Williamson: A revolution in further education - delivering for the forgotten 50 per cent

A new focus on the “forgotten fifty per cent” of the population who don’t go into university will be launched by the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, today as he lays out an ambition to beat Germany in delivering opportunities across non-academic routes within a decade. 

To support this ambition a huge expansion of Institutes of Technology will be launched today to make sure young people across the country have access to quality technical education. Up to £120m will be invested to take the total number from twelve currently planned to up to twenty in cities across England. This huge expansion of the programme will particularly benefit the North-West of England, Teesside, the East Midlands, and cities along the South Coast.

Institutes of Technology bring together business, universities and FE colleges, to deliver post-16 FE and technical and vocational courses suited to the needs of the business in the regions they serve. This move will make sure that key sectors and every region in England will benefit from at least one IoT, meaning that wherever you live or work, there’ll be an IoT to enable you to take your technical skills to the next level.

The Education Secretary will also form a new Skills & Productivity Board of leading labour market economists to advise him policies to drive forward the provision of world leading skills and qualifications, particularly for the FE sector. This will be geared towards ensuring the courses undertaken by students will fit with to the demands of the workforce of tomorrow, helping drive productivity and ensure taxpayers money is focused on delivering the skills we need.

Building on the success of the free schools programme to date, Mr Williamson will also expand the number of specialist maths free schools open from two to eleven, to ensure elite maths teaching is available for all 16-19-year-olds, wherever they live in England. These schools will ensure all young people gifted in maths have the best opportunity of achieving academic excellence, working with likeminded young people and going on to academic success, whatever their background and wherever they live.

These announcements follow the recent spending review which saw school funding across the country increase, with an additional £14 billion being spent on schools over the next three years and every school to receive more funding. 

Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, said:

“There is one part of our education system that’s often overlooked, Further Education. While past Labour Governments obsessed over targets to get half the population to university, they forgot about the other 50%. We’re going to put that right.

“Apprenticeships, technical and vocational education are just as valuable as University education and they are at least as important to our economy. We want to ensure that in the next decade, we beat Germany on the opportunities we give to those taking technical and vocational routes.

“We’re going to super-charge Further Education and set our sights high. We will ensure equal focus is given to all young people, whether they choose the technical, vocational or academic routes.”

ENDS

For further information, please contact Richard Holden on 07850 436797

Notes to Editors

Free Schools

• There are already two open Maths Free Schools, in partnership with Kings College London, and Exeter University. Both schools are rated Outstanding by Ofsted. More Maths Free Schools are being developed by the University of Cambridge, Lancaster University, the University of Liverpool, and the University of Surrey. But there are areas of the country where young people cannot access this high quality provision and we want to change this. Funding will be from the DfE Capital Programme. (Ofsted, Kings College London Maths School, 25 April 2017, link; Ofsted, Exeter Mathematics School, 24 January 2017, link).

• Free Schools serve our most deprived communities the most. Over 40 per cent of free schools are in the 30 per cent most deprived communities and 18 per cent of all free schools are dedicated to special needs or alternative provision. (Prime Minister’s Office, Press Release, 9 September 2019, link).

• Free schools are overwhelmingly rated as either good or outstanding by Ofsted. Of those inspected by Ofsted, 85 per cent have been rated good or outstanding, with 30 per cent rated outstanding – and in 2018, four of the top 10 Progress 8 scores for state-funded schools in England were achieved by free schools. (UK Government, Press Release, 9 September 2019, link).

• Labour will end the successful academies and free schools programmes. Labour’s 2017 manifesto pledged that ‘We’ll start by immediately ending the Tories’ academy and free schools programme.’ (Angela Rayner, Speech to Labour Party Conference 2018, 24 September 2018, link).

• Since 2010, Conservatives have enabled free schools to be set up outside local authority control. There are now 507 Free Schools across England delivering 280,000 new places. Free Schools are set up by groups of parents, teachers, existing schools to tackle a need identified in their local community, be that to address standards, provide a different kind of education or for new places. The Government recently announced Wave 14 for a further 30 free schools and is separately accepting applications for Special Free Schools (for pupils with SEND) and Alternative Provision Free Schools (for pupils who are excluded, or at risk of exclusion, from mainstream schools). (Prime Minister’s Office, Press Release, 9 September 2019, link).

Institutes of Technology

• We have already made £170 million available to create 12 new Institutes of Technology to invest in new or refurbished buildings and equipment to train young people for the future workplace. The 12 Institutes have access to £170 million of capital so they have the equipment and facilities to deliver a world-class technical education (Department for Education, Press Release, 10 April 2019, link).

• Labour oppose our plans for new Institutes of Technology. Their manifesto in 2017 stated that: ‘Labour would abandon Conservative plans to once again reinvent the wheel by building new technical colleges, redirecting the money to increase teacher numbers in the FE sector’ (Labour Manifesto 2017, 16 May 2017, link).

• We are making an investment of up to £120 million to establish high quality Institutes of Technology across England. This will allow us to establish up to 8 more Institutes of Technology in ‘cold spots’ that do not currently have access to this provision – which include built up areas in the North West as well as the East of England, among others. These Institutes will provide employers with the higher level skills they need to drive growth and productivity across the country. A competition will ensure that only the highest quality applications are approved.

• We are reviewing higher technical qualifications to ensure they provide the skills that employers want. We are providing a high quality progression route from T Levels or A Levels (Level 3) into higher technical qualifications at Levels 4 and 5, for young people looking to progress from education or apprenticeships or adults wanting to upskill or retrain. We will ask the Institute for Apprenticeships to assess higher technical qualifications against employer-led occupational standards (developing occupational standards where they don’t currently exist) and to approve those qualifications that deliver the knowledge, skills and behaviours set out in those standards. This will provide young people with clear routes into skilled employment (Department for Education, Higher Technical Education, Government Consultation, launched 8 July 2019, link).