Manchester's biggest further education provider has already turned away 200 hopeful students this year
A lack of places to study all manner of qualifications at sixth form has hit a crisis point, with the city’s biggest further education provider already turning 200 hopefuls away from its landmark new campus. By 2025, demand will outstrip its 6,000-student capacity, a new report has warned.
It says the problem stems from the fact that to build new infrastructure, it is required to ‘match fund’ any cash it gets from the Department for Education , a recent report to Manchester City Council claims. That requirement to find its own cash was insisted upon despite ‘previous, very significant match funding rates’ for other projects, it added. In effect, it’s ‘something akin to asking the NHS to self-fund new hospitals’, the LTE continued - although the government deny that money exclusively comes match-funded for further education.
And while behind-the-scenes wrangling has been had, the situation on the ground is only worsening, with The Manchester College seeing a 148 percent growth in ‘first choice’ applications from 2023 to 2024. In part, that’s been fuelled by a new phenomenon of ‘parents choosing to move house into Manchester to secure a place on the college course’.
How the crisis is solved long-term remains to be seen, with a DfE spokesperson saying it is 'working with Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Combined Authority to establish the full extent of the pressures on capacity, and to support the identification of potential solutions in education settings'.
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