What is education? Guest speaker (Nick Bennett)

Nick Bennett is the principle of Gower College, Swansea. He gave us an overview of further education in Wales.
He bagan by talking about what Further education is for. He said that it:

Underpins social justice

• Widening access (Get more skills and qualifications)
• Second chance (Get qualifications later in life for those who failed at school)
• Cultural awareness
• Financial support
• Community regeneration
• Civic duty 

Support for Economy

• Employer engagement
• Vocational qualifications
• Workforce development (get skills to get a better job)
• International partnership
• Enterpreneurship
• Knowledge exploition
• Work based learning
• Business generation

Teaching and learning opportunites

• Innovation
• Welsh medium
• Progression
• Flexible
• Tailored
• Local

Nick then went on to give some statistics about further education...
In 2009-10 there were 184,730 learners in further education - 95% of which were from wales.
In wales there are more than 5000 different courses available
16 -19 year olds are 2 times more likely to be in college than they are to be in schools with sixth form.

In 2011 there was a Welsh Government Programme set up to:

• Improve further and higher education. It encouraged further mergeres of further education colleges where they provide increased learning opportunites and enable closer collaboration between further education and higher edcuation.  It is also improved because it maintains committment by providing financial support to students from low income households.
• Improve skills for employment. They offer training for young people and apprentership opportunies.