Education and Skills Committee on Further Education - report

12th September 2006

Commenting on today’s report by the Education and Skills Committee on Further Education, Richard Wilson at the IoD said:

“Today’s report echoes two of the IoD’s key concerns about FE. Firstly, the Government’s requirement that colleges should focus on employability could be restrictive. Employability is an ambiguous concept. Some of the personal and community development learning provided by FE is not obviously vocational. Yet, in studying for these courses, learners may acquire skills that are attractive to prospective employers, or acquire a taste for learning that leads to more training.

“Secondly, the Government needs to continue to eliminate the funding gap that exists between schools and colleges. This is already due to narrow from 13% to 8% by 2006-07; the Government needs to shrink this further if FE colleges are to compete on a level playing field with schools in recruiting and retaining staff.

“Where we disagree with the Select Committee is on the issue of training levies. These were used widely in the past but were not successful in removing skill shortages. In any case, employers spend substantial sums on training and so the case for compulsory training levies is unproven.

“Forty six percent of IoD members send some of their employees to colleges for training purposes. Most believe that the quality of training provided to be good or excellent. We must not lose sight of this in the debate on the future of FE.”