Education cuts and adult literacy
Stagg challenged the Minister’s commitment to democratisation in light of cuts to VECs and the abandonment of the adult literacy second-chance scheme; the Chair and Minister treated this as a separate question.
I join with other speakers in welcoming the Minister and wishing her well. With regard to the Minister's point of view that democratisation of the educational system is desirable, can she explain why, when the very savage educational cuts which have been implemented were being put into force, the VECs, the most democratic of the educational systems we have at the moment, were most severely hit, to such a degree that some schools will not be able to buy chalk? Within that cut the adult literacy "second chance" scheme has been abandoned. How does this compare with the Minister's wish to have more democratic schooling systems?
