Further Education: Coronavirus

(asked on 17th November 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if his Department will make an assessment of the potential merits of allowing people who have lost their job during the covid-19 pandemic to access Further Education foundation courses at the start of the January 2021 term; and if he will make a statement.


Answered by
Gillian Keegan Portrait
Gillian Keegan
Secretary of State for Education
This question was answered on 24th November 2020

We want to ensure that a wide range of opportunities are available to people of all ages to meet their future skills needs. We have introduced a number of additional measures this year to support that ambition, as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

In April, we introduced the Skills Toolkit, an online platform which is already providing free courses to help individuals build the skills that are most sought after by employers. We have recently expanded the platform so that people can now choose from over 70 courses, covering digital, adult numeracy, employability and work readiness skills, which have been identified as the skills employers need the most. These courses will help people stay in work, or take up new jobs and opportunities.

In July, the Plan for Jobs was announced by my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which includes incentives for employers to take on new apprentices, including those over 25, and an additional £17 million to triple the number of sector-based work academy programme (SWAP) placements in 2020/21, enough funding to support an extra 40,000 job seekers with additional training opportunities and the chance of a job.

In September, the Lifetime Skills Guarantee was announced by my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister. It is aimed at adults, including those that have become unemployed, and measures include fully funding adults’ first full level 3 qualification and new digital bootcamps which will be available in 6 areas across the country from January. The bootcamp training courses will provide valuable skills based on employer demand and are linked to real job opportunities, helping participants to land jobs and employers to fill much-needed vacancies. We are planning to expand the bootcamps to more of the country from spring 2021 and we want to extend this model to include other technical skills training.

These measures will be funded by the £2.5 billion investment (£3 billion when including Barnett funding for devolved administrations), for the National Skills Fund to help adults learn valuable skills and prepare for the economy of the future. The guarantee also includes a Lifelong Loan Entitlement to provide individuals with an entitlement to 4 years of loan funding to use over their lifetime.

Anyone who becomes unemployed for whatever reason, is able to access a range of provision to meet their future skills needs, and funding for this will depend on age and prior attainment.

Our funding rules allow for flexibility in course delivery and it is up to individual colleges to determine enrolment times for students accessing their provision.

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