Education and Skills Bill

Local authorities do this sort of thing all the time. They build all sorts of inspectorates, which they run very successfully. I do not see that they cannot be trusted. Most of the time they will use formally accredited qualifications, but there will be times when something else is right for an individual. Under the Bill, local authorities are focusing on individuals because they are ultimately responsible for bringing prosecutions against individual young people. They will be very focused on individuals’ needs. I do not want to see them tied to offering only courses that are clearly unsuitable to a particular young person because their needs lie outside the rather narrow spectrum of accredited qualifications that have mostly grown up to deal with the other 90 per cent of young people. The big providers such as FE colleges can offer any course they want. Will they get funded for them, though? Most of the funding mechanisms in FE rely on the qualification being accredited. It was a hard enough battle, when the system came in of funding A-levels according to points, to allow any space within the FE funding mechanism for all the extras that sixth-form colleges had traditionally offered students. Although some funding was kept, there was noticeable shrinkage at that stage, and there is little, if any, allowance for activities outside the strict curriculum for vocational qualifications. Enrichment does not seem to be part of the funding mechanism. If an FE college wants to offer level-zero qualifications to improve people’s employability, sociability, management of money or any of the problems that young people present with, from where will it get the funding if the qualifications are not accredited?