Colleges must become job brokers

Colleges are by now used to getting paid by results. Their funding depends in part on students gaining a qualification at the end of their course, and training schemes for unemployed people can pay as little as 40% of money upfront.

Later this year, though, the stakes for colleges and other training providers will become even higher, as the first learners enrol for a new programme designed to reduce the numbers claiming jobseekers' allowance and other benefits.

Under the Work Programme, which will replace Flexible New Deal and other welfare-to-work schemes this summer, just 10% of money will be paid upfront. As part of a growing trend requiring training providers to find jobs for learners as well as teach them skills, the rest will be staggered over the next 18 months – and then only if the learners remain in employment. Within three years, all payments will be performance-related.

Jacq Longrigg, employment services manager at Carlisle College, says finding work for learners will be a challenge even though the jobs picture in Cumbria is better than in other parts of the country. "We have developed relationships with job centres and employers and feel quite confident," she adds.

As a college, Carlisle recognises that it is increasingly being judged on "hard economic outcomes", but sees these programmes as an important source of funds. "We have to generate income to survive," says Longrigg.

Carlisle is lined-up as a "job broker" by G4S, one of 35 prime contractors that will submit bids to the DWP over the coming months. Sean Williams, managing director of G4S's welfare-to-work team, says colleges "are very much part of the picture".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2011/feb/15/college-funding-unemployed-students?INTCMP=SRCH