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Education: Adult Learners

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, referred to a Leitch target of 40 per cent by 2020. The Germans and the Americans are already there. We are going to play catch-up again. We must aim for 45 per cent, which means an extra 2 million at level 4. We are not going to get that if we now take action that will damage the institutions that can deliver on that. I agree with the objective; we must do it, but we cannot do it by damaging them. Therefore, we must find a way forward that avoids that. The one that occurs to me is to say to institutions, ““We will ring fence your ELQ money for your institution on the basis that you reorient your teaching to fit in with the Government’s objective””. There have been suggestions for exempting certain courses. There are good reasons for that. If I were to advocate one, it would be for languages at a lower level, because we are underskilled distinctively in that area. But I am conscious that that shuffles the problem around and does not help towards the £100 million. Therefore, I come back to the basic proposition: protect the institutions on which you rely to deliver by the kind of arrangement that I have suggested.