Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to help further education colleges support young people who are not in education, employment or training through (a) flexible funding arrangements and (b) supporting collaborative working with local authorities.

Through the Post-16 education and skills white paper, the department is committed to enabling local and strategic authorities, schools, and further education (FE) providers to more effectively identify, track and share data about young people. These measures aim to prevent young people falling out of education/training and becoming not in education, employment, or training, and look to ensure that those without a post-16 study plan are automatically allocated a place at a local college or FE provider.

We will provide £1.2 billion of additional investment per year in skills by 2028-2029. This investment will enable us to support 1.3 million learners each year. This significant investment will ensure there is increased funding to colleges and other 16-19 providers to maintain real terms per-student funding in the next academic year to respond to the demographic increase in 16 to 19-year-olds. This will enable the recruitment and retention of expert teachers in high value subject areas, and interventions to retain top teaching talent.