Truro and Penwith College have released a statement praising today's budget announcement.

The college have broadly welcomed today's announcement from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond, that the Government is to expand vocational and technical post-16 education