LABOUR'S FURTHER ED FUNDING FIASCO

How can this have possibly occurred. ?

The LSC is given huge tranches of capital to encourage building projects; Government extends the future compulsory age of attendance from 16 to 19; the new 14-19 curriculum which will require complete restructuring & massive funding is introduced – with targets on how quickly institutions should be responding - & then it’s all taken away again.

Is the LSC to blame for not keeping proper account of the funds promised to institutions or the Government to blame for not keeping proper account of the LSC ?

All I can say is that a sector vastly underfunded since Thatcher moved FE out of local authority control, which has over the years had to contort itself to the point of deformity to fit the critieria of a variety of government funding fads in order to secure the money to survive - & I say this as a lecturer of some 20 years experience in the sector- is now going to be struggling once again to provide against even greater odds an adequate education to post sixteeners struggling to get the right grades to access places at university which since the onset of recession have become more competitive than ever.

What an awful mess - & you can bet that with the pressure on to provide infrastructural funding that will create jobs in the adult labour force, there won’t be many handouts left to undo the damage.

Like the whole Building Schools for the Future & Diploma programmes this has been ill thought out, poorly planned for & even less effectively monitored. What have the ministers concerned been doing ? It’s hard to believe that in some areas education has suffered even more under Labour than it did under the Tories.