-focused study has been capped at eight weeks. The government announced recently they would pilot an extension of this to 12 weeks for full-time study, or up to 16 weeks on a skills bootcamp in England.

AoC chief executive David Hughes said the rules mean that those most likely to benefit would have to give up financial support to train and learn, and with no access to other maintenance support, would likely have to forgo any chances of reskilling in order to live, eat and pay bills. 

Government statistics show there were 2.6 million seeking either universal credit or jobseeker’s allowance in April 2021, compared to 1.4 million in March 2020, before the first Covid-19 lockdown.

The AoC’s report says government is rightly talking about the importance of training and retraining to support people and employers following the pandemic with investment in traineeships, apprenticeships and kickstart.

But there “seems to be a mismatch between the levelling up agenda and the employment and jobs strategy”.

The report calls for reform to universal credit rules and for every unemployed person to receive financial support for a course at college “when they need it to get into good local jobs, no matter their starting point and with no impact on their benefits at the end of sentence”.

Also on the list of recommendation is an extension to the new level 3 adult offer under the lifetime skills guarantee, so that it is open to everyone, not just those without any existing level 3 qualifications.

In addition, the AoC wants partnerships with JobCentre Plus to be embedded in new local skills improvement plans mooted in the FE white paper and Skills Bill, which gets its second reading in the House of Lords next week.

Hughes said: “We need a coherent system that spans education and welfare and works for those at risk of long-term unemployment. If we don’t we risk leaving people behind in efforts to boost sought after skills for employers and help combat the impact of the pandemic on jobs and the economy.” 

Senior researcher and policy analyst at Resolution Foundation, Kathleen Henehan added: “A clear and joined-up national strategy is needed, with serious consideration given to removing unhelpful barriers that prevent people from accessing opportunities to learn and train.” 

A government spokesperson said: “Universal credit is designed to help people into work and every claimant receives tailored support from their work coach, including help to build new skills with recent changes made to enable claimants to take part in full-time training for longer.

“In addition, our multi-billion-pound Plan for Jobs is helping people train and find new opportunities as we push to build back better.”

The government added that universal credit is not designed for those in full time education, but there are some exceptions, including those caring for a child and being in receipt of a disability-related benefit.

Universal credit claimants can also have a “permitted period where a claimant may be allowed to restrict their job search to their previous or qualified job goal, if their work coach deems that there is a reasonable prospect of them securing employment in this field”.

Keegan stands firm on keeping levy funding for apprenticeships

The skills minister has restated her stance that apprenticeship levy funding should only be used for apprenticeships, insisting it has proven to be the best way to build a “solid” skills pipeline.

Gillian Keegan’s comments, made on the second day of the Association of Employment and Learning Providers national conference, deals a blow to the hopes of organisations like the Confederation of British Industry to fund a wider array of training with the levy.

The minister said her stance on the levy was borne out of the “madness” of organisations recruiting people and building “skills pipelines” from other countries, instead of using home grown talent.

“When I look at what the apprenticeship levy has actually done,” she told delegates, “it has forced a shift in how employers work with the Department for Education and training providers to build the skills pipeline”.

She said the sector and government had “lost focus” on that, compared to 20 or 30 years ago, due to “lots of global movements, lots of talents available from other countries”.

Recalling her time as a governor of an NHS trust, Keegan said managers had found the supply of nurses from Portugal and Spain had been depleted, so they were building a pipeline for skilled people from the Philippines.

This was “madness,” the minister said, and reflected how: “We have largely relied on either those skills or bringing in global talent to fulfil, many of our skills gaps, and this is simply not going to work.”

But with the coronavirus pandemic and global talent shortages, that approach “isn’t going to work, so we have to build really solid skills pipelines in this country, and we owe that actually also to the people of this country to do that”.

Levy ‘annoyed everybody into action’

The levy gives employers two years to put a programme in place or work with their supply chain or local community to transfer funding, she explained.

