Education: Blunkett announces pounds 83m extra for FE colleges

Further education colleges will get an extra pounds 83m in 1998/99, David Blunkett, the Secretary of State for Education, said yesterday.

Of this, pounds 20m will come from employers who in future will have to pay 50 rather than 25 per cent of the cost of their employees' courses. Another pounds 48m will come from former training schemes to be replaced by the Government's New Deal for the long-term unemployed. Another pounds 15m will come from accounting changes in Mr Blunkett's own department..

Government funding per student has dropped by 28 per cent in the past five years. The colleges' deficit has grown from pounds 6m to pounds 112m since 1993. The Prime Minister said at this year's party conference that 500,000 new places would be created in further and higher education in the next five years. Most of these are expected to be in colleges of further education.

Yesterday's announcement aims to fund 80,000 more students next year and to ease the colleges' financial plight. Mr Blunkett told the Association of Colleges' conference in Harrogate: "Further education is central to meeting the skills of business and commerce and improving employability."

Derek Betts, senior official at the National Association for Further and Higher Education, said: "It is a small deposit rather than the payment in full which is needed by colleges if they are to avoid the cash crisis and maintain standards for growing numbers of students."

The Association of University Teachers said that the Government should use the same approach for higher education and take money from employers to fund universities. -- Judith Judd