The subject of co-funding from employers.
John Denham claims that there is now conclusive proof that employers would want to buy in to co-funding higher level skills of their employees. This goes against my 35 years of experience of working life when only one employer (the Inland Revenue) ever wanted to fund me to do a higher level qualification, that is to say, beyond level 3. They would have funded me for an entire ATII course (Institute of Taxation) if I had wanted them to do so which I must say was very far sighted of them. However, the other employers whom I have had throughout my working life would not have done any such thing, preferring that the person came to the table "ready educated", so to speak.
The subject of first time buyers into Higher Education.The redistribution of £100 million for first time buyers.
There again, there is no real evidence that there is any shortage of first time buyers into Higher Education in the full-time sector and real evidence that an increasing burden of debt is putting people off going into higher education. That is why people are increasingly going into the part-time sector to fulfil their ambitions of achieving higher qualifications. But we must also remember that many people are going into the part-time sector of higher education to refresh their higher level qualifications or to change direction.
....... and the shortage subjects of Science, Mathematics and Languages.
although not, I notice, Information Technology, which surely is constantly a shortage area.
The subject of Leitch report and lower level skills came up.
I just cannot understand where it is that the government gets the idea that it must constantly emphasise and fixate on the higher level skills sector when there are so many people who are leaving school being innumerate and illiterate. To me this is where the skills investment must come in, at the level of encouraging pupils to be able to read and write before they leave school. This is not to do with higher education, yet these numeracy and literacy shortages are repeatedly being pushed into the higher education arena. What you are getting in higher education, if I might say so, is a lot of students who are nowhere near ready for higher education and one needs to spend time on a lot of remedial work with them which should have been done at the level of sixth form (or lower). This is not a higher education problem and the government seems to be confusing the two.
As far as Widening Participation went, the Universities were invited to work with Hefce and to try to find new ways of working to meet the potential targets
This is something which I thought was especially funny. In fact the Open University and Hefce have done nothing but identify a student market with which to work; now they were being expected to work extra hard to identify another market because 25% of their existing market had been stripped away from under them at the stroke of a pen.
The Secretary of State said that the re-allocation of monies would in fact result in 20,000 new FTE (full time equivalent) places, the equivalent of one new University in fact.
I really dont know how this figure got into the equation. This would be enough to sustain one new university for about one year with 20,000 * 5,000GBP for each student (including overhead costs and provision of courses).
In overall terms, I have to say that however pleasant the Secretary of State seems to be when explaining the position, what he says does not wash and the figures do not stack up. This seems to be something which has been prepared with indecent haste. Let us hope that we can prove in the Select Committee Enquiry that what has been said does not stack up and hopefully persuade the government to withdraw their plans.
Donald Hedges, Dip Eng Law(Open), BA(Hons)(Solent).
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