Chancellor of the exchequer Rishi Sunak announced at his spending review in November employers will be able to transfer levy funds in “bulk” to small-to-medium enterprises.

The government is also offering incentive payments of £3,000 for employers to take on apprentices, until this September.

The reforms brought about by the levy had, Keegan argued, led to a situation where now “we have seven and a half thousand starts on nursing apprenticeships at all kinds of different levels.

“That change came about because the levy was there – it kind of annoyed everybody into action in a way.”

While the minister wants to “work with the industry to overcome any barriers,” she believes: “We’ve got to be forced to be strategic sometimes and I think if I’m honest, that’s how I feel about the apprenticeship levy.”

The CBI had, as recently as last October, told the government to end the “failed experiment” of the apprenticeship levy.

Following multiple calls for reforms and relaxations on the levy, the confederation’s ‘Learning for life: Funding a world-class adult education system’ report said the levy should be turned into a “flexible skills and training levy”, which can be used for short modular courses, pre-apprenticeship programmes, product training, professional courses, and soft skills training.

Government careers agency bemoans lack of Baker Clause compliance

The head of the government’s careers quango has bemoaned how independent providers have not been given enough access to schools to talk up technical education.

Speaking at the Association of Employment and Learning Providers national conference today, Oli de Botton (pictured, right) committed the Careers and Enterprise Company to this year making sure more students know all the options available to them beyond A-levels.

“It is true historically that there hasn’t been enough access for ITPs or enough information about apprenticeships and technical routes for young people,” the CEC’s chief executive, appointed last October, told delegates.

He promised the company, set up in 2014, would be working “very, very hard this year” to ensure students know all their options as this is important to the government’s levelling up agenda.

“What is very clear is when you do give access to different providers and all the options, young people are more likely to take them,” he added.

His remarks came in response to a question on research by UCAS, released late last month, which revealed one-third of students are not told about apprenticeships.

This is despite secondary schools and colleges in England being legally required to allow other training providers access to their learners to inform them of technical qualifications or apprenticeships.

This is what is known as the Baker Clause – named after its author, former education secretary Lord Kenneth Baker – which became law in 2018, and meant schools and colleges also had to publish statements online outlining how they will comply.

In a report on its research, UCAS stated an ambition to “act as a ‘digital Baker Clause’, providing comprehensive information, advice, and content tools to help students make informed and aspirational choices about the full range of post-secondary options in a single location”.

The Department for Education and its agencies have made several small-scale attempts to enforce compliance with the clause: then-academies minister Lord Agnew fired off letters to headteachers last year, warning them to comply with the legislation.

It followed letters to five academy trusts about non-compliance that were sent out by the DfE in 2019.

In May 2020, Ofsted judged a secondary school to be ‘inadequate’ for “not currently meeting its statutory responsibility to ensure that providers of technical qualifications and apprenticeships visit the school to inform pupils about these options”. FE Week understood this was the first case of a school being pulled up by the inspectorate for failing the Baker Clause.

But the CEC’s own data, published in November, showed just 47 per cent of the more than 2,000 schools in the quango’s careers hubs fully met a target for a “meaningful encounter with providers of the full range of learning opportunities” for staff and students. For those schools not in the hub network, 13 per cent met the target.

In its landmark Skills for Jobs white paper, which formed the basis for the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill currently going through Parliament, the DfE pledged “tougher formal action against non-compliance” with the Baker Clause.

This, the paper published in January said, will be based on a new minimum requirement “about who is to be given access to which pupils and when”. Government-funded careers support for schools will also be made conditional on Baker Clause compliance.

de Botton, himself a former headteacher, did also say today the Careers and Enterprise Company had heard from the schools and colleges that “they are providing more and more access to ITPs, more and more compliance with the Baker Clause”.

In response to de Botton’s comments, a DfE spokesperson said: “It is vital young people are informed about the wide range of options for them to reach their future careers goals.”

A consultation on proposals to “strengthen” the Baker Clause will be conducted in the summer they added, and more details “will be released in due course”.

