Free GCSE tuition for adults

Wednesday, 9 July 2003 12:00 AM

Adults are to become eligible for free tuition for full-time GCSE courses as well as weekly grants of £30, a Government White Paper to be published today is expected to reveal.

The Skills White Paper will reveal that free tuition is to be confined to specific subjects where local people and businesses agree there is a skills shortage. The aim is to close the skills gap and to make education after the age of 16 more 'fair'.

Speaking in a BBC interview this morning, Charles Clarke that inequality in the current system means that people who leave school at 16 with no qualifications get almost nothing spent on them whereas people who go on to university get approximately an extra £25,000 spent on them 'out of which you can make more money.'

'This is a kind of evening up of the process which I think most people would welcome,' the Education Secretary said.

Mr. Clarke admitted that under the current system, the 'network of qualifications' was 'confusing'.

Accordingly, there had been an 'unprecedented working together' of government departments to establish a 'simple system with clear funding streams and one-stop shops' for training, he said.

'With the best will in the world people don't know which qualification to go for and how and what will happen is a simpler, clearer qualification system so that people will know where to go'.

'And in each particular sector, the sector will say we're short of certain skills - construction is a classic case at the moment - we will positively go out and seek people to go on courses to become qualified in the various aspects of construction, which will ensure those skill gaps are filled.'

A new national academic identity scheme, listing a person's qualifications, is also expected to be revealed as part of the proposals.

The Association of Colleges is expected to welcome the Government's plan to give adult learners the right to free tuition up to the equivalent of 5 GCSEs but would like more focus on young adults returning to learning to achieve a first level 3 qualification.

However, the Liberal Democrats education spokesman, Phil Willis, warned that the new skills proposals were 'a recipe for confusion and inertia' because three major government departments had to agree to 'every single step of the strategy'.

According to Mr. Willis, employers were in desperate need of 'bite-size chunks of training for specific purposes' whereas these proposals would not 'kick in for at least two years':

And he expressed fear that employers would be faced with 'an over-complicated bureaucracy' when trying to access the training opportunities.

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