Welfare Reform on the Web (April 2011): Education - UK - training

Fewer teenagers will get education grants

G. Paton

Daily Telegraph, Mar. 29th 2011, p.10

The coalition government has announced the launch of a new bursary scheme to replace the abolished Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA). Under the new scheme, 12,000 vulnerable teenagers, including those in care and those with disabilities, will receive a guaranteed bursary of £1,200 per year to cover further education costs. A further £165m will be given to schools and colleges to distribute as they wish. Total state funding for the scheme will be £180m per year, reduced from £560m per year spent on the EMA.

Integrating employability and skills: s new horizon?

J. Chambers

Working Brief, Feb. 2011, p. 17-18

This article calls for join up between the Department for Work and Pensions' Work Programme and the Skills Funding Agency's funded training programmes. It proposes the introduction of pre-apprenticeships to equip unemployed people with the core employability and vocational skills they need to enter the labour market, enhanced entitlements to funding for in-work training, and greater employer engagement with the programmes.

Integrating employment and skills: the role of community-based learning

A. McTier and A. McGregor

Policy Studies, vol. 32, 2011, p. 73-90

Community-based learning is difficult to define and its employment impact is often overlooked due to the diverse nature of its clients, activities, venues and outcomes. This article aims to show the important role it plays in supporting people to enter, sustain and progress in employment on the basis of two research studies undertaken in Glasgow. The first study comprised an audit of community-based learning provision in North Glasgow; the second was a review of the links between employability and adult literacy and numeracy services across the city.

Review of vocational education: the Wolf report

A. Wolf

Department for Education, 2011

This review of skills-based education for 14- 19-year-olds found that up to 400,000 students a year are studying for worthless qualifications at colleges that fail to lead to either university or a decent job. The review recommends shifting money away from poor quality courses in favour of work-based tuition, including apprenticeships. It also backs the creation of a new generation of university technical colleges to train young people to become engineers, plumbers, builders and mechanics. Students will be able to quit mainstream comprehensives at 14 to study trades in a revival of the technical schools established in the 1940s and 1950s. There they will be expected to work nine hour days for 40 weeks a year. More professionals who are not trained teachers should be allowed into schools to teach vocational courses.

URL: http://www.education.gov.uk/publications/eOrderingDownload/
The%20Wolf%20Report.pdf