As the government presses relentlessly ahead with its "modernisation" of education, the poor relation turns out to be the Further Education sector, where staff are paid less than in schools or universities, and where levels of investment have consistently bumped along at rock-bottom levels.
Numbers of students attending FE colleges have increased faster than expected in the last couple of years, to more than 4 million, hitting the target they were set by the Treasury.
But the funding has not risen in proportion, and one of the final gestures from Charles Clarke as Education Secretary was two fingers to anguished College heads, telling them that they should not expect taxpayers" to invest any more in FE.
"The Treasury doesn't automatically come along and say have some more money,"
Clarke told the Association of
Colleges conference in
November.
So who should pay? Clarke
wants more to be snatched
from the pockets of individual
students and from employers
in fees: "The proportion of
money raised in fees needs to
increase," the hefty moderniser
told the college chiefs.
At present colleges raise just
11 percent of their revenue
from fees, with 80 per cent
coming from the Learning and
Skills Council and another 9
per cent from commercial
activities.
But to make any significant
difference in these shares, fees
would need to be jacked up
substantially - affecting the
poorest students, and sabotaging the government's own
campaign to draw more
employers into training
schemes.
In FE as well as other public
services, New Labour needs to
put its money where its mouth
is, or face a system increasingly unable to meet incompatible targets for performance. SOCIALIST cent. the BBC to compete with the