Education and Skills Bill

On the question of pro rata, I am not suggesting that. As emerged from our earlier discussions, the teaching side of part-time courses can be quite intensive. Many vocational courses are also more expensive than college-based courses. On top of that, there are problems evaluating an NVQ. That is why, as of now, expenditure on a modern apprentice, which is paid to a training provider—typically, a training company—and the work that they do with the apprentice, including finding him an employer, is the same as the amount that is given to an FE college for a full-time student at that college. There is that parity. I suggest that extra money needs to go to the employer to find the places, in addition to the money going to training providers who arrange the off-the-job element, the evaluation and the assessment. A total of the moneys will go to people who are going down the part-time route, some of which, as was said, will go through the training provider—or the FE college, if that is where they are doing their part-time training—and some of which will go to the employer; there is that total. Another total comes from the money spent in respect of those in full-time education; some of that is for tuition, some is the educational maintenance allowance and some involves child tax benefits and so on. The aggregation that I am talking about would involve looking at this at the national level—what is the total that could possibly be done locally and what is the total of resources going to one type of person compared with another?—and, going down the part-time, job-related route, guaranteeing the amount of resources per person; that would be no less than the amount going to the more privileged group going through the full-time route. That was my suggestion.