The second celebratory seven-day #LoveourColleges, held this week, has been about showing the impact of further education and underlining the need for adequate funding for the future.
Yet you’ll no doubt understand if I say that I’d rather we didn’t need to stage another one next year. What I would rather see, is the government suddenly realising just how much the country needs a thriving FE sector and dig deep in its pockets to compensate the sector for years of funding cuts.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) recently reported the dramatic cuts to the sector’s funding in recent years.
The lecturers’ union, the UCU, says FE pay is down 25 per cent in the last decade and that 24,000 teaching posts have been lost in the same period. All told, the country is now seeing a worrying number of colleges openly admitting they are struggling financially.
Funding reared its head recently when I attended a really useful get-together hosted by the Department for Education for organisations that have successfully bid for funding to create an institute of technology (IoT). At Milton Keynes College, we are planning one with business partners for Bletchley Park, the home of the wartime Enigma code breakers, and excited at the prospect of an initiative to cut the UK skills gap. But the thought that kept surfacing for me during the meeting was that while we are making plans for producing a whole new generation of digitally skilled individuals at Level 4, where are the Level 2 and 3 students going to come from to create that pipeline of talent? After all, if we don’t have the funds to train them, who else will?
It’s worth remembering the demands in the #LoveourColleges manifesto, first published last year, which have yet to be met:
Increasing the 16-19 funding rate by five per cent a year for the next five years and extending the pupil premium to cover post-16 students
Fully funding a National Retraining Scheme to support level 3 to 5 skills
Introducing a lifetime learning entitlement to fund skills training for all adults who have not previously achieved a level 3 qualification
Providing immediate exceptional funding, ring-fenced for pay, to cover the costs of a fair pay deal for college staff from 2018/19 onwards.
Historically we in the sector have sometimes been our own worst enemies by failing to make enough noise about the achievements of our former students. Three of the sixteen finalists in this year’s BBC Masterchef, the Professionals, developed their skills at Milton Keynes College, for example. We could also talk about Georgia Mallory, who studied with our Performing Arts team and is now in the second year of her degree studies at the Central School of Speech and Drama. Equally, we could make a fuss about Ben Tomblin, who studied construction with us; Tomblin now runs his own business with eight employees and has apprentices attending our college.
What we have managed to do in the past twelve months though, is raise awareness sufficiently that MPs have debated our inadequate level of funding. In January, Robert Halfon, chair of the Commons Education Select Committee, spelled out FE’s Cinderella-status within education in a Westminster Hall debate and the need to “banish the ugly sisters of snobbery and underfunding”.
At the same event, Anne Milton, the Skills Minister, acknowledged the way higher education has crowded out FE in terms of funding and educational opportunities. “We must ensure,” she said “that everyone, whatever their age, background or prior educational attainment, can access the best opportunities that are available.”
These two politicians have got the message because both know what we do and how well we do it. What is proving more difficult is getting the ear of the treasury, but we won’t be giving up. We will keep shouting in the hope of being heard. Hopefully, where you are, #LoveourColleges week 2019 has been a fun and positive experience, which is just as well, since there is every sign that we will need another one next year. But I’m happy to be proved wrong.
Robert Halfon, the chair of the education select committee, isn’t always a fan of the great and good, admitting that he is more interested in people with frontline experience
When I ask Robert Halfon, the chair of the education committee, to name the witness who has affected him most, I’m expecting a big-hitter.
Andreas Schleicher, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s education director, perhaps – or Chen Liang-gee, the Taiwanese science and technology minister?
But instead he talks about Carlie Thomas, a senior caseworker from the St Giles Trust, who in March this year spoke bluntly about the challenges of supporting children at risk of exclusion.
Select committees can call whoever they want – and the nominees must attend. If they refuse, they are at risk of being in contempt of parliament.
