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Where does Lancashire Adult Learning (LAL) receive its funding from?
Are all Lancashire Adult Learning (LAL) courses publicly funded?
What is the reduction in budget from the Learning and Skills Council for 2006-07?
Although LAL is a Lancashire County Council service, its core funding is not from the County Council. LAL is mainly funded by the Lancashire Learning and Skills Council (LSC), with other income from tuition fees, conference and other income-generating activity.
Currently funding breaks down roughly as follows:
Lancashire Learning and Skills Council: 75.2%
Fees and other income sources: 24.8%Th e Learning Skills Council (LSC) is the Government body responsible for funding and planning education and training for adults over 16 years old in England (except learners in Higher Education)
No. Some courses are held on a full-cost-recovery basis. Standard conditions, including fee remission arrangements, may not apply in these cases. Such courses, and the conditions applying, are clearly indicated in programme information and publicity brochures and on the service website.
Funding from the Learning and Skills Council is £1,018,240 less than for 2005-06. Taking account of inflation, overall funding has been reduced by 13%.
Current Government policy is to concentrate available funding for adult learning on courses leading to a first full Level 2 qualification (eg 5 GCSE s at grades A to C, or an NVQ Level 2), a first full Level 3 for 19-25-year-olds (from August 2007), and courses for people with literacy, language and/or numeracy needs. Funding is still made available, through the Learning and Skills Council, to subsidise learning for personal and community development. However, this subsidy is linked to an expectation that learning providers will generate increased income from fees as a contribution to costs. This means that most providers will be raising fee levels and where necessary amending their policies on access to free tuition from August 2006.
No. All local authority providers of adult learning nationwide have been subject to funding reductions. The Government itself expects the number of publicly funded places on courses not leading to a qualification to fall by around 500,000 by 2007-08.
The rate charged per hour has increased from £2.50 to £3.00 for Personal and Community Development and First Steps courses, and to £2.00 per hour for further education courses (in 2006-07 providers will be expected to collect 32.5% of the cost of these courses in fees). This is still well below what it costs to run the course - the rest is still subsidised by the Learning and Skills Council.
Most learners who have not paid fees in the past will continue to be entitled to fee remission. However, the Service will usually charge a minimum fee of £5.00 for each course a learner enrols on. This is a very small contribution towards the cost of running the course. Most learning providers charge reduced fees for people in receipt of income-related benefits. However, even with the introduction of the £5.00 minimum fee Lancashire will be charging far less than most.
Any learner who does not receive an income-based benefit, but is subject to financial hardship, may still be able to pay a reduced fee, with the balance provided from Learner Support Funds. Such funds are limited, so decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis upon application.
Many courses will remain free to all participants. These include:
Fee increases and reductions in provision have been widely trailed in the national press. The Government commissioned a survey by MORI in September 2005, involving more than 2000 members of the public. This showed that around half of adults agreed that learning was a good investment which they should contribute to, and that they should expect to contribute substantially for "personal development" courses. The survey also showed that people generally were not aware how much of their learning was subsidised, and greatly underestimated this.
Learners are being informed through newsletters, programme brochures and via the service website. Fee increases are an agenda item for the three Lancashire Adult Learning zones' Governors meetings, each of which includes a community and/or learning representative.
Through special meetings held with staff directly affected, and via staff newsletters and regular team meetings.
The Service is required to supplement government funding with other sources of income as much as possible. This is why fees are increasing, which will mean that some people will not enrol on courses. Also, we need to show that courses are running economically, so that classes which may have run in the past with quite small numbers will have to be larger in future. Taken together, these factors will mean that classes may not be considered large enough to be viable, and will close. In some cases two classes may be merged into one.
Yes. This is because these benefits are not included in the list of categories specified by the Learning and Skills Council allowing free entry to courses, as they are not income-related. However, if a learner is entitled to an income-related benefit as well as Incapacity Benefit/Severe Disablement Allowance, he/she is still entitled to fee remission. This change brings Lancashire Adult Learning into line with many other local authority providers.