Post-18 education boosted to prepare workers for post-Covid economy

The Prime Minister will today (29 September) set out plans to transform the training and skills system, to "help the country build back better from coronavirus".

Adults without an A-Level or equivalent qualification will be offered a free, fully-funded college course, with the opportunity to study at a time and location that suits them.

This offer will be available from April in England, and will be paid for through the National Skills Fund.

Higher education loans will also be made more flexible, allowing adults and young people to space out their study across their lifetimes, take more high-quality vocational courses in further education colleges and universities, and to support people to retrain for jobs of the future.

The Prime Minister is expected to announce a new Lifetime Skill Guarantee. He will say: "As the Chancellor has said, we cannot, alas, save every job. What we can do is give people the skills to find and create new and better jobs.

"So my message today is that at every stage of your life, this government will help you get the skills you need.

"We’re transforming the foundations of the skills system so that everyone has the chance to train and retrain."

Apprenticeship opportunities will also be increased, with more funding for SMEs taking on apprentices, and greater flexibility in how their training is structured – especially in sectors such as construction and creative industries where there are more varied employment patterns.

That is why the government is committed to making higher education more flexible to facilitate lifelong learning, and to make it easy for adults and young people to break up their study into segments, transfer credits between colleges and universities, and enable more part-time study.

This new arrangement will provide finance for shorter term studies, rather than having to study in one three or four year block.