Rt Hon Lord Mandelson
First Secretary
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills
BIS
1 Victoria Street
SW1H 0ET

18 June 2009

Dear Peter
Equivalent or lower qualifications (ELQs)
Alastair Hunter, UCU’s national president attended the launch of BIS on Tuesday at Aston University. He asked you whether you might revisit the removal of ELQ funding, given the current economic situation and the vital need for retraining in a recession.
UCU gave evidence to the IUSS select committee in January 2008 with regard to this policy alongside the Open University, Birkbeck College and the National Union of Students. All were of one voice on the regressive nature of the policy and the damaging effect it would have on providing continuing access to learners who wanted to re-skill or change career paths. All agreed it would also have a negative impact in terms of the provision of innovatory widening participation and outreach programmes.
Back in September 2007, when the government made the surprise announcement to axe ELQ funding, we were told that the £100m saved would be used to fund extra places for students who did not have a first degree. This laudable sounding aim meant that additional publicly-funded student numbers in 2010-11 would increase from 40,000 to 60,000. However, the government has now announced there will only be 10,000 additional student numbers in total in 2010-11, giving only a cumulative total of 40,000 extra students since 2007-08. That’s a drop of 20,000 compared with original plans and prompts the awkward question of where the money saved from ELQs has gone. 
 The money has certainly been sorely missed and its impact has already been felt throughout the country. The University of Manchester announced that it was to shut its Courses for the Public programme in the summer. That news was quickly followed by confirmation that the University of Reading planned to close the public programmes offered by its School of Continuing Education, while the University of Bristol said it would be withdrawing some of its lifelong learning courses at the end of the academic year. 
 
Other universities, including Bath, Lancaster, Bucks New University and Cardiff have all said that they are scaling back adult education provision, with many more considering the closure of courses at the end of the summer term. All the affected institutions cite the ELQ cuts as the reason for closure.  The worrying buzzword in departments suffering from ELQ cuts at the moment is ‘survivability’. 
 The government has now instructed HEFCE to conduct a review into the impact of the change in ELQ funding. HEFCE is not due to report back until the autumn and we believe that by then it will be too late for many departments and students and we are well aware of the difficulty of trying to restart an area of learning after it has been lost.
We would urge you to prioritise revisiting this funding issue, which at a time of recession in the economy, is more critical than ever.
Yours sincerely

Sally Hunt     
General secretary                                                                                                                                            

Attached: UCU evidence to the IUSS select committee