Wales' education funding is at crisis point

Written by Jenny Randerson AM and published in House Magazine on Sat 20th Feb 2010

It is often said that devolution is a process not an event and, at least in constitutional terms, the last decade in Welsh politics has proved that hypothesis. But what is seldom understood, is the speed in which policy divergence has taken place between Wales and the rest of the UK.

Education is an area which illustrates this particularly strongly. The prioritisation of early years education through the introduction of the Foundation Phase, rejected by England, an end to SATs and improvements in 16-19 learner pathways have all been welcome. Sadly, as the screw has begun to tighten on Government finances, the Labour Governments in both Westminster and Cardiff seem to be reacting in remarkably similar fashions when budgeting for Further and Higher Education.

There is a thick funding fog surrounding the future of both FE and HE in Wales. The long promised commitment to provide more stability in funding has disappeared as quickly as the winter snow, in the face of spending restrictions.

Recently, Higher Education chiefs faced the Assembly's Finance Committee about their plans for the years of austerity that lie ahead. While they are ahead of the game in modelling cuts in upcoming budgets, they are not able to predict the extent of these cuts, and the true impact on Wales' education system. Philip Gummett, Chief Executive of the Funding Council for Welsh Universities, bluntly pointed out that as 58% of Universities' costs came from staffing, any cuts would clearly result in significant job losses.

What we do know is that there is already at least a £60m funding gap between Welsh Higher Education institutions and those in England. Just as in Mandelson's plans, Higher and Further Education will have to face their share of the pain over a significantly longer period of time and perhaps in a harsher way than other areas of spending. Already, the Assembly Government has imposed a greater need for funding discipline on FE and HE than they have on their own central government departments.

In this year's Welsh budget, the Government have imposed immediate 5% cuts on Universities, labelled in an Orwellian fashion, as "efficiency gains". This is in the same year as the Welsh Government paved the way for Top-Up fees to be finally introduced for Welsh students, so removing a key advantage of studying in Wales.

FE Colleges have also suffered an uncomfortable cut to core funding which, they are already warning, will lead to significant cuts to jobs and courses at a time when they are reporting a massive increase in applications for skills based courses.

The big difference between Wales and England will be seen in the wider economic effect. Wales lags significantly behind England in economic performance and there has, for a decade, been political consensus on the way through this situation. Unless Wales reduces its over-reliance on public-sector employment and builds a high skill workforce, it is likely that all the measures of economic performance, which see Wales at the bottom of the pile, will continue to do so.

The political parties have also previously agreed that up-skilling Wales was the best way forward. Now, the governing parties have dealt a painful blow to that consensus.

Economists tell me that Wales has an economic model built on low wages, rather than high skills. They almost unanimously agree that an investment now in the skill base, at college and university level, is the only way to turn this situation around.

Just as in England, post sixteen education seems to be the first in line for the chop, and this has left many wondering what horrors await the sector when things get really bad in 2011 and beyond.

It is clear that a failure to deal with the skills deficit will leave the already vulnerable Welsh economy in an even weaker position and will destroy the economic remodelling that has been promised for post recession recovery.

It is clear that all areas of Government spending are in for a bumpy ride but slashing the ability to deliver skills when we need them the most is frankly dangerous. This seems to be emerging in both the diverged policy programmes of Cardiff and Westminster: the difference is that the Welsh economy will be left all the more at risk by the action.

ENDS