College Collaboration Fund Opens New Round

The Department for Education (DfE) has launched the second round of its £9 million national grant programme for all statutory further education (FE) colleges in England.

The College Collaboration Fund (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.

As a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak, the first application round for the CCF was cancelled. The DfE have now adjusted the application process and opened the second round of the CCF to support FE colleges to respond to the current challenges.

Statutory FE colleges in England can apply. These are:

General FE colleges

Sixth form colleges (except those in the process of converting to an academy in the 2020 to 2021 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.

A total fund of £5.4 million is available for this round. Applications are invited for grants of a value up to £500,000 with an expected minimum value of £100,000.

Application forms should be submitted by the deadline of 28 June 2020.

More information about this funding opportunity and the application process is available on the GRANTfinder funding information platform. GRANTfinder provides up-to-the minute content, insight and analysis on funding news and policy. To find out more about how GRANTfinder can keep you in the know, and subscription fees, contact us today.