Adult Education (Hansard, 4 February 1986)

§ 2. Mr. Haynes
asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science if he will consider a further expansion of adult education.

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Science (Mr. George Walden)
Plans for central Government expenditure on adult education for the next three years and local authority expenditure in 1986–87 are contained in the recent public expenditure White Paper (Cmnd. 9702). The Government will continue to encourage local education authorities and other providers to achieve the most cost-effective deployment of the resources available to them, taking account of both traditional and newly emerging needs. The Government's own expenditure plans on adult education are kept under constant review.

§ Mr. Haynes
That is a shocking reply. When will the Minister wake up to the fact that his Government have put millions on the dole and that he is missing a first-class opportunity to give further education to many who need it? He should resign.

§ Mr. Walden
The hon. Gentleman is being uncharacteristically unkind about Government policy. I remind him that the Government have introduced REPLAN, which the hon. Gentleman did not mention, which deals specifically with the educational needs of the unemployed. At the other end of the scale, the Government have also set up an effective mechanism—PICKUP —which deals with making sure that people will have jobs in the future, because they will have continuing training.

§ Mr. Madel
Will my hon. Friend confirm that he is looking for more help from the further education colleges and polytechnics to provide imaginative retraining schemes in the new technologies for adult unemployed and that the Government are funding them?

§ Mr. Walden
I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the response that we have had from higher education in general, and that the polytechnics in particular, in the matter of retraining and continuing training.

§ Mr. Sheerman
Will the Minister accept that his answer will be seen as entirely complacent at a time when the Open University could provide tens of thousands of cheap retraining facilities for the unemployed and for those who want to upgrade their skills, but is stopped from doing so only by the Government's parsimony? Is he aware that he is stopping the individual development of many people, not only through the collapse of many of the programmes at the Open University, but through the complete collapse of the Workers Educational Association?

§ Mr. Walden
There is a whole panoply of misconceptions in that question. On the matter of the Open University, the hon. Gentleman might like to know that we have not only added money to bridge the funding gap, but have specifically converted a loan to a grant to help the university's admirable development of continuing education. The hon. Gentleman will know that we are in continuing consultation with the Workers Educational Association. We are continuing to discuss the level of the grant and the ways in which it can spend it more effectively.

§ Mr. D. E. Thomas
Does the Minister accept that it is wholly unacceptable that the Government should be reducing the funding to the traditional residential education colleges, which in the present crisis of mass unemployment should be able to take up far more places?

§ Mr. Walden
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman phrased his question in that way. We are concerned to ensure that those residential colleges, the work of which we do not underestimate, make the maximum use of their premises, which, of course, includes expanding the numbers who can attend such colleges.