Absolutely. It is important that lifelong learning continues to be accessible to many people. Sadly, we have heard of cases where people are not diagnosed during their time in school, and it is even more important that those opportunities are always there for them.
The Lifelong Learning (Higher Education Fee Limits) Bill is one step further in our mission to revolutionise access to higher and further education with the introduction of a lifelong loan entitlement, otherwise known as the LLE. As the Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), says, the LLE will ensure that everybody has a flexible travel card to jump on and off their learning journey, as opposed to being confined to a single ticket. It is hard to overestimate the transformative effect that this legislation could have. Through the Government’s wider skills agenda, we have built the engine to help to transform our technical education system. We are doing this by expanding the number and quality of apprenticeships, by growing technical routes into work and by creating innovations such as boot camps. These reforms mean that the engine is ready, but it needs accelerator fuel and that is what the LLE is. It is the way we will deliver on a simple promise: if you back yourself, we will back you.
The Bill will adapt the student finance framework, making different types of study more accessible and more flexible. This is chiefly because it will enable meaningful fee limits to be set on periods of study shorter than a year. It will no longer be the case that the only ticket to further or higher education is through a three-year degree. Money talks, and there is often talk about parity of esteem. This system delivers parity of esteem. What this means in practice is that modules and short courses, as well as traditional degree courses, will be priced according to the amount of learning they contain. This will create a fair, more flexible system and go a long way to encourage more people into post-18 education.