AELP conference to warn against new ‘costly’ list of independent training providers

Training providers will this week warn against new legislation in the Skills Bill that they fear will impose “costly bureaucracy” on the sector.

At its annual conference, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) will highlight an unexpected set of conditions required of independent training providers to be on a new government list of approved providers.

Under the proposals, any provider not on the list will not be granted funding agreements or be allowed to subcontract with another provider who is on the list. It will be additional to the existing register of apprenticeship training providers.

No consultation has taken place prior to the conditions being included in primary legislation and AELP said this should happen before any new requirements for providers are introduced via regulation.

The association is worried that conditions stipulate providers should take out a potentially expensive form of insurance cover which doesn’t currently exist in the sector. The government’s own impact assessment of the Skills Bill states the new list could impose “significant” extra costs on providers.

‘A major rethink is required’

AELP chief executive Jane Hickie (pictured) said her members have been put in a good position to support businesses recover from Covid with extra funding for apprenticeships and traineeships, but what “we don’t need is for them to be saddled with unnecessary and costly bureaucracy which is threatened by the new legislation”.

“A major rethink is required,” she added.

The Skills Bill will receive its second reading in the House of Lords on 15 June.

AELP’s four-day conference, sponsored by Learning Curve Group and NOCN, will feature keynote speeches from skills minister Gillian Keegan, shadow skills minister Toby Perkins and Commons education committee chair Robert Halfon among many others.

The future of apprenticeships, traineeships, adult education and devolved skills programmes will be discussed by sector leaders, who will also give their verdict on the government’s controversial catch-up funding announcement.

Senior mental health lead training: 5 things you need to know

Up to two-thirds of schools and colleges will have to wait until at least next spring to hear if they will receive grant funding for senior staff mental health training, the government has confirmed.

The Department for Education published brief new guidance on Wednesday setting out further details of its pledge to offer every school and college training for a senior mental health lead. The government has announced £9.5 million so far for leads in up to 7,800 schools and colleges.

But training has still not yet begun almost three years after the plans were announced in a 2018 government mental health green paper. The DfE has blamed delays on the 2019 election and Covid.

Here are the key takeaways from the DfE’s latest update to schools and colleges.

1. New mental health waitlist for most

The DfE reiterated previous statements that around a third of schools and colleges can benefit in the next year.

But amid widespread frustrations over long waiting lists for other children’s mental health services, most schools and colleges could find themselves on a waiting list too.

The DfE said it would create a “waitlist” for those schools and colleges not approved this year, but schools and colleges will still not be given certainty over provision in future academic years.

The DfE “will confirm future grant funding in the spring of 2022”.

2. Training aimed at heads and SLTs

The guidance underlines that funding is primarily aimed at school and college leaders, which could leave some more junior staff with a mental health remit disappointed.

A section on ‘which staff can get the training’ says it is up to schools or colleges, but suggests heads, deputy heads, and members of the senior leadership team.

Existing mental health leads or mental health support team coordinators can be nominated.

But schools and colleges considering appointing staff who are not senior leaders “need to consider whether the individual has the authority, capacity and support to influence and lead strategic change within the setting”.

3. ‘Up to £1,200′ for two days’ training

The DfE says schools or colleges “should get up to about £1,200,” but will have to wait until the autumn term to find out exactly how much.

Training should be “approximately two working days”, depending on specific learning needs and types of course.

4. Colleges able to sign up ‘soon’

The DfE promises more information “soon” on its new senior mental health lead guidance page about how schools and colleges can sign up for any training from September.

But training providers have still not yet been invited to submit their senior lead training offers for quality assurance, and the DfE’s criteria for this assurance will only be published “in the summer”.

A list of approved courses will then be published in September, suggesting training is unlikely to start immediately in the next academic year.

5. Focus on ‘whole school or college approach’ to mental health

The DfE makes clear the funding is not compulsory, but designed to give schools and colleges the knowledge and skills to develop a “holistic”, “whole school or college” approach to promoting and supporting mental health and wellbeing.

