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Colleges Are Carrying More Than They're Being Paid For

  • 2 days ago
  • 3 min read

Date | 20th March 2026



The Children's Commissioner doesn't often turn her lens on FE colleges. When she does, it's worth stopping to read it carefully. Published this week, her report gives the first proper national picture of what the college sector is actually dealing with, and some of the figures are striking even for people who've spent years in it.


Ninety per cent said it, and a third said it's worse than that


Ninety per cent of college leaders say funding limits their ability to give students the additional support they need. A third say they can't meet the requirements set out in Education, Health and Care Plans because the funding simply doesn't match the need. These aren't anecdotal complaints from a handful of colleagues; this is the national picture, documented and published by an independent statutory commissioner.


The report also names something that student services teams and SENCOs will recognise immediately: the information gap at the school-to-college transition. Young people are arriving without key details being passed on, leaving colleagues piecing together support plans from scratch while the clock ticks on term time. The Commissioner's clearest recommendation is extending the pupil premium to post-16 education, with additional funding targeted at the learners who need it most. Whether the DfE picks that up in the next spending round is another question, but having it in a commissioner's report is at least a stronger platform than another campaign document.


The backdrop matters too. The number of 16-to-18-year-olds in England grew by around 300,000 between 2018 and 2025. Colleges absorbed most of that growth. The funding envelope didn't.


A billion for young people not in learning


Also landing this week: the government confirmed an additional £1 billion for the Youth Guarantee, taking the total to £2.5 billion. The package includes a £3,000 hiring incentive for employers taking on 18-to-24-year-olds who've been out of work for at least six months and a £2,000 apprenticeship incentive for SMEs. Around a million 16-to-24-year-olds are currently NEET, up a third since the pandemic. That's the scale of the problem the money is aimed at.


Colleges aren't named directly in the announcement, but they're the obvious re-engagement route for a lot of those young people. A pilot starts in April across six target areas before national rollout later in 2026. It's worth watching which areas are selected and whether AEB-funded provision is properly threaded into the plans when the detail arrives. It's the kind of thing that gets promised in a press release and quietly dropped in implementation guidance.


The white paper asks more than the funding delivers


The Institute for Fiscal Studies published its analysis of the post-16 white paper this week, and it didn't hold back. Colleges will receive about £450 million more in real terms for 16-to-19 provision in 2026-27, a 3% real increase per student. That sounds reasonable until you notice that real-terms per-student funding will still sit roughly 4% below its 2010-11 level in colleges and around 18% below for school sixth forms. On top of that, colleges are being asked to implement new qualification frameworks, build T Level delivery, take on V Levels, and strengthen their workforce development all at the same time.


The IFS said the white paper's ambitions "do not always add up to a coherent overall strategy." A curriculum manager staring at a September delivery plan right now probably has a less polite way of putting it.


Ten new construction hubs, open for business


Quietly, the ten Construction Technical Excellence Colleges began their regional rollout events this week, including Bristol today. The £100 million initiative (£80 million capital, £20 million revenue) aims to train around 40,000 construction workers through a hub-and-spoke model with partner providers across each region. Colleges named as CTECs will want to get on top of the partnership expectations before conversations from regional providers and independent training providers start arriving.


The IFS has said the numbers don't fully add up. The Commissioner has said EHCP funding doesn't match the need. The NEET figures say nearly a million young people have fallen through the gap. The Spring Budget has been and gone, and those three realities are all landing on senior leadership agendas across the sector right now.



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