My job is not to harangue the government
But apart from Richard Atkins, the FE commissioner – the only high-profile witness he mentions and praises as “brilliant” – Halfon, the Conservative MP for Harlow, seems more interested in people with frontline experience than the educational big cheeses. For the ongoing inquiry into special educational needs and disabilities, the committee invited children with SEND to share their experiences.
They were applauded at the end of their testimony, which didn’t go down well with all viewers of parliamentlive TV.
“Someone criticised me on Twitter, saying, ‘giving them a round of applause is everything that’s wrong’.
My response was, ‘you’re talking crap’,” he says.
“We’re giving them a round of applause, not because they are special needs, but because their evidence was better than most politicians who have been on the platform. They were incredible.
“Their evidence was moving, it was serious, it was factual, it was brilliant. And, of course, these people stuck in their boxes, they immediately want to stereotype – I was doing the opposite of stereotyping.”
Despite his own public-school background, Halfon is confident in his abilities to connect with people of all backgrounds. And unlike some of his fellow politicians, he insists that he writes his own newspaper columns, including The Sun , or for the website Conservative Home.
There have been some uncomfortable sessions, including one last May with the chief executive and the chair of the government-funded Careers and Enterprise Company.
The committee members seemed united in their fury against Claudia Harris and Christine Hodgson. They grilled them on why they hadn’t yet had any impact – somewhat unfairly, I suggest, given that the company was formed in 2015.
Why was Halfon so hostile to an organisation set up by his own government?
“They are untouched by austerity and have got buckets of money to play around with. There’s no checks and balances; they’re not inspected by anyone properly,” he says without a pause.
“Other organisations are crying out for money, and they seem to be handed money like there’s no tomorrow. I mean, when I come back to Earth, I’m going to come back as the Careers and Enterprise Company. They’re loaded.”
He’s angry that the government-funded organisation spent almost £50,000 on a conference at the children’s activity centre KidZania, pointing out that they could have funded it with private sponsorship.
“Now you might think, ‘oh, it’s only £50,000 out of a multi-million-pound budget, it doesn’t matter.’ But it just shows the kind of attitude – that money is a free-for-all. I suspect when you go in that building, the money comes out of the taps.”
Harris became increasingly flustered during the hearing, stumbling over her facts and figures and famously refusing to say whether 100 per cent of the disadvantage fund had been spent on disadvantaged students.
But what about the more convincing witnesses? Has anyone managed to change his mind on something?
Halfon has become well known for his jazzy selection of ties. Here’s a selection of our favourites
“What’s opened my mind is that special educational needs is a horror story. It is irrefutable that it is a disaster,” he says, with the kind of emotive language that will sit well in the column he’s heading off to write for The Sun about fuel duty.
“The [Children and Families Act 2014] was very well intentioned, most people agree with that. But the resources that have been spent badly, the lack of accountability, the constant treacle of bureaucracy that parents have to wade through – it’s a horror story.
“Not everywhere. There were fantastic examples of good practice, amazing practitioners – there’s good work going on in schools – but so much of it is going wrong.”
As he cites the session that featured Pepper the robot as one of his favourites, I cringe. When the pre-programmed humanoid was called as a “witness” in October, the committee made headlines, including on the BBC and the pages of the Daily Mail. Was that not a bit gimmicky?
“Some Oxford academic said it was the most disgraceful display of AI in history, or something. And I just thought ‘get out of your ivory tower’. We’re trying to bring this committee to millions of people, who would never watch anything about parliament, and to explain to them – because it was all over the news – what the future can be and will be. There are 10 to 15 million jobs that could be lost to automation and artificial intelligence.”
Halfon understands the power of branding and the media. The committee’s social media team is preparing a video on all the recommendations that have been adopted by government, he tells me proudly.
“The best moments of the committee are when government adopts things, or when you know you’re shifting opinion. So, for example, on alternative provision, we’ve set the debate in the country on this and I think it’s one of the biggest social injustices.
“There are many Pavlov’s dogs’ reactions to it by arch traditionalists who just want a Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ for our school system. And even if they’re angry with me, I’m happy, because it’s setting a debate.”
