The skills minister has said she would like to see college staff pay matched with school teachers.
Baroness Jacqui Smith, universities, skills and apprenticeship minister, apologised that the Government had not been able to fund the same 5.5% pay increase for further education (FE) lecturers as school staff this year.
Addressing college leaders on Tuesday in Birmingham, the education minister said FE staff and students have too often been “sidelined”.
She acknowledged that college staff “felt rightly very disappointed” as they were not awarded the same, fully-funded, pay award as their peers in schools.
Baroness Smith told the annual conference of Association of Colleges (AoC): “We have a different situation in FE in terms of the Government’s role in pay, and that was the reason why we weren’t at that point able to fund the same pay increase.
“I know it will have felt like a lack of recognition of the FE workforce, but genuinely we understand the crucial role that the FE workforce plays in both the skills development I was talking about in colleges, and for your…
