15th December 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Recent announcements by the government have confirmed that funding for Sixth Forms in the UK is to be significantly cut between now and 2015. The BBC have reported on their website that the Education White Paper reveals that the plan is to bring sixth form funding closer to the amount received by further education colleges in the UK.
The gap in funding per student is approximately £280 a year when comparing a college student to one in a sixth form. Schools and colleges had hoped for the this gap to be closed by increasing college funding, but, with the government looking to cut spending on post 16 education, the decision was to lower sixth form funding instead. There are 430,000 students in sixth forms in the UK, and the Times Education Supplement estimates that these cuts will amount to £120m.
The general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL), Brain Lightman, said that the only fair decision would have been to increase college funding, and that cuts of this scale would lead to less choice for students, larger classes, and less contact time between students and their teacher.
Julian Gravatt, assistant chief of the Association of Colleges said that no-one is happy to see a reduction in funding for sixth forms, and that he would have preferred the funding of colleges to increase instead. However, he added that it’s a positive step to create more equality between sixth forms and colleges, and he was happy that the White Paper acknowledged that the current funding system was inherently unfair.