It says a “coordinated and evidence-informed approach” improves pupil emotional health and readiness to learn. Funding is to go towards both training and hiring supply to cover staff while away.

Sir Kevan Collins resigns as government education recovery tsar

The government’s education recovery commissioner Sir Kevan Collins has offered his resignation after ministers allocated just £1.4 billion in funding for the next phase of their catch-up plan, it has been reported.

In his resignation letter to prime minister Boris Johnson, published by Tes, Collins warned he did not believe it was “credible that a successful recovery can be achieved with a programme of support of this size”.

The Times has also reported that Collins said he had “no option” but to resign following today’s announcement, and accused ministers of taking a “half-hearted approach”.

Appointed in February to advise on proposals to help students recover education missed during the Covid-19 pandemic, Collins was reported to have called for spending in the region of £15 billion, with initiatives such as extending the school day on the cards.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson announced initial spending of just £1.4 billion today, £1 billion of which is to be spent on tutoring. But the government only committed to a review of the time spent in school and college, with findings due “later in the year to inform the spending review”.

Collins’s response to the announcement today was lukewarm, with the former Education Endowment Foundation chief executive warning that “more will be needed” to meet the scale of the challenge.

‘We risk failing hundreds of thousands of pupils’

In his resignation letter, Collins warned that without a “comprehensive and urgent response” to the pandemic, “we risk failing hundreds of thousands of pupils”.

He also revealed that he told the prime minister last week that he did not believe it would be “possible to deliver a successful recovery without significantly greater support than the government has, to date, indicated it intends to provide”.

“I am concerned that the apparent savings offered by an incremental approach to recovery represent a false economy, as learning losses that are not addressed quickly are likely to compound”.

He said the package of measures announced today provided “valuable support”, but said he did not believe it was “credible that a successful recovery can be achieved with a programme of support of this size”.

“I hope that you are able to allocate the additional resources that are likely to be needed for a successful recovery through the spending review. I believe the settlement provided will define the international standing of England’s education system for years to come.”

‘We hope this will focus the minds of ministers’

Geoff Barton, general secretary of the ASCL college leaders’ union, said he was “sad but not surprised that Sir Kevan Collins is reported to be standing down as education recovery commissioner following the government’s announcement of a recovery package which clearly falls a long way short of what he had in mind”.

“Sir Kevan has huge credibility across the teaching profession and across government. We hope that this episode will focus the mind of ministers on the need to match their recovery rhetoric with action.”

Williamson told BBC News today the government was looking at interventions they can “actually deliver today” rather than waiting for the spending review later this year.

Asked about pushing for extra cash, he told Sky News that “all the time you’re in discussions right across government” but the prime minister Boris Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak are “committed” to taking actions needed.

Prison educators plan further strikes in health and safety dispute

Another wave of strike action by educators has been announced at 49 prisons and young offenders’ institutions.

The University and College Union (UCU) said staff will take action on Thursday 10 and Wednesday 23 June, following two days of strikes in May.

This has all come about due to a dispute between workers and Novus, the UK’s largest prison education provider.

The union has accused the provider, owned by the LTE Group, of a “failure to meaningfully engage with UCU over Covid health and safety concerns of prison educators teaching and supporting learners on the prison estate”.

Novus is also alleged to have launched complaints and investigations against UCU health and safety representatives, which the union said is “making it difficult for staff to raise safety concerns and impossible for any meaningful health and safety discussions to take place”.

The UCU’s general secretary Jo Grady said “all” Novus needs to do to halt the strikes is “stop its bullying behaviour, withdraw the unfair complaints and investigations against our health and safety representatives, and take staff safety concerns seriously”.

She said it was time for LTE Group’s board, which is due to meet on 15 June, to step in and “end Novus’ bully-boy tactics and work with us to resolve the dispute.

“Until they do so UCU will continue to support prison educators to take industrial action and protect themselves.”

