Education Business Partnerships (Hansard, 10 March 1999)

§ Mr. Blunkett

My Department supports a range of programmes which promote education business links—principally, work experience for pupils mentoring programmes and teacher placements to industry. Support for these programmes in the year ahead, made available through Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs), will be £13.5 million. My Department also provides £145,000 support per year to the National Education Business Partnership Network.

The support that we make available to Education Business Partnerships through TECs has been an important element in the TEC Review which has been under way. I am today announcing some changes to the operation of TECs, arising from the first phase of the TEC Review. These will strengthen partnership and accountability, improve the quality of work-based training and streamline contracting arrangements.

In the light of the TEC Review, the responses we have received to the "Learning Age" Green Paper, the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC) Quinquennial Review report—which has been published today and copies of which have been placed in the Libraries of both Houses—and the setting-up of the new local learning partnerships, I propose now to undertake a wider assessment of how we can best meet the learning and skills challenge. We shall also take into account the forthcoming Moser Report on basic skills, the University for Industry Corporate Plan, the further report of the Skills Task Force and the Social Exclusion Unit report on disaffected 16 to 18-year-olds.

Drawing on the TEC Review, we will want to examine the local and national arrangements relating to the delivery of lifelong learning, work-force development and skills, excluding higher education. This will include consideration of new opportunities for business involvement in meeting the skills challenge.

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I have today written inviting all those concerned with this key part of the learning and skills agenda to contribute to this process, following which I intend to publish specific proposals in the summer. I will, of course, work closely with my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry—as he takes forward his proposal to establish the new Small Business Service—and the Deputy Prime Minister on the role of Regional Development Agencies.

Our aim is to ensure that we have the skills required for the new century in which knowledge, application and our capacity to learn will be crucial both to individual employability and economic success. As we set out in the "Learning Age" Green Paper, our goals are to increase the number of people engaged in learning; promote excellence and quality in its delivery; ensure coherent provision of further education and work-based training; provide support for all young people in making the transition from school to further learning or employment; involve employers in the promotion of lifelong learning; ensure that provision best meets the economy's needs for skills, creativity and innovation; make the most effective use of resources; and meet our National Learning Targets.