Spending Review and skills funding: helping colleges support housing targets

How the Government’s Spending Review and Skills Training investment for Colleges may help to achieve their wider housing targets:

As part of the Government’s Spending Review the Chancellor has set out government spending plans for the next three years, boosting the schools budget, extending the rebuilding programme and increasing skills funding.

Skills Funding:

The Chancellor has promised an additional £1.2 billion of additional investment for skills training per year by 2028-29 a year by the end of this parliament, which includes funding to support over 1.3 million 16 to 19 year olds to access high-quality training opportunities, supporting 65,000 additional learners per year by 2028-29.

Rachel Reeves in her announcement of the spending review said this investment would help to support “over a million young people into training and apprenticeships so that their potential, their drive and their ambition is frustrated no longer.”.

As part of this funding it will also deliver £625 million between 2025-26 and 2028-29 to train up to 60,000 skilled construction workers as part of the Government’s wider Construction Skills Action Plan. Recently the DfE have opened applications for 10 new technical colleges specialising in construction which will be located in every English Region and serve as a regional hub to boost advanced training in trades and engineering.

There was no mention of adult education funding in the spending review documents, but the government did say it will set out further detail its plans for post-16 education and skills later in the year.

Further education providers in England include 220 colleges and 1,300 independent training providers which currently receive over £12 billion from the government each year to support around 1.9 million learners. While predicted school pupil numbers are forecast to fall over the next four years, the number of 16 to 19 year olds is set to rise by 118,000.

David Hughes, chief executive of the Association of Colleges, warns that the extra funding for more 16 to 19 places may not be enough as the 65,000 extra 16 to 19 places will only just keep up with population growth; this may be insufficient if the improving participation seen in recent years continues.

Integrated settlements

Following on from the Government’s recent devolution white paper, more mayors will receive funding through integrated settlements in 2026. These are budgets that combine funding sources from different government departments, including adult skills, into one pot, giving mayors more freedom to fund priority projects.

The Government has announced the mayors of Greater Manchester and the West Midlands would be the first to get the integrated settlements for 2025-26 and the spending review confirmed that the Greater London Authority and mayoral strategic authorities in West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North East and Liverpool City Region will also receive integrated settlements from 2026-27.

Conclusion and Summary:

Whilst, as to be expected, there is room for improvement on the amount of funding which has been made available for Colleges to invest in their facilities and skills training, the announcements which have already been made as part of the Spending Review show that the Government is committed especially with regard to improving the country’s construction industry and capacity.  Whilst these changes might not be able to impact the 1.5million homes target that the Government has set itself it will be essential if the situation is to improve further down the line.