Information and guidance ‘crucial to lifelong learning reforms’

Life Long Learning Loans will be bigger than Apprenticeship Degrees and have the potential to deliver benefits as great as those we have had from the creation of the NHS. The big question is "How much will it cost? - what proportion of GDP /Government Expenditure will it represent?". This should be a cross party debate now, with a clear answer, so that there will be a consensus to support the increases in taxation required. The current student loan system is not fit for purpose and is, in practice, a hidden tax, that has widely different impacts on different groups of people within the general population. We need more information now, on how the loan system will operate. From what we have been told so far, the loans could be available to over half the population - over 30 million people. Expectations need to be managed and the Government needs to provide more and better information now.