by Colin Waugh
674,700 Work-based learning and community education places have been lost through government funding changes in 2005-06.
The Government has been warned that “Train to Gain” could become a re-run of the “disastrous demand-led” policies of the 1990s, by creating pressure on colleges to produce for employers as many qualified staff as cheaply as possible.
Further, research carried out for the Learning Skills Council on government programmes aimed at getting more adults to return to learning via further education has concluded (January 2007) that: “Few adults without a qualification participate at all, and a tiny proportion progress, however you measure progression”. Again, in a report on FE in September 2006, the Commons Education Committee concluded that there was ‘compelling evidence’ of courses being axed as a result of government funding cuts. In the same month, the finance director of the Association of Colleges claimed that the overall debt of FE colleges was about half a billion pounds.
The FE system is in difficulties, and this may shortly involve a sharp acceleration of existing tendencies towards the privatisation of those aspects of FE which are concerned with employment-related training. especially for adults.
The Government’s has also attacked the provision of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) for asylum seekers.
The most grasping FE employers have responded to the crisis in FE by splitting from the main employer’s group, the AOC, to form the 157 Group.
There are about 350 general FE colleges in England. A college can apply to join the 157 Group if it has an annual turnover exceeding f35 million and inspection grades of 1 or 2 for governance and management. Out of the 30 colleges which meet these criteria, at least 25 have now joined the Group, which has been endorsed by the Secretary of State, Alan Johnson.
Part of the 157 Group’s declared agenda is to form connections with private sector training organisations. For example, one of the highest profile 157 Group members, Castle College Nottingham, has already formed a partnership with the private trainer Carter and Carter. Over the last year, meanwhile, shares in this company, founded in 1992 to operate ‘in the accident repair market’, have quadrupled in value, (to about £475 million), while its founder and chief executive Phillip Carter has been voted Entrepreneur of the Year for 2006.
Another organisation waiting in the wings to provide privatised training via the FE system is the defence contractor Vosper Thorneycroft. It is more important now than ever that grassroots union members in FE build a democratic and fighting rank and file movement.
