A survey of Natspec colleges, who all provide education for students with complex needs and Education, Health and Care plans (EHCPs) has shown that proposed changes to funding rules will have an overwhelmingly negative impact on students. In February, the Department for Education announced changes to the policy relating to funding restrictions for students that do not study eligible qualifications in English and maths, if they have not achieve a grade 4 or above in English or maths GCSE.
Natspec, together with other FE organisations, is concerned about the additional requirements in the new guidance for students who are not exempt.
The requirements are:
- the introduction of minimum teaching hours (3 hours per week for English and 4 hours for maths)
- how these hours are used. It must be “stand-alone, whole-class, in-person teaching, with any additional support, such as small group tuition or online support, supplementary to these minimum classroom hours”
- a phased removal of the tolerancefrom 5% to 0%, starting from academic year 2025 to 2026.
In early March, we consulted with Natspec members to understand more about the implications of these additional requirements for students at their colleges. We received responses from 46 colleges, nearly 40% of Natspec members, representing 3,173 students with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).
The results show that for 63% of students studying English and 65% of students studying maths, the Guided Learning Hours of the qualifications they are studying are less than the new minimum requirements.
91% of respondents said that enforcing the new minimum teaching hours (3 hours per week for English and 4 hours for maths), would have a negative impact on some or all of their students who are studying qualifications.
81% of respondents said that the requirement for “stand-alone, whole class, in person teaching” would have a negative impact on some or all students, citing the importance of a person-centred approach and flexible teaching methods.
Comments from responded included:
“The new guidelines for all providers will cause a huge amount of behaviour issues, staffing issues…this is not a viable new way of working.”
“Our learners with an EHCP deserve the opportunity (where appropriate) to undertake qualifications… However, due to the specific needs of our learners, we need the flexibility to offer the programme in smaller chunks. Not all of our learners can manage 3 or 4 hours of content each week.”
“This would impact on other areas of the curriculum, such as learning skills for employment and skills for independent living, which are the primary aims of the courses the learners have enrolled for.”
“We feel that this would reduce learner attendance leading to additional stress.”
“From a budget perspective, having to staff these additional hours because they are mandatory would almost certainly lead to reductions elsewhere and we already run a lean organisation.”
“It would negatively impact on the time that they have available to spend in the workplace which will mean that they don’t develop their Employability skills and will mean it is less attractive for an employer to offer a supported Internship placement.”
“To take away our person centred learning and replace with dictated hours will make learning difficult to access for our autistic students and as such negatively impact on outcomes.”