26 August 2010
Taking responsibility for education funding away from councils will seriously hamper the commitment for all 16 to 18-year-olds to be in education or training, according to education and local government leaders.
The previous Labour administration was committed to the Raising the Participation Age policy, which aimed to have all young people staying in education or training until they were 17 years old from 2013 and until 18 from 2015. The coalition government is due to decide whether to commit to the RPA in the next few weeks and it is thought to favour going ahead with the reforms.
But teaching unions have warned that schools and colleges could face a similar crisis to the current shortage of university places when the new leaving age is implemented. They have warned that the coalition government’s June decision to take responsibility for 14–19 education funding away from councils and give it to the Young People'sLearning Agency will affect planning to deal with the extra demand.
John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, told PF: ‘I doubt schools actually have the capacity to implement the RPA but they have the capacity to put together some semblance of an organisation.
‘I do think this is the great elephant in the room for local authorities. They have not got round to tackling the organisational issues and it is not a top priority... they have got funding problems elsewhere.’
Ian Keating, senior policy consultant at the Local Government Association, said that local authorities still had a legal obligation to ensure the RPA was implemented.
But he told PF that there was a problem with the way the YPLA decides on funding, since ‘lagging’ – basing funding on the past year’s intake – would not be adequate for implementing the RPA. He warned this would lead to ‘an automatic system’ of funding that did not relate to need.
Keating added that there had been no commitment so far for extra funding for the increased numbers of students, and the amounts available would not be clear until the autumn Spending Review.
Siôn Humphreys, assistant secretary for secondary schools at the NationalAssociation of Headteachers, said the current shortage of university places for those leaving school at 18 highlighted future problems for the extra number of 16–18 year olds staying at school.
‘The worst case scenario is that an increasing number of students feel obliged to stay on [at school], but will there be a pot of gold at the end of the proverbial rainbow?’, he said.
