Discretionary Awards (Hansard, 21 February 1995)

§ 8. Mr. Hain
To ask the Secretary of State for Education what monitoring she plans to undertake of the discretionary awards system.

§ Mr. Boswell
Discretionary awards are the responsibility of local authorities. The Department will continue to collect a range of relevant statistical and other data from them.

§ Mr. Hain
Is not the discretionary award system now an absolute shambles? Legal, dance and drama, music and many other categories of student have no chance whatever of getting a discretionary award because of the Government's cuts in funding. The Minister must not insult the intelligence of the House or of students by pretending that local education authorities can bridge the gap, when he and his Government are savaging local education budgets.

§ Mr. Boswell
I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman feels that his intelligence will be insulted if I invite him to consider the facts. When the Gulbenkian Commission, which is not under Government control, considered that matter, it projected an increase of about 20 per cent. in the total number of discretionary awards between 1990–91 and 1993–94, a 32 per cent. increase in further education courses and an increase in expenditure of 14 per cent. in real terms in the same period. The fact that there is worry about local provision in some local education authorities should not be taken by the hon. Gentleman as an excuse for a diatribe against a system that we continue to fund, and which is not failing.

§ Mr. Harry Greenway
Does my hon. Friend agree that many local authorities, especially Labour and Liberal Democrat controlled authorities, do not pay proper attention to the discretionary awards system, and that young people miss out as a result in terms of course, career and their future? Will he seek to do something about it?

§ Mr. Boswell
I do hear what my hon. Friend says and I respect his expertise in that matter. All the local authority associations with whom we have discussed the matter want very much to continue their discretion; the problem is that some of them, wilfully or for whatever reason, choose not to exercise it and thereby deprive young people of the resources that we make available with that purpose in mind.