He has also made some progress with apprenticeship bus fares. “I haven’t succeeded, but I keep haranguing the government about it. Having said that, they’ve now introduced some travel discounts, but it’s not enough – we’ve got a manifesto commitment.”
Lifelong learning is a disaster area – there’s not enough money
Halfon was a backbencher for five years before he became a minister for two: first in the Cabinet Office, then as skills minister.
After the snap election in May 2017 he was replaced by Anne Milton and immediately started campaigning in the corridors of Westminster – an uncouth approach, say some MPs – for the education committee chair. He beat five rivals, including Nick Boles, his predecessor as skills minister.
So which does he prefer? Haranguing the government or making policy?
“I want to make it very clear,” he says, in a serious tone. “My job is not to harangue the government.
“As a minister, you make policy – although you have to have it checked by a thousand people before anything gets cleared. But nevertheless, you’re making policy; it’s a huge privilege. I loved being apprenticeships and skills minister because I felt I could make a difference.”
Halfon managed to bring the Further and Technical Education Bill through parliament just before the 2017 election.
“But you are in a straitjacket, you have to be careful of everything you say. I do love the freedom. I can’t make policy happen, but the committee can influence it and can set a debate.”
So, assuming that the government doesn’t fall before the autumn (highly questionable), which topics are on the horizon for the committee?
It’s not up to him, he insists. The committee decides by vote or, as has happened to date, by consensus.
Back in July 2017 when the education committee was formed, they decided to adopt Halfon’s trademark “ladder of opportunity” – something he used as a branding tool when skills minister – as their guiding principle. In the committee’s version of the ladder, job security and prosperity are at the top, and the poles on each side represent social injustice, and skills. Addressing these two issues, his theory goes, will allow people to climb up wards.
If it were up to him, he’d keep the heat on exclusions – as with the recent one-off session on knife crime. Then he’d love to do something on how cared-for children fare in schools. And finally, life-long learning and adult education, “because that’s also a disaster area. Apart from the apprenticeships, which is wonderful, there’s not enough money.”
When I rib him that he doesn’t sound like a Tory, he corrects me: “These aren’t left-right issues. That whole split is nonsense. This is about people’s lives – it’s about social justice.”
FE Week’s story of Hadlow College being the first to be taken through a new education insolvency regime is a massive watershed moment.
It is the culmination of two years of policy and legislative work that civil servants are keen to put to the test.
The Treasury had become fed-up with the Department for Education quietly bailing out colleges with multi-million pound hands-outs known as exceptional financial support.
So where take-overs or mergers couldn’t solve the problem, it was felt new legislation was needed to protect learners whilst allowing the institution to go into administration.
But letting a college go bust means potentially leaving lenders like Barclays Bank out of pocket, so the Treasury set-aside £700 million fund to help colleges pay off their DfE and bank debts early.
Just over half of the restructuring fund, as it was named, was used before it stopped taking applications last September.
And in January the new college insolvency regime became law, leaving Hadlow College to face being the first test case.
The DfE appears to have not entirely ended hand-outs, with £40 million already committed “where it was essential that funding was provided”.
But with financial irregularities and investigations into the scandal swirling around Hadlow Group, there was perhaps an inevitability that insolvency would follow.
So the government is unlikely to take the blame and the Association of Colleges has been quick to blame previous management and governance, rather than funding constraints.
And in terms of personal gain, it is worth reflecting on the fact that by the time the financial irregularities had been exposed the salaries of both the deputy principal and the principal had more than doubled to over £200,000 each.
It seems Hadlow College has been picked for putting through the insolvency regime, as opposed to West Kent and Ashford, because it is in the most financial trouble and being a specialist agricultural college with so many subsidiaries it is presumably the most difficult part of the group to find new owners.
As the local MP and senior Conservative, Tom Tugendhat, is right to say it would be a huge loss to the local community were the college to be lost, but sadly this could well be the result.
