Responding to a speech today (Thursday)
by Education Secretary , the University and College Union (UCU) said
further education desperately needed funding because of a decade
of cuts under Conservative governments. But that increased
investment should not be at the expense of higher education.
The union said the scrapping of the 50% target of young people
going to university looked like rhetoric to secure a headline and
that the route to recovery involved more people accessing
education, not cutting funding for universities.
UCU general secretary Jo Grady said: ‘Further education is in
dire need of funding, but that is because the Conservative
governments of the last decade have decimated it. Hearing
lament the lack of funding for colleges is as
astonishing as it was to hear universities minister complain last week about
record student debt levels on the back of £9,250 annual tuition
fees introduced by the Conservatives.
‘Promising to scrap the 50% target of young people going to
university might secure a headline but the road to our recovery
from the current crisis does not involve cutting the proportion
of young people accessing education.
‘The government should be encouraging people to attend all forms
of education, not picking artificial winners in a market it has
created, nor denigrating university education at a time when the
sector desperately needs support.’
A report by
the Institute for Fiscal Studies released in
September found that adult education, further
education and skills spending on young people have been hardest
hit by austerity since 2010.
It found that between 2010–11 and 2018–19, spending per student
fell by 12% in real terms in 16–18 colleges and by 23% in school
sixth forms. Following on from larger cuts during the 1990s and
lower growth than most other stages of education during the
2000s, further education spending per 16-to-18-year-old is due to
be only about 13% greater in 2018–19 than it was about 30 years
earlier in 1989–90.
