HC Deb 25 January 1993 vol 217 cc523-4W
Mr. McNamara

To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what monitoring exists to assess the Training and Employment Agency's programme to encourage the development of skills within the two communities; what numbers of men and women are being trained within each community; and what monitoring takes place to assess the long-term impact of such training.

Mr. Atkin

[holding answer 22 January 1993]: Responsibility for the subject in question has been delegated to the Training and Employment Agency under its chief executive, Mr. J. S. Crozier. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from J. S. Crozier to Mr. Kevin McNamara, dated 22 January 1993: You asked the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland what monitoring exists to assess the Training arid Employment Agency's programmes to encourage the development of skills within the two communities; what numbers of men and women are being trained within each community and what monitoring takes place to assess the long term impact of such training. As Chief Executive of the Agency, I have been asked to reply. The Training and Employment Agency has instituted arrangements to collect information by which it can monitor uptake of all its employment and training services, by reference to religion, gender and disability. After a developmental period this information is now coming on stream. It is as yet incomplete, partly because there are still substantial numbers of people who entered our programmes before its collection commenced but its quality is steadily improving. The information will be monitored monthly. Because there is a constant flow in and out of our programmes, the figures change from month to month. However at the last count there was a total of 27,350 people receiving training in our programmes. Of those whose religion we have so far been able to determine, 7,061 were Protestant (47%) and 7,927 were Catholic (53%). We cannot as yet establish the gender split, within these groups. Overall however 62% of participants were male and 38% were female. Establishing the long term impact of training measures is by definition a long term process, and is difficult to do accurately or exhaustively. However we collect information about the numbers and proportion of trainees who secure recognised vocational qualifications and employment. We plan in future to analyse this information so that we can establish what proportions of successful trainees are Protestant or Catholic, male or female, or disabled.

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