The wider question is whether this test case will lead to college insolvencies becoming anything more frequent than what the skills minister predicted would be “rare”.
If there is a positive to be taken from this tragedy it is that it will be a massive wake-up call to governors concerning their responsibility in stewarding such high value assets.
A cash-strapped college’s future has been thrown into doubt after a merger it was depending on to sort out its finances was delayed for a second time in mysterious circumstances.
A formal merger between Havering College of Further and Higher Education, Havering Sixth Form College and New City College – which are currently part joined in a federation – was supposed to be concluded last month, after an initial delay in January this year.
But this hasn’t come to fruition and all three colleges have remained tight-lipped, saying no more than that the plans have been postponed.
Havering College was hit with a financial notice to improve in June last year, after it reported a £3 million loss in 2016/17. The deficit increased to £3.2 million one year later.
The college was heavily reliant on this merger to go ahead to resolve its financial struggles, and had requested an overdraft of £1 million from Barclays Bank and exceptional financial support of £2.25 million from the ESFA as “cashflow risk-mitigation measures”. It is not known whether these requests have been granted.
In its 2017-18 accounts, the college warned that if these requests were not approved and the planned merger failed to proceed to completion, “there would be a material uncertainty regarding going concern”.
In order for the merger to go ahead, Havering College was dependent on Barclays Bank approving a combined financial plan with an “acceptable aggregate deficit position”, according to minutes from a board meeting in February.
But Gerry McDonald, the group chief executive of New City College who also became Havering College’s interim chief executive in October following the sudden retirement of Maria Thompson, said in that meeting that Barclays Bank had indicated “they are running out of time for the combined financial plan to be considered by its credit committee in order to enable the novation of the HCFHE debt to NCC”.
This meant it was “unlikely” for the merger to take place on April 1, 2019 as had been planned.
The corporation commented in the meeting that it “seemed strange for Barclays Bank to be taking such a position considering that they have been aware of the merger timeline for a while”.
McDonald explained that the draft 2019-20 financial plan for NCC showed a deficit, and the combined effect with the projected deficits from HSFC and HCFHE “would paint a very grim picture” to the bank.
He said that if a revised combined financial plan was not acceptable to the bank’s credit committee, then “disposal of assets might be necessary”.
Havering College currently operates out of its main campus in Ardleigh Green, Essex, as well as a construction focused campus in Rainham, Essex, which received a £5.4 million funding grant from the Greater London Authority to expand in September 2017. It sold its Quarles campus site in Harold Hill, Essex, in 2017.
During an NCC board meeting in December governors questioned why the college was merging with a college in “such financial difficulty”. It was then noted that Havering College has “a stable 16-to-18 base” to generate income but has “suffered recently with poor financial management and an ill-informed property strategy”.
Havering College’s latest accounts show the college had breached a bank loan covenant for its Barclays loan agreement of £3.9 million in 2017-18.
In July, the bank wrote to the college saying that the covenant breach would be waived.
But the bank had anticipated that the loans and finance leases would be novated under existing terms to New City College upon merger.
Barclays declined to comment on whether it was still supporting Havering College following the postponement of the merger when approached by FE Week.
During the Havering College February meeting McDonald suggested the merger could be delayed once again until August this year.
Havering College declined to comment on what the merger delay means for its future.
The college is no stranger to failed mergers: it was supposed to link up with Barking and Dagenham College in August 2017, but this collapsed after Havering decided it was “no longer the best option to achieve the college’s aspirations for its students, staff and local communities”.
New City College was formed by the mergers of Tower Hamlets College and Hackney Community College in August 2016, Redbridge College in April 2017 and Epping Forest College in August 2018, becoming one of the largest groups in the country.
Providers awaiting the outcome of the Greater London Authority’s adult education budget tender will not be told the outcome for weeks, despite the list of winners being approved by the mayor over a month ago.
The delay, which has left many providers frustrated, has been blamed on a “large number of queries” raised by applicants.
