Government must stop treating sixth-form colleges unfairly

Sixth-kind college college students acquire significantly less funds from government in contrast to college pupils, because of funding cuts and VAT guidelines. Photograph: Howard Barlow

I am angry. I want to employ new teachers, lower down class sizes and boost personnel wages at the degree of inflation, but I can’t. Why? Due to the fact I am the principal of a sixth-kind college.

Between 2011 and 2017 my university will have skilled a 14% lower in funding per student. In genuine terms this quantities to a 29% reduction in funding. This is a end result of cuts to enrichment funding for sixteen- to 19-yr-old college students and the effect of a new funding methodology, which will hit sixth-type schools in September 2016.

As a sixth-kind university we’re obtaining to make a disproportionate contribution to the government’s austerity programme in contrast to major and secondary schools whose budget was protected in the 2010 comprehensive spending overview.

On leading of being hit tougher by funding cuts, we are not reimbursed for the VAT we devote on the purchases we make, as opposed to colleges, which get the money back from the government.

Just imagine for one fantasy minute that an training marketplace is the secret to driving up standards, a crucial dogma in Michael Gove’s policy. Absolutely, it really is entirely incorrect for competitors to be rigged to favour 1 set of suppliers to the disadvantage of an additional? Nevertheless this is exactly what is taking place with VAT. Colleges, which are in a position to claim back their VAT expenses, are in effect acquiring paid a greater value from the state for their sixteen- to 19-12 months-outdated students.

Final 12 months VAT price my university £310,000. That income could make a actual contribution to mitigating the worst results of the cuts. It could be utilised to employ nine additional teachers, which would let us to increase educating time for our A-level courses and reduce set sizes. It could enable us to improve staff wages at the degree of inflation, with income left more than to fund planned maintenance, sadly neglected in the final few many years. Or, it could reverse the planned cuts in our stock of personal computers and enable us to reintroduce meals technology or religious scientific studies – subjects we have had to axe. In essence, there would be much more funds to commit on the frontline – supporting college students and rewarding difficult-pressed teachers.

The failure to offer a degree playing area for colleges and sixth-type colleges in relation to VAT is not the only example of how the government promotes competitors as the most effective way of delivering schooling and but fails to manage that industry relatively. Particular privileges for totally free schools, this kind of as the correct to make use of non-competent teachers, sponsoring new school sixth-types in locations exactly where they are not necessary and pressurising colleges to turn into academies towards their will are all additional examples of approaches that the government is satisfied to set aside marketplace philosophy when it suits and use the energy of the state to support its pet tasks and prejudices.

David Adelman is the principal of Godalming Sixth Kind School.

Government must stop treating sixth-form colleges unfairly