The 2006 White Paper Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances is the government’s response to the Foster review of the future role of FE colleges. It sets out a series of reforms to raise skills and qualification levels for young people and adults to world standards. Proposed changes aim to:

• offer more choice for customers
• tailor services to meet individuals’ needs
• encourage new, innovative providers to enter the market
• promote action to tackle poor quality, combined with more autonomy for the excellent.

The FE system will be more clearly focused on helping people gain the skills and qualifications needed for employment. All colleges and providers are expected to have at least one specialism and be part of new national sector-based networks led by National Skills Academies.

A broad range of provision is expected to continue alongside this core economic mission. Proposals include strengthening the range and quality of learning for personal fulfilment, civic participation and community development. This includes recreational, health-related and cultural learning funded through local Learning and Skills Council (LSC) Partnerships.

The capital programme for FE also presents opportunities for culture and sport. A fully integrated capital strategy is expected to deliver the capital vision for 14-19 year-olds across schools and the FE system in each locality. This includes the LSC’s capital programme allocating capital to support the policy of specialisation, particularly to develop National Skills Academies (such as for creative and cultural skills, and sport and active leisure), Centres of Vocational Excellence (CoVEs) and sectoral networks.

An update published in July 2007 sets out progress made against the White Paper.

World Class Skills: Implementing the Leitch Review of Skills in England sets out how government intends to lead a ‘revolution' in attitude towards education and skills. It aims to make England a world class leader in skills by 2020, to sustain and improve the country’s position in the global economy.

Targets for 2020 are:

• 95 per cent of adults to have the basic skills of functional literacy and numeracy
• more than 90 per cent of adults to have gained at least a level 2 qualification (equivalent to 5 GCSEs at A*-C grade)
• shift the balance of intermediate skills from level 2 to level 3 (equivalent to 2 A levels), with 1.9 million more people achieving level 3 by 2020
• deliver England’s share of the UK ambition to have 500,000 people a year in apprenticeships
• more than 40 per cent of all adults to have a higher education qualification (at level 44 and above).

Proposals for giving employers greater leadership of the skills and employment system include creating more National Skills Academies (NSAs). NSAs are employer-led centres of excellence for skills training. They provide hands-on involvement by employers in designing and delivering learning, so that training is tailored to the specific needs of their sector. Government aims to have 12 NSAs in place by the end of 2008.

The creative and cultural skills NSA is expected to complete its business planning for approval during 2007. A new NSA for sport and active leisure is also being established.

Back