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The Chancellor is set to announce £3billion of investment on education to give people ‘the skills they need to earn more and get on in life’.
Rishi Sunak is expected to give a cash injection not onto to those in post-16 education, but also to adults in later life as part of next week’s budget.
The number of skills boot camps under the Government’s Plan for Jobs is also set to be quadrupled in areas such as the nuclear industry, artificial intelligence and cybersecurity.
Some 24,000 traineeships will be created, while £1.6billion will go towards more lesson time for 100,000 students aged 16 to 19 taking their T-levels – technical qualifications introduced in September last year.
The Chancellor said: ‘Our future economic success depends not just on the education we give to our children but the lifelong learning we offer to adults.
‘This £3billion skills revolution builds on our plan for jobs and will spread opportunity across the UK by transforming post-16 education, giving people the skills they need to earn more and get on in life.’
Education Secretary Nadhim Zahawi added: ‘We are supporting people to gain the skills they need to secure great jobs.
‘Our skills reforms and this additional investment will support more people to continue to upskill and retrain throughout their lives and open the door to careers in high-skilled industries.’
Existing colleges in England are to be allocated £830million with extra funding for new equipment and facilities.
The National Skills Fund will be boosted with a total investment of £550million to quadruple the number of places on the skills boot camps, which are available for adults of any age.
Sunak will also announce the expansion of free Level 3 courses for adults, which are equivalent to A-levels, in subjects like maths, chemistry and biology.
Apprenticeship funding will also increase by £170million to £2.7billion in 2024/25 under the new package.
Deputy general secretary of school leaders’ union, Nick Brook, said: ‘This money is welcome and post-16 training and skills for employment is important.
‘But the learning and experiences children and young people have had earlier in their lives, to help them get to that point, is also important.
‘We need to see investment from Treasury next week into education the whole way through, right from the vital early years.’
General secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, Geoff Barton, added: ‘We welcome any investment in education but this pledge is sketchy and appears to be limited in scope.
‘Post-16 education has been woefully underfunded by the Government for many years and while T-levels will work well for some students, they are untried and untested.
‘We therefore also need to see more funding for the hundreds of thousands of young people who do A-levels, BTECs and other long-established qualifications.
‘More investment is also needed in schools, early years and in education recovery following the Covid pandemic.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
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