Cuts to further education will be deeply damaging

A loss of up to £1.6bn from the further education budget could lead to four in 10 colleges and sixth forms closing

Thousands of pupils across the UK are in the midst of GCSE and A-level exams this month (FREDERICK FLORIN/AFP/Getty Images)

It has been evident for some months that the quality and breadth of college education is at risk. While ministers have invested heavily in transforming school-age education through the expansion of the academy programme and the introduction of free schools (whatever one’s judgement on the merits of those schemes), and at the same time encouraged universities to find new ways of funding the cost of teaching and research, cash for sixth forms and further education colleges has dwindled.

In June, colleges admitted that they had already had to cut back on subjects such as music, design and technology, and modern languages to save money. Now research from the House of Commons Library reveals that, under proposed cuts, a loss of up to £1.6bn from the further education budget could lead to four in 10 colleges and sixth forms closing.

When the prospect of college closures was first mooted in Parliament earlier this year, Sajid Javid, the Business, Innovation and Skills Secretary, said colleges had “the resources they need to do their jobs, and we will not put that at risk”. His promise will be tested in the wake of George Osborne’s spending review.

It’s not only the obvious effect – that young people will have less opportunity to gain the qualifications they need to enter university – that matters. Closure or shrinkage of FE provision takes a particular toll in areas where adults who are leaving industries in decline need to learn new skills to re-enter the workforce, in rural areas where alternative options may be few, and in communities where small businesses lean heavily on colleges to design apprenticeships and other courses to train their staff.

With more than two million people already enrolled on an apprenticeship, closures would also derail government efforts to get the unemployed back to work. That alone is reason enough to reconsider the cuts.