by Tricia Hartley
Tony Blair is on record as saying that a UK Prime Minister could easily declare war on another country completely unnoticed – as long as he or she did so in a speech entitled ‘Meeting the Skills Challenge’.
Our laughter at the low profile of the skills agenda is starting to sound a little hollow now, though, isn’t it, when cuts to the Adult Skills Budget in England before the Election threaten at least a quarter of all learning and training provision for over 19s outside apprenticeships, and the rhetoric of austerity suggests that even more salami slicing may now be in store?