They were bidding for a share of the adult education budget being devolved to the GLA on August 1, 2019.
The authority’s annual budget will be £306 million, of which £130 million is being procured over four years.
The GLA launched the tender in October, with a submission deadline of December 21, and received 202 bids for the total amount of £811 million.
A list of winning providers was then “endorsed” by the authority’s adult education budget (AEB) board on April 10 and feedback to bidders was meant to be released on April 23, with a standstill period commencing April 24 to May 3.
But more than a month later and with just over two months to go until the devolution handover, providers have told FE Week they have yet to be informed whether they have secured an AEB procured contract.
Explaining the delay, a spokesperson for the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan, said: “Funding decisions have been slightly delayed due to the need to process a large number of queries raised by potential providers’ applications.
“Applicants will be advised if their bid has been successful during the next few weeks.”
By contrast, providers applying in the West Midlands Combined Authority tender for AEB funding have this week been made aware of the results.
The delays to the GLA’s procurement come despite plans for the authority to topslice £3 million from the AEB every year to cover administrators’ wages, as revealed by FE Week in May last year.
The mayor was warned in September that a team of 72 administrators may not be enough to handle the fund when devolution kicks in, with procurement being a key issue.
The delay to the GLA’s tender comes just weeks after the authority’s own risk register re-graded the devolution programme from green to amber for the first time.
Papers included in the agenda for a board meeting on April 10 predicted £950,000 of implementation funding would not be enough to cover all the implementation costs up to the end of July 2019, mainly due to rising system costs of GLA OPS – the Grant Management System – which is expected to handle the majority of AEB expenditure.
At the meeting, the board endorsed spending up to £650,000 from the implementation budget and the GLA reserves to develop GLA OPS, after it had already agreed in February to increase the spend on developing systems for the AEB programme from an average of £54,000 per month to £105,000 per month.
The GLA is one of seven English mayoral areas which are taking control of their areas’ AEB this year.
Devolution expert Dr Gareth Thomas told FE Week in October that while the authorities “may be able to complete the procurement and contracting” it was less certain that providers would “be able to adapt their delivery models and put appropriate partnership arrangements in place” in time.
This, he warned, may lead to “market instability”.
Campaigners battling to save a college campus that serves the community affected by the Grenfell Tower disaster have pleaded with the prime minister to intervene.
In a private meeting with Theresa May and communities secretary James Brokenshire that lasted over an hour on the evening of May 8, members of Grenfell United spoke of the “existential crisis” facing Kensington and Chelsea College.
The embattled college, which received its fifth consecutive grade three report from Ofsted earlier this year, is progressing with merger talks with Morley College – a year after plans to join up with Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College collapsed following huge local opposition and intervention from the FE Commissioner.
A failure by the government and RBKC to deliver on the future of the college will provoke further anger
KCC’s latest accounts show that it has hit a deficit of more than £10 million in the past three years which is eating into its “significant” reserves of £34.6 million.
The reserves, which are quickly shrinking, were built up partly by the controversial sale of KCC’s Wornington Road campus, sold to the local council for £25.3 million in 2016, despite local opposition.
An independent review conducted by consultancy firm Kroll later concluded that the sale was not in the interests of its local community. KCC’s new leaders subsequently branded the sale as “plainly wrong” and “shameful”.
The college is preparing to launch restructure plans, described by campaigners as “brutal”, aimed at saving £1.5 million in staff costs. This is despite the proposed merger with Morley College, whose bid “promised to protect staff contracts”, according to the Save Wornington College Campaign.
The group, which had a standalone bid for KCC turned down in March, is asking for “immediate intervention” to stop the redundancy plan and to ensure that the government “buys back the Wornington Road property from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea with a covenant for permanent educational use”.
Campaigners are hoping last week’s meeting with the prime minister and the communities secretary will quickly prove fruitful to their cause.
