Learning and Skills Council: Sixth-form Funding (Hansard, 19 November 2001)

§ Baroness Walmsley
asked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether they consider the funding of sixth-form places by the Learning and Skills Council to be adequate.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Skills (Baroness Ashton of Upholland)
Yes, my Lords. The total amount for the funding of school sixth forms by the Learning and Skills Council from April 2002 has already been agreed. The Learning and Skills Council will announce initial allocations in December.

§ Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. Does she accept that the predictions are that sixth-form places in schools will be funded at a level £900 below the average in the past? Will she give the House an absolute assurance that no school will be penalised for having a successful, thriving and growing sixth form by having to dig into the rest of its budget to support the sixth form under the new regime?

§ Baroness Ashton of Upholland
My Lords, I am more than happy to give that commitment to the noble Baroness. I want to take a moment to explain the funding regime, because there has been some misunderstanding about how the formula was to be worked out, based on very preliminary information that we sent out. No sixth form will be funded below the 2000–01 rates, which we are describing as the baseline year. In addition, the Learning and Skills Council will take account of any significant cash injections to sixth forms made by LEAs in the last financial year and will make appropriate adjustments. The £2,600 that is being quoted will be the determining figure if numbers change, not the figure on which the figures are based.

§ Baroness Blatch
My Lords, does the guarantee extend to a growing sixth form—in other words, one that will have more pupils? Also, will the decision for 869 discontinuing a sixth form lie with the organisational committee and adjudicator or the Learning and Skills Council and how will one read across to the other?

§ Baroness Ashton of Upholland
My Lords, I shall answer the noble Baroness's second question first, but I shall remember to answer her first question as well. The Learning and Skills Council has the power to propose the closure of a sixth form on any site only if it has been deemed inadequate following two consecutive Ofsted inspections. That will be the trigger. For growing sixth forms, the real-terms guarantee is reviewed each year and numbers are taken into account at that point in order to put the guarantee back in place. It is the purpose of the Learning and Skills Council to help thriving and growing sixth forms wherever possible.

§ Lord Lucas
My Lords, what do the Government expect the trend in funding per pupil in sixth forms to be? Do they expect it to rise in line with average education expenditure over the next three years, or will it drop below that?

§ Baroness Ashton of Upholland
My Lords, the funding available for 2002–03 is £1.356 billion. Already, the allocation for 2003–04 is set at £1.428 billion. That is a rising trend. It is our aspiration to support and help sixth forms across the country.

§ Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, will the Minister confirm that the rate of inflation implicit in the figures put forward by the Learning and Skills Council is 3 per cent a year? How is it proposed to fund the settlement through the Learning and Skills Council should teachers' salaries rise by more than 3 per cent a year?

§ Baroness Ashton of Upholland
My Lords, I can confirm that the figure is 3 per cent a year. We are looking at the new formulas for the Learning and Skills Council for the future. I am sure that this is not the answer that the noble Baroness is looking for, but we are allowing schools to vire money across. The sixth-form money does not have to be put in a separate pot. Pre-sixth-form and sixth-form money can be vired into the general school budget. We shall have to look at the salaries of school teachers in the general spending review.

§ Lord Pilkington of Oxenford
My Lords, has the department taken note of the provision in the Act that economic factors should not govern the allocation of money to sixth forms, particularly in rural schools? Can she guarantee that rural sixth formers will be protected in any allocation of grants?

§ Baroness Ashton of Upholland
My Lords, the Learning and Skills Council is required to look at elements of disadvantage, and that includes issues such as free school meals eligibility. It is unusual to have a 870 formula based on free school meals eligibility rather than take-up. That makes it more representative. We are very conscious of the need to support rural communities and rural sixth forms. That will be an important factor in the LSC's work.

§ Baroness Carnegy of Lour
My Lords, I do not think that my noble friend Lord Pilkington was talking about disadvantage. I thought that his point was that sixth forms in rural areas are likely to be smaller.

§ Lord Pilkington of Oxenford
Yes.

§ Baroness Ashton of Upholland
My Lords, I did not mean to suggest that rural communities are disadvantaged per se, but there have been issues of disadvantage because of pupils requiring to travel and so on and the need to support and protect small sixth forms, as your Lordships made very clear during the passage of the Bill. Part of the purpose of the Learning and Skills Council is to ensure that those sixth forms thrive and work collaboratively and co-operatively with others to ensure that a broad range of A-levels are available to pupils across rural communities.