FE Colleges in a time of austerity
Edition 6 May 17th. With 22 % budget cuts how can FE Colleges deliver for their communities? Anya Cook, SEA NEC and FE teacher, outlines inspirational work in Newcastle and rails against cuts to EMA
Erratum.
Those interested in Richard Rieser’s project collating the experiences of disabled young people outlined in the last issue should email rlrieser@gmail.com. There was an erroneous ‘r’ in the address in the last issue..
Compassion Connecting College and Community
Anya outlines how her local college worked with trade unions, women’s groups and other local groups to reach out to marginalised members of the community
Fifty years ago, in Education For A Change, writers Colin and Mog Ball asked “What is community?”* A simplistic understanding of community is an organisation such as a school or hospital, a district maybe or a religious community, defining on a singular commonality, be it location or activity.
The Balls say that a vibrant community is one of a multiplicity of interactions on different levels between different groups, connected through a common location or institution. They add that vibrancy is created through service in interactions, give and take, balancing care and concern with access to local knowledge.
Further Education colleges are essential, but overlooked, in our education system, providing academic and technical education, basic skills, ESOL and lifelong learning. With diminished budgets and 22% cuts to funding of Adult courses over the last decade combined with financial barriers created by loans to pay for courses, adult participation has dropped and those most affected are from disadvantaged and marginalised groups. Therefore it is no longer enough for colleges to sit and wait for potential students to rock up to enrolment events and sign up for the courses that remain funded, but it is advantageous to reach out, step beyond the campus bounds and meet people where they are.
Suffrage Sisters Alliance is a network of more than 200 women drawn from across Newcastle’s mosques, from different backgrounds, cultures, traditions and of different socioeconomic status, education levels and experience. After meeting with them to discuss education and how they might become involved with education, trade unions and campaign groups, I realised there was a gap in their access to information. I therefore organised an event with the local People’s Assembly group, bringing in the Trade Union Education Centre based in Newcastle College, and women involved in leadership roles in trade unions.
The event, set in the context of what the TUC in 2020 called the North East Jobs Crisis, provided information and tools on access to adult education, employability skills and workplace protections. Importantly, the event also highlighted what trade unions can do for women as safe organisations founded on anti-discrimination principles. They provide training and learning opportunities, allow for voices to be heard, and enable access to organisation leaders. Unions facilitate women taking on roles and positions which they might not have access to in their workplaces.
Sparking interest, the Suffrage Sisters organised further training with the Trade Union Education Centre, some women signed up for IT courses at Newcastle College and others participated in a number of Newcastle Council-led community education courses. The Sisters have also continued to run their events, bringing in other organisations such as Safer Cities, Police & Crime Commissioner, the local MP, councillors, and Citizens Advice.
Feminist writer Bell Hooks spoke of the importance of empowering, building confidence and togetherness through education and learning in order to navigate the system and make challenge where it was needed. Thus for this community of women, increased knowledge growth in confidence will develop the skills they need to strengthen their own campaigns to challenge the misogyny and racism they experience. Learning is a multiplier and they will grow.
Education is compassion and to deliver education is a kindness. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer said that to give in care, to be compassionate as we might say today, is to be fully human. So to be fully connected and involved in the community then, is to be fully human; enabling us to reach our own and meet others’ potential.
Newcastle College and its parent group NCG, have gained from the delivery of workshops with the Suffrage Sisters, from students signing up to college courses. They have learned too, about reaching beyond campus, not just delivering off campus. The Trade Union Education Centre is now in contact with the men’s group from the Bangladeshi Community Centre. Our college Chief Executive arranged a partnership with a GP surgery close to the main campus, in a ward with the lowest health outcomes in the city, to arrange learning opportunities which will target deprived groups, marginalised by poverty and health needs.
These are small, local steps but they are vibrant, interactive connections with local knowledge at work in the community, just as Colin and Mog Ball incentivised.
These are steps towards building what the Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, calls ‘communities of resistance’ through our colleges. By gaining awareness of who we are, by learning how to navigate choices and decision-making, we enable healing and transformation of ourselves, of others and of the community.
Reinstate Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA)
Restoration of the EMA is a key policy in the SEA manifesto and is also demanded in the SEA ‘s proposed motion to Labour Conference. Anya explains why.
EMA was a payment to students that was introduced under Labour in 1999 to improve participation in education post-16 both in FE colleges and sixth forms. Students had to attend lessons and complete work to receive the payments. It was terminated by former Secretary of State for Education Michael Gove. Now the UK has a higher non-participation rate in education post 16 than most European countries, at 8.4%, even though education or training post 16 is now compulsory. In April the Welsh Government which continued with EMA, has just agreed an increase of payments from £30 to £40 a week. The same needs to happen in England.
