College Collaboration Fund Opens New Application Round
Funding available to help Further Education colleges in England share good practice and develop quality improvement priorities.
The College Collaboration Fund (CCF), a national programme of competitive grant funding for all statutory further education (FE) colleges, has opened a new round of funding.
A total fund of £5.4 million is available for this second round.
CCF enables colleges to collaborate and share good practice and expertise to address common quality improvement priorities.
CCF aims to:
- Develop greater collaboration between FE colleges, usually, but not exclusively, in the same geographic place
- Stimulate quality improvement through developing sector-led approaches peer-to-peer support and sharing good practice
- Ensure sustainable FE provision through adopting process which supports high performance
- Produce products and approaches to quality improvement that can be adopted by other FE providers
- Stimulate the market and provider base to support ongoing quality improvement
- Develop a stronger FE offer through improving the quality of FE provision and learner outcomes, including progression to level 3 qualifications
- Better meet local and national skills priorities and improve labour market outcomes for learners.
Statutory FE colleges can apply as defined in section 91 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992.
These are:
- General FE colleges
- Sixth form colleges (except those in the process of converting to an academy in the 2021 to 2022 financial year)
- Designated institutions.
Each application will need a lead college and either a minimum of one other college or a maximum of four other colleges.
To lead a bid, colleges must have either Ofsted grade 1 (outstanding) or grade 2 (good) for overall effectiveness.
Applications are invited for grants of a value up to £500,000 with an expected minimum value of £100,000.
Completed application forms should be submitted by the deadline of 21 May 2021 (5pm).
