My Lords, I will try to be as brief as I can. Four of the five amendments in this group are mine, so I rise to move Amendment 91A and to speak to Amendments 91B, 171A and 171B. These amendments will ensure that colleges delivering education to 14 to 16 year-olds are funded at the same level as schools delivering the same curriculum and experience. They will strengthen partnerships in education to benefit 14 to 16 year-olds and, finally, they will create a duty for all parties to consider greater collaboration in the education system.
The reason for wanting to strengthen existing joint working and generally to re-establish partnership working between schools and colleges more strongly reflects the successes of the increased flexibility programme that was abandoned a decade ago. That programme encouraged more school students with strong vocational interests to follow opportunities in a college setting while studying academic subjects at school. Student confidence, attitudes and behaviour were found to be improved. Students were more engaged in learning and in developing their social skills. Extending such collaborative methods of working would enable young people to have a wider range of opportunities across vocational and academic routes. They would also, I submit, support stronger outcomes at key stage 4.
Amendments 171A and 171B would strengthen partnership working between colleges and schools and include a duty on providers of pre-16 education in England to consider collaborative agreements with other education and training providers, including over-16 providers, with a “14-16 school-college partnership fund”, which is proposed in Amendment 91A.
Amendment 91B is about the national funding formula, which aims to deliver funding to each mainstream school on the same basis. Funding for 16 to 19 year-olds in colleges has been allocated directly from the Department for Education and the Education and Skills Funding Agency, so this amendment relates to pre-16 funding. The issue is this. The three blocks of the DfE’s dedicated schools grant cover schools, early years and high needs. High needs amounts to £9 billion a year, £300 million of which goes to colleges to support some 30,000 students. When a student reaches the age of 16, funding drops and, despite recent increases, is still lower than it should be. There are several differentials between academies and colleges. Several thousand 14 to 16 year-olds study full-time in colleges, but they attract college funding only at the post-16 rate for pre-16 courses. There seems to be a clear funding disparity here, and the Bill offers an opportunity to re-examine 14 to 16 partnership working. I hope the Minister will be willing to do this, because it is in the interests of so many of our young people. I beg to move.