“The Save Wornington campaign welcomes fresh intervention from the PM and James Brokenshire but we are now restless for solutions,” a spokesperson for the campaign group said.
“So much energy and input comes from our vibrant community, they deserve answers and reparation. We won’t be shrugged off.”
She continued: “SWC, KCC staff and the local community are frustrated at having to fight continually to safeguard this vital institution. This college must be saved as reparation for Grenfell.
“The eyes of the North Kensington community are watching what happens at Wornington and a failure by the government and RBKC to deliver on the future of the college will provoke further anger. This community demands to be heard.”
Number 10 said it could not comment on last week’s meeting since it was private.
Kensington and Chelsea College’s current principal, Andy Cole, took the reins in February last year from Dr Elaine McMahon, who served as the college’s interim principal when Mark Brickley resigned with immediate effect in 2016. He was responsible for the Wornington site sale.
Brickley made the sale in the face of falling income at the college: in 2012 its income sat at £27.5 million but had fallen to just £9.25 million by 2016. However, the Kroll report found that the former principal had made the decision in a secretive manner, without consulting staff and the local community.
Naraindra Maharaj was the chair at the time. Mary Curnock Cook became chair in May 2017 but resigned in July 2018 following criticism from campaigners about her leadership. She has since been replaced by Ian Valvona.
A spokesperson for KCC said the college is “fully supportive of the proposal for the government to buy the site from RBKC under covenant for educational use” and its leaders are “lobbying together with various partners, including community organisations, to achieve a swift and positive resolution to this matter”.
He added: “Management proposals launched last week are aimed at bringing pay costs closer to the sector average whilst protecting provision at both its sites. With the exception of two small curriculum areas generating income of less than £75,000, it is proposed to retain all provision at existing income levels.”
A college that crashed two grades from ‘outstanding’ last year is consulting on plans to close down its A-level provision – putting around 20 jobs at risk.
“Unfortunately, due to low predicted uptake, the sustainability of the sixth form academy is currently under consultation with staff, students and their families,” said an internal email to staff, seen by FE Week.
Due to low predicted uptake the sustainability of the sixth form academy is currently under consultation
“The consultation period will last for 30 days. If staff have questions or concerns during this period, or wish to contribute to the consultation, please contact myself, your line manager or a member of HR who will be happy to help.”
Highbury College offers 15 A-level subjects, according to its website, but its current number of learners is unknown.
A source close to the college told FE Week that between 15 and 20 jobs could be lost if the decision is made to stop offering the provision. They added that the closure could come as soon as September, which might affect current first year students.
Highbury College did not provide comment at the time of going to press.
The college saw its Ofsted rating drop to ‘requires improvement’ in April 2018, with the report criticising leaders and governors for being “slow to reverse the college’s decline in performance”.
Inspectors found that “too much” teaching of 16 to 19 learners is “lacklustre” and “uninspiring”, while attendance at most lessons is “low”.
“Too few students are clear about what they have learned and what they need to do to improve their work,” the report added.
A follow-up monitoring visit was published for the college by Ofsted in January, which found it to be making ‘reasonable progress’ in all areas.
The consultation on the future of A-level provision is the latest in a string of troubles for Highbury College, which blocked access to FE Week’s website on its servers in January following an investigation by this newspaper into a failed Nigerian venture that could cost it a fortune.
The college’s attempt to suppress the media coverage from its staff led to the story being published to a wider audience, following articles by the Press Gazette, Private Eye, and Portsmouth’s The News.
It also attracted heavy criticism from top sector officials, including skills minister Anne Milton, who said she was “absolutely shocked” by the action, and Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman, who said she was “astonished”.
Highbury’s financial position has “deteriorated over the last three years”, according to its 2017/18 accounts.
The financial statements showed a deficit of £2.48 million, and as at July 31, 2018, the college had £5.4 million of loans outstanding with bankers on terms negotiated in 2008, which cost £293,000 in interest payments in the year to July 2017. This was, however, fully repaid in August 2018 from the proceeds of the sale of its City of Portsmouth Centre.
