Ministers cut funding for ‘low value’ courses

Skills and Enterprise Minister Matthew Hancock has announced plans to cut the number of “under-used and low value qualifications” which are available for taxpayer funding.

The intention to remove funding from these qualifications was highlighted in the Spending Review. The changes mean that nearly £200m of the adult skills budget will be re-directed towards what the Department for Business Innovation and Skills see as the highest quality and most relevant qualifications.

The Government expects to reduce the number of qualifications by more than 5,000.

Mr Hancock said: “Small qualifications in coaching angling, aerial balloon displays and self-tanning are not a good use of taxpayers’ money or learners’ time. There are currently 15,400 regulated qualifications, and even with the restrictions we have made so far, 11,000 of them are eligible for Government funding. This means the system is complicated, bureaucratic and hard to understand, and we need to change that.”