As you know, I’ve been keeping an eye out for information on the Department for Education/Office for Students higher education short courses trial for a good while now.

Despite ministerial protests, it remains the best way of understanding potential demand for loan funding that defines the lifelong learning entitlement LLE. So I was delighted to see a question from Seema Malhotra get a response from universities minister Robert Halfon.

There are some serious points to make about Halfon’s response, but let us begin with the cheap laughs.

As of June 2023, Halfon reports 240 applications to providers for short courses, resulting in 126 people actually enrolling. Of theses 75 applied for the fee loan, and in 34 cases this has resulted in payment.

As luck would have it, I last looked into this in mid-June and was told there were 206 course applications, 114 enrolments, 46 applications and 37 of these were approved for funding (this last was up from 33 in January, and 12 in September). So either thing have actually gone backward (did three people withdraw before the SLC deadline?), or just one additional loan was offered since January.

Halfon notes:

The numbers of applications for loans for the trial only test demand for loan funding and are nor the best or only indicator of demand. There is a wide range of evidence that individuals want to pursue technical and vocational education, sometimes modularly, at Levels 4 and 5 such as uptake of Advanced Learner Loans, uptake of Foundation Degrees, HNDs and HNCs, data from the In-Work Skills pilot and growing numbers of approved HTQs.

Which is slightly disingenuous. There has always been evidence of interest in technical and vocational education – the question before us is on demand for LLE-style fee loans and the trial is the best and only indicator of that demand.