The centre was sold by Highbury in August for £5.7 million, which was more than £4 million less than it was previously valued.
Stella Mbubaegbu
Meanwhile, FE Week continues to press the college to release its corporate expense claims for the past five years.
A Freedom of Information request for the information was submitted in October, to which Highbury finally responded to in February despite FOI law stating responses should take no longer than 20 working days, or 40 working days if the organisation needs to apply the public interest test.
Highbury refused the request, claiming it was “manifestly unjustified, inappropriate or improper use of a formal procedure”.
FE Week is currently challenging this with the Information Commissioner’s Office.
From a previous FOI, it was revealed that Highbury’s principal, Stella Mbubaegbu, used college cash to pay for a first-class return flight from London to Dallas at a cost of £4,132. The college has refused to say whether or not this flight was work related.
Following the first national Colleges Week last October, the Association of Colleges has held a further week of activities to raise awareness of funding cuts and cost increases in the sector.
This smaller-scale campaign was boosted most visibly on Twitter, with many principles and senior leaders using the social media platform to share their passion for the sector, and students revealing the impact college education has had on their lives.
AoC chief executive David Hughes said: “The financial viability of colleges is as hard as it has ever been. This is despite the fact they are embedded within their local community and work with employers to provide solutions to people of all ages.
“If we want to achieve success, locally, regionally and nationally, we must ensure they are properly supported.”
The Department for Education told FE Week that neither skills minister Anne Milton nor education secretary Damian Hinds had plans to visit any college this week as part of the campaign, but shadow education secretary Angela Rayner took part in the initiative by visiting Sheffield College.
Angela Foulkes, chief executive and
principal, The Sheffield College, and Angela
Rayner, shadow Education secretary
She warned that “years of cuts have created a crisis in further education”, meaning that “support for students has been slashed, teaching hours are falling, staff are thousands of pounds worse off, and providers are being pushed ever closer to the brink”.
A number of other events took place across the country, with deputy Mayor of London for skills Jules Pipe visiting Southwark College on Tuesday.
He toured the campus with principal Annette Cast and AoC director Mary Vine-Morris, stopping by creative arts classes and looking in on rehearsals for a Shakespeare performance.
Pipe said: “I’ve really enjoyed meeting staff and students today. I work on some key priorities for the Mayor, including ensuring that we have a skills system that addresses the needs of London residents. Meeting young people who are passionate about their chosen subjects and really have a sense of direction and what they can achieve is so inspiring.”
Meanwhile, the Nelson and Colne College, Accrington and Rossendale College and Lancashire Adult Learning held a “Governor, Learner and Apprentice Speed-Networking Event”, at which governors asked students a range of questions about life at the three colleges and whether they feel that college is preparing them for their futures.
Jesse Tuzara, a level 3 ICT student, said: “I found the networking event really useful. The governors were very friendly and approachable and they were genuinely interested and eager to know more about the students. The event also gave me a chance to express to them the skills I have developed at college, my next step and what I want to do in the future.”
Also this week, 11 students at Kirklees College were invited to tour the Houses of Parliament and listen to one of the debates taking place.
Local MPs for Kirklees Tracy Brabin, Paula Sherriff, Barry Sheerman and Thelma Walker were in attendance as students quizzed them on fair funding for FE, lowering of the voting age to 16 and Brexit.
Principal Marie Gilluley said: “We were extremely lucky to be given the invitation to join our local MPs in parliament during Love Our Colleges Week. This campaign is extremely beneficial and we fully support the work that is going on by the AoC to highlight the importance of better investment in colleges.”
The Love Our Colleges campaign is a partnership between the AoC, National Union of Students, Association of College and School Leaders, University and Colleges Union, Unison, GMB, TUC and National Education Union.
It is calling on the chancellor to increase the 16-to-19 funding base rate from £4,000 to £5,000 in the upcoming spending review.
