Nick Bennett 6th March (guest speaker)

We had a lecture with Nick Bennett who is the Principal of Gower college he talked to us about the overview of further education in Wales and why some people attend college. These reasons could be that they want to widen their learning experience. They need higher qualification for the career they want to do or they are not sure on what career path they want to take so by going to college and trying out new subjects they may find the best career for them.

The Welsh Government has two major functions;
1. Underpinning Social Justice
- Widening access
- Second chances
- Cultural awareness
- Financial support
2. Supporting the Economy
- Qualifications
- Entrepreneurship
- Work based learning
- Business generation
- Employer engagement

By having these major functions further education everyone gets an equal opportunity to go onto further education, it doesn’t matter on your age, gender, religion or race.

Nick also gave us some statistics in colleges;
- In 2000/01, 37% of pupils completed their courses
- In 2009/10, 41% of pupils completed their courses
- There were 184,730 college learners in 2009/10
- 957 of them were from Wales
- Further education offers over 5,000 different qualifications in Wales
- 68% of students are over the age of 19
- 95% of students studying in Wales are actually Welsh

This shows us that college's are performing at a higher level than they were a couple of years before. More people are attending colleges to get a higher qualification and more opportunities to get a job or move onto universities.

When students go onto further education if they are between the ages of 16-18 they can receive money if their household income is less than £20,817 this is called EMA. They can get £30 a week, paid every two weeks. This will help a student to buy new things for college, for example books, equipment, stationary. (www.studentfiancewales.co.uk)
This could help more students to go onto further education after school if they know they can get financial help along the way.

Mr Bennett also told us that in 1979 there were 40 colleges and today in 2012 there are only 17 colleges, this is because they have merged together creating bigger and better places for higher education.