National Education Union delegates voted at this year’s annual conference to make it union policy to campaign for EMA to be reinstated in England for all students aged 16-19. This should be aligned to Job Seekers Allowance rates, currently approximately £60 a week.
NEU Joint General Secretary Mary Bousted said “For young people from disadvantaged backgrounds in particular, accessing financial support from the Government is often a key means by which they are able to stay on in education past the age of 16”.
The OECD - the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development - in its 2011 report Going For Growth called for EMA to be reinstated in order to keep young people in education and to boost youth employment in the UK. Former UCU General Secretary Sally Hunt said at the time “The Government has been criticised from all sides over how it has handled the EMA… The very least [they] can do is look again at the necessary level of support needed to give this country’s poorest teenagers a fair crack at an education”. The UCU commissioned research which predicted that 70% of further education students would drop out if their EMA was withdrawn and predicted that more young people would claim benefits, thus increasing the benefits bill.
David Cameron swiped that aside, raising the education leaving age to 18 less than 2 years later in 2013. Compulsion though has not led to better outcomes for the UK’s poorest students. For the very poorest the gap on average was 4 A level grades equivalent between them and their more advantaged peers pre-pandemic. The Government’s temporary replacement, a means-tested scheme, forced students to apply for financial support through a discretionary fund administered by individual colleges and schools; fewer students were eligible to receive a reduced stipend.
Addressing this gap must include financial barriers to education. Last summer the OECD adopted the recommendations made in its report on Creating Better Opportunities For Young People. This report recognised that to have young people achieve in education and training more must be done to address barriers to young people including financial ones.
I don’t need a report to tell me this. Working in further education for 16 years, in a college in the North of England, in an area of high social deprivation, I have witnessed first-hand the problem. Declining living standards and poverty work against the increasing struggle for young people to attend their courses and achieve qualifications well. Young people who cannot afford to eat or to travel have to subsidise learning through low-paid jobs. This is often because they have responsibilities to provide for their families. They are therefore at a disadvantage in the classroom; that’s if we, as educators, can get them there and keep them there.
Financial concerns and poverty create compounding pressures, heightened stress, increased anxiety, directly impacting on attendance, achievement and future life chances. Post-16 education should be about developing and supporting young people into adulthood. Living in hardship though means their independence is decreased and their dependency increased.
With education now compulsory to age 18 the conditions in which all young people can thrive, must be campaigned for and implemented. Gateshead art teacher Sarah Kilpatrick says slashing EMA was a decision that made her very angry, “I have been powerless to stop students with so much potential dropping out due to poverty. It is devastating.”
Mary Bousted continued “The reinstatement of EMA to meet today’s living costs would be a positive first step towards ensuring that all young people, particularly those from working-class backgrounds, can get the education they deserve”.
EMA would have kept my own son in sixth form completing his A levels and, if it is reintroduced, will prevent other young people from dropping out or achieving less than their potential.
To Level Up we must iron out socio-economic equalities and provide all young people with the same opportunities to learn and grow in security.
SEA Motion to Labour Conference 2023.
Please get your CLP and/or union branch to support.
Conference recognises education is facing an unprecedented crisis.
· One third of teachers leave after five years and ideological control of ITT is a factor in teacher recruitment falling to 42% below target.
· The gap between state and private school funding has doubled since 2010
· The recent IFS/Nuffield report shows that the attainment gap between ‘disadvantaged’ and other pupils has not narrowed over 20 years.
· Academisation has failed to deliver better outcomes for pupils
· The narrow ‘knowledge rich’ curriculum, and high stakes examinations ignore key skills like critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and problem solving, which would include SEND pupils more, and suit employers
· OFSTED are imposing this Tory orthodoxy on schools, putting teachers under intolerable pressure.
Conference calls on the next Labour government to implement a programme of education reform which treats teachers and support staff as professionals and returns schools to local democratic oversight similar to devolution proposals contained in the Brown Report.
This programme should
· Increase state education spending from 3.9% of GDP to 6% over a life time of a Labour government, returning pay to 2010 levels in real terms, fully funded
· Replace OFSTED with a peer review process and local authority safeguarding checks
· Close down Institute of Teaching, handing back teacher education to universities
· Appoint a panel of educationists, including education unions, to devise a national curriculum and examination framework which restores the arts, leaves room for local plus school-based initiatives and replaces GCSE, vocational qualifications and A level with a baccalaureate style qualification.
· Restore the EMA