Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy




 

18-06-2007

Comments on the Green Paper: Raising Expectations: Staying in Education and Training Post-16

  1. CIPFA welcomes the discussion of the proposals in the Green Paper: Raising Expectations: staying in education and training post-16.

  2. CIPFA shares the Government’s overall aim in the Green Paper to go beyond the existing stretching targets for increasing post-16 participation and to make sure that all young people start adult life with the skills, qualities and attributes they will need to make a success of their lives. The proposals set out in the paper to these ends raise some very important issues with far reaching implication and will need to be extensively discussed. There will in particular be substantial cost and funding implications.

  3. As one of the leading professional accountancy bodies in the UK and the only one which specialises in the public services, CIPFA is keen therefore to comment on the issues raised in this important and wide-ranging Green Paper, particularly with regard to the financial and funding implications of the proposals.

  4. In particular, CIPFA notes that while the Green Paper makes a number of radical proposals, these proposals will raise some very significant financial issues. However, it is difficult to comment in detail because neither the financial implications nor the funding associated with the proposals in the Green Paper are yet clear.

  5. CIPFA would, therefore, simply wish to flag up at this stage that, after the Green Paper has been considered, the results of the separate public consultation absorbed and analysed, and the preferred policy options are chosen, there would need to be a financial appraisal of the costs involved and the creation of a funding system that recognises those costs and where they fall.

  6. In CIPFA’s view, it will be important that the resources for Green Paper proposals are costed, if only approximately, and that the funding sources be clearly indicated. We would then be in a better position to comment on these in some detail before they are finalised.

  7. In CIPFA’s view, it will be important too that the public money to be spent on the proposals in the Green Paper should be properly accounted for under any resulting actions.

  8. CIPFA therefore would intend to comment in further detail once the above issues become clearer.