Commenting on the government’s Skills for Jobs White Paper, Geoff
Barton, General Secretary of the Association of School and
College Leaders, said:
“We welcome the government’s focus on supporting people to
retrain through their lives and gain new skills aligned to the
needs of the economy. This is important in a time when we are
seeing rapid technological change, and particularly as the
country recovers from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“However, we continue to be concerned about the severe
underfunding of the post-16 sector, which plays such a vital role
in delivering the technical and vocational education that the
government says it is so keen to boost, as well as academic
routes which are also of the utmost importance.
“Recent analysis by the Institute
for Fiscal Studies found that further education and sixth form
colleges, along with school sixth forms, have seen the largest
falls in per-student funding of any sector of the education
system since 2010–11.
“We hope that the government will now commit to the immediate and
urgent increase in funding that this sector has needed for so
long.
“We note that the government is also launching its consultation
on post-qualification admissions for university, where students
receive and accept offers after they have achieved their
A-levels.
“This is an important reform which should make the system fairer
alongside other measures and we look forward to seeing the
detailed proposals.”
