A RISE in claims for growth money from further education colleges this year is threatening to halt the increase in student numbers and plunge the sector deeper into financial difficulty.
The Government wants to cut the amount of extra cash colleges receive for recruiting more students because it fears a strain on the Treasury. Claims on the fund rocketed in 1995/96.
If the Further Education Funding Council is forced to make up the amount from its own resources the sector could lose up to Pounds 30 million.
Urgent discussions are to take place in the new year between the FEFC and Department for Education and Employment on the future of the cash. The money, known as the demand-led element, was introduced at incorporation three years ago to encourage growth. It is a cash limitless fund provided for colleges who recruit students above their target numbers, paid at Pounds 6.50 per unit.
So far, the FEFC has not had to tap into Treasury money because it has been able to fund extra recruitment through refunds from colleges which had under-recruited. But in the last financial year, when the number of part-time students grew by 37 per cent, the figures did not balance in the same way.
It is understood claims on the fund could be worth more than three times as much as in the first two years. Now the money could be reduced or possibly axed altogether from April, badly hitting colleges since many of the extra students are already in the system.
The knock-on effect is likely to be an end to growth in a sector that has been encouraged to deliver a year-on-year increase in numbers of about 6 per cent.
Colin Flint, principal of Solihull College, said: "It will bring much of the expansion of further education to a grinding halt just as we are beginning to see the possibilities of establishing some kind of lifelong learning culture. The effect will be much worse than the capping of HE."
A DFEE spokeman said the Government envisaged continuing growth in the sector and decisions about the rate of the demand led element were up to the FEFC.