SFCA press statement
Read the Sixth Form College Association's press statement
Pay disparity impacting Sixth Form Colleges
Sixth Form Colleges like Hills Road are suffering a pay disparity compared to 16-19 Academies. Find out why this is, and what action is being taken by members of our community.
Published on 21/01/2025
Planned industrial action
In addition to the industrial action by teaching staff members of the National Education Union (NEU) on 7, 8 and 9 January a new round of action will be taking place on the following dates:
- Wednesday 29 January
- Thursday 6 February
- Friday 7 February
Hills Road Sixth Form College will remain open on these days and lessons will continue as normal for classes that are not impacted by industrial action.
Background and context
The context for this dispute concerns the omission of Sixth Form Colleges in a new pay deal for teachers.
There has recently been movement on the pay parity issue, with the government making an offer to fund a pay rise for Sixth Form Colleges to 5.5%, in line with 16-19 Academies and schools, from April 2025 and committing to funding all post-16 providers equivalently from next academic year.
Whilst this is welcome news for Sixth Form Colleges, it still leaves the matter of the period from September to March this academic year, for which the government is providing no additional funding and the NEU position to its members is that this gap remains untenable.
As we reported in October, other 16-19 providers will receive an additional 3.65% in funding: but Sixth Form Colleges like Hills Road will not now receive it for the period September to March of this academic year. This means that academies (many of which are former sixth form colleges, including Long Road Sixth Form College which academised on 1 September 2024) will benefit from much-needed help to meet rising costs: Hills Road will not.
We have shared important information to consider in the context of the situation, which you can find further down the page.
The Sixth Form Colleges Association, representing almost all organisations that are Sixth Form Colleges, initiated legal proceedings towards a Judicial Review of this decision and released a press statement.
However, a settlement was reached between the two parties in December 2024 that ended the proceedings. More information about this to follow soon.
Support from across the community is an important way to raise awareness about the issue, and to this end we have been making contact with local MPs.
If you'd like to support the College by writing to your MP, you can download a letter template below.
Important information
While industrial action is never the route that any colleague wishes to take, and is not something we endorse as an organisation, we hope the information shared below is helpful in setting out the very real financial challenge Hills Road Sixth Form College is experiencing.
It is this that has led NEU colleagues to feel they have no other choice in relation to this government decision to withhold the additional funding from Sixth Form Colleges.
Impact on budget
The funding uplift that all post-16 education received in terms of a rate rise to cover all cost increases this year is 1.89%. That is already an effective budget cut to the money we need to provide the breadth of sixth-form education that we do.
If we were to receive the same pay funding as 16-19 academies, it would mean an additional £434,000 for the Hills Road budget this year.
Illustrative comparison
In 2010 Hills Road received £5049 in funding per student per year. For this academic year, 2024-25, we will receive £4834 per student per year. The difference is urgent and obvious, not least, as this figure doesn’t even include the real terms impact in relation to inflation and cost of living pay rise increases.
Further Education (FE) sector context
As a Sixth Form College within the FE sector, we have paid VAT since 1992. All FE Colleges pay VAT currently, and, in the last five years, Hills Road has paid almost £2 million in unrecoverable VAT which adds interesting context in the current debate about independent schools and VAT.
The government is keen to make a distinction between schools and FE to explain the difference in treatment, but FE Colleges have lecturers’ terms and conditions and do not pay teacher pay rates, as Sixth Form Colleges do.
