The mythology of redistributing the £100million

There is an interesting bit of mythology that is doing the rounds about where John Denham perceives the £100 million going that he intends to take from Equivalent or Level qualifications and redistribute.

In the first place, he claims it will go into co-funding qualifications, including the foundation degrees and indeed 11 such projects have taken place, costing about £20 million. Thats about £2 million a project. So far so good. What I really want to know is, how far have these plans actually been advanced. How will they be done and will it be on the sad level that has taken place within the Train to Gain scheme whereby we had train to gain brokers that nobody knew about or ever used? I think we should be told?

In the second place, we have been told that the money will be redistributed to people who have not yet been through the higher education system. That also sounds good, until you realise that the average bod who enters higher education for the first time will come out with a debt of £25,000. Then it does not sound so fantastic; that £100 million is going to stop students paying tuition fees is it? I think not?

In the third place, we have been told that the money will be redistributed to youngsters who might wish to go into highyer education. All very good, except for the dip in the birth rate. Apart from that, very fair. So all in all we might not have the students of a younger age group to fill the places.

The system we have at the moment of lifelong learning and widening participation and embedding them within university departments is a system that works. But what we are now proposing is to take the money away from this system into what does not work or what has no proof as to be a viable solution.

In the meantime good universities such as Birkbeck and the Open University will suffer. This is against the avowed policy of the government to have lifelong learning and widening participation.

The £100 million is going to be mythologically redistributed. It does not stack up; lets defeat this silly argument once and for all.