Union members were balloted for strike action in April, with over two-thirds voting in favour.

Around 600 staff will take part in the June strikes.

MPs ‘shocked’ by ‘bitter’ strike dispute

Several meetings have been held between Novus and the UCU to resolve the dispute with the help of government industrial relations conciliation service ACAS.

The co-chair of the Justice Unions Parliamentary Group Liz Saville Roberts MP has written to LTE’s governors, calling on them to address the UCU’s concerns and withdraw the action against the representatives.

Saville Roberts, MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, said the 100 cross-parliamentary members of her group had been “shocked to learn about this increasingly bitter dispute”.

She said the UCU had given them “alarming” reports of Novus “intimidating” health and safety representatives, covert recording and exploitation of private union meetings, and fake social media accounts “set up to discredit UCU.

“We are told the board has now involved itself in the dispute by making unfounded allegations against union representatives and commissioning an investigation without reference to any formal procedures, which UCU describes as counter to natural justice.

“We are at a loss to understand why Novus has taken such a confrontational attitude towards the union at this dangerous time for prisoners and prison staff.

“We ask you to put staff health and safety first, withdraw any threats of action against UCU branch representatives and work with the union to address staff concerns in good faith,” she writes, offering the group’s help in resolving the dispute.

Provider complains of ‘false allegations’ about its board

Novus has said its relationship with the UCU has declined since it declined to institute health and safety procedure changes without the agreement of Her Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service and after it claimed it was given less than 24 hours to assess the impact of the changes.

Also, after employees reported “serious” concerns about the behaviour and approach of UCU representatives, including bullying and intimidation. Novus claims UCU has refused to have “meaningful engagement” about health and safety matters until allegations about its representatives are withdrawn, but Novus says these come from the employees.

“These events have led to an increasingly strained relationship between UCU and Novus,” the provider said, which have been inflamed by “false allegations” about them and the LTE board.

Novus refutes that it has ever refused to meet with UCU to discuss health and safety matters, ignored requests to meet with ACAS, made it harder for employees or UCU representatives to report concerns in that area, or intimidated representatives.

“UCU’s persistent misrepresentation of Novus to its employees and more widely in the public domain is a matter of grave concern for the group,” Novus has said.

“Such false allegations are damaging to employee trust in their employer and continue to erode a previously good working relationship between employer and union.”

The 49 prisons and institutions which will be affected by strikes are as follows:

Her Majesty’s Prison (HMP) Altcourse
HMP Birmingham
HMP Brinsford
HMP Brixton
HMP Buckley Hall
HMP Deerbolt Bowes
HMP Doncaster
HMP Durham
HMP Featherstone
HMP Hatfield/Lakes
HMP Haverigg
HMP Hewell
HMP High Down
HMP Holme House
HMP Hull
HMP Humber
HMP Kirkham
HMP Kirklevington
HMP Lancaster Farms
HMP Leeds
HMP Lindholme
HMP Liverpool
HMP Northumberland
HMP Oakwood
HMP Onley
HMP Pentonville
HMP Preston
HMP Risley
HMP Rye Hill
HMP Stafford
HMP Swinfen Hall
HMP Thameside
HMP Wandsworth
HMP Wealstun
HMP Wormwood Scrubs
HMP Wymott
HMP/Young Offender Institution (YOI) Low Newton
HMP/YOI Moorland/Lakes
HMP/YOI Styal
Her Majesty’s Young Offender Institution (HMYOI) Askham Grange
HMYOI Cookham Wood
HMYOI Feltham
HMYOI Hindley
HMYOI Isis
HMYOI New Hall
HMYOI Stoke Heath
HMYOI Thorn Cross
HMYOI Werrington
HMYOI Wetherby

Revealed: Government plans to expand 16-19 Covid tuition fund

The government has published plans to expand the 16-19 Tuition Fund as part of a £1.4 billion package of measures to support education recovery.

£222 million is being allocated to the existing 16-19 tutoring programme, which originally launched last July with £96 million for providers to hold “small group tutoring” for disadvantaged 16 to 19 students whose studies have been disrupted by the pandemic.

Colleges opted in for the money, which could be spent on extra tutoring for students without a grade 4 pass in English and maths to study either of those subjects, or another course where learning had been disrupted by coronavirus.

This latest cash injection will have a special focus on subjects like maths and English, and the Department for Education expects the money will deliver around 700,000 courses each year – though no time frame is given for this funding.

In a release announcing the funding, the department says this funding will “make sure when teachers identify a disadvantaged child in need of support as a result of the pandemic, extra support is available”.

There will also be funding for schools or colleges to offer students in year 13 the option to repeat the year “if they have been particularly badly affected by the pandemic”.

The DfE said it will fund providers to accommodate the additional student numbers.

Government ‘must make sure no child is left behind’

Prime minister Boris Johnson said: “Young people have sacrificed so much over the last year and as we build back from the pandemic, we must make sure that no child is left behind.”

FE Week previously reported colleges had spent their share of the £96 million on hiring extra study support staff and strengthening mental health support systems.

It was announced in February this year the government had set aside £102 million to run the 16-19 Tuition Fund for another year.

Earlier this year, it was also announced former Education Endowment Foundation chief executive Kevan Collins had been appointed the government’s education recovery commissioner, with a remit to advise on interventions to catch up the education of students aged up to 19.

Education secretary Gavin Williamson said this third “major” package of catch-up funding in 12 months, “demonstrates that we are taking a long-term, evidence-based approach to help children of all ages”.

Measures ‘hugely disappointing,’ says ASCL

Plans for an extra year of sixth form for students who cannot complete A-level courses in time were revealed by The Times today, from a leaked report by Collins.

It had been rumoured the government was putting aside up to £15 billion for this education recovery package, in the face of opposition from the Treasury.

Association of School and College Leaders general secretary Geoff Barton called the £1.4 billion “hugely disappointing,” adding: “The amount of money that the government plans to put into education recovery is insufficient and shows a failure to recognise the scale of learning loss experienced by many during the pandemic – particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“There has obviously been a battle behind the scenes over funding for education recovery which the Treasury has clearly won with the result that the settlement is less than a tenth of the £15 billion that was being mooted.

“The announcement has then been snuck out in half term presumably with the hope that it won’t attract too much attention.”

Bill Watkin, chief executive of the Sixth Form Colleges Association, says the announcement “falls well short of the comprehensive package of support that is required to ensure that no young person is left behind by Covid.

“These measures, little more than an extension of the small-scale 16-19 tuition fund and the promise of additional funding for students that wish to repeat a year, will only address the needs of a very small number of students.

“More information is needed, but ultimately, it would appear that the government has missed the opportunity to introduce the bold measures necessary to start repairing the damage caused by Covid.

“It is vital that ministers grasp the nettle in the spending review later this year and introduce the serious additional investment that is required to meet the needs of sixth form students.”

Association of Colleges chief executive David Hughes said “the failure to fund additional teaching hours or to extend the pupil premium to age 18 means that many disadvantaged students may fall through the gaps”.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers chief executive Jane Hickie pointed out “not every 16 to 18 year old is at school or college,” with 36,000 young people on 16-19 study programmes with independent training providers.

“Once again, It would appear that they will get nothing and by taking this decision the DfE has actually forgotten those very young people they vowed not to.

“Here is a prime example of the levelling up agenda being failed by the government, taking an institutionalised approach instead of one that will benefit all of the affected learners themselves.”

Shadow education secretary Kate Green said Kevan Collins “has all but said this plan is insufficient.

“Kevan Collins told ministers that 10 times this level of investment was needed to help children recover.”

As such, this announcement “makes a mockery of the prime minister’s claim that education is a priority”.

Other funding announced by the DfE today includes £218 million extra for the flagship National Tutoring Programme for schools, as well as £69 million to expand the Early Career Framework professional development scheme to all new teachers.