The choice at this election
There was nothing in the latest Budget for the Further Education sector. The Government is cutting funding for adult learning, at a time when people need to be able to access courses to retrain, or up-skill, in order to find new jobs or start new careers. The number of apprenticeship starts also fell recently.
Colleges are still being restricted by bureaucracy and red-tape, which means that they can not be as flexible in responding to local needs as they would want to be. Yet the Government is making things worse by pressing ahead with the shift from one quango, the LSC, to three, whilst giving some powers back to local authorities.
We can’t go on like this – Britain can not afford another five years of Labour’s failures and obsession with targets.
We want to make things easier for colleges and training providers by reducing the number of bodies involved in funding, inspection and auditing in the further education sector. This would start by creating a streamlined Further Education Funding Council for England, which would reduce bureaucracy and give colleges more flexibility over funding.
We would refocus the Train to Gain budget to help people of all ages, by investing in more apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeship training, creating new funds for NEETs and community learning and creating a new all-ages careers service.
Whilst the review of student finance and support is still ongoing, we want to see the student experience improve, a fairer deal for part-time and mature learners and clearer pathways from vocational routes into higher and further education, which might include providing more higher education courses by further education providers.
The choice at this election is clear; five more years of a bureaucratic and complex funding system; or change with the Conservatives, who would raise the status of further education and set colleges free to do what they do best.
David Evennett is Shadow Minister for Universities and Skills
Read other FE News articles by David Evennett:
Sector update, by Shadow Minister for Skills David Evennett
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