Last updated 14:59, Friday, 27 June 2008

Mick Farley, UCLan's Director for Cumbria (and previously Executive Director of LSC Cumbria)

BILLIONS of pounds will be handed to local authorities, including Cumbria, for 16-19 education and training when the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) is abolished in 2010.

The Government’s draft legislative programme for the next Parliamentary year includes yet another Education and Skills Bill.

There has been an Education Bill virtually every year since Labour returned to Government in 1997. The 2008 version will repeal a major reform of an earlier Act which since 2001 has provided for a single joined-up life-long learning sector through the LSC. But now it’s to be goodbye to the LSC and hello to a fragmented structure with a myriad of new bodies.

Funding and responsibility for delivering 16-19 education and training will transfer to LAs and a new non-departmental public body – the Young People’s Learning Agency (YPLA) – will be created for certain functions pre-19. LAs will be expected to develop a strategic commissioning plan for their areas working with neighbouring authorities through “sub-regional groupings”, the arrangements for which will require approval from the Secretary of State.

These will be policed at regional level by the existing Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and Government Offices, and at national level by the YPLA which will ”perform a final moderation”. Until sub-regional arrangements are agreed, the YPLA will deal with general further education colleges leaving LAs to deal with schools and sixth form colleges. LAs will also commission required apprenticeship volumes from a new National Apprenticeship Service (NAS).

The NAS will be a delivery arm of yet another quango, the Skills Funding Agency (SFA), established for post-19 provision. This will fund Train to Gain and Skills Accounts; local, informal learning not leading to qualifications and/or employment; provision for learners over 25 with learning difficulties and/or disabilities; and Offender Learning. In addition to the NAS, the SFA will have two further delivery arms, a National Employer Service and a new Adult Advancement and Careers Service. The SFA will operate in an already over-crowded landscape: nationally, a Commission for Employment and Skills; regionally the RDAs; and locally, Employment and Skills Boards.

Leaving aside whether LAs have the capacity and knowledge to fulfil their new roles when transition begins in September this year – and frankly this must be in some doubt – this masterpiece of bureaucratic muddle will be difficult for anyone to unpack and understand.