Funding for adult participation through the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) will reach nearly £3.6 billion per year by 2010-11, an increase of 17 per cent. compared with 2007-08. This will support on average over three million funded adult learners per year over the next three years.
LSC funding is allocated to further education (FE) colleges and providers to offer education and skills training to adults in response to the needs of both learners and employers. As FE providers often operate cross constituency borders, the following table provides information on adult funding in respect of the two main FE providers serving the Wakefield area; Wakefield college and Wakefield district council.
2003/04 (actuals) 2004/05 (actuals) 2005/06 (actuals) 2006/07 (actuals) 2007/08 (allocations) Wakefield college1 3,520,098 4,043,563 3,683,988 3,981,982 4,200,475 Wakefield district council2 2,852,790 3,176,379 3,176,782 2,888,414 2,884,347 Total 6,372,888 7,219,942 6,860,770 6,870,396 7,084,822 1 Total funding includes funding for 19+ further education provision, Train to Gain (which rolled out fully from 2006/07) and 19+ work-based learning. 2 Total funding includes funding for 19+ further education provision and adult safeguarded learning (includes adult and community learning, personal and community development learning among other provision). No Train to Gain funding information is available but the district council do deliver this provision as part of a consortium.
Other providers based in the Wakefield district deliver Train to Gain and Work-based Learning. The adult funding allocated to these providers has not been included on the basis that they will be delivering to learners across a much wider area—in some cases at a regional or national level. Including this information would not accurately represent the funding spent on adult education in the Wakefield/Hemsworth area.
The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) use a national funding system comprising of national rates as the basis for determining the amount of public funding payable for courses funded through the Adult Learner and Employer Responsive funding models. The actual funding for an individual course is based on the number of hours required to complete the course. Those learners who do not qualify for full fee remission are expected to contribute to the cost of the course in line with the national fee assumption. For the 2007/08 academic year the national fee assumption is 37.5 per cent. of the national funding rate.
Adjustments are made to this value to take account of the higher costs of delivering certain subjects. The total public funding allocated to a college or provider will also take account of factors such as success rates and disadvantage (providing additional funding for learners from deprived areas). In light of the number of factors affecting the actual amount payable for each course it is not possible to provide an average level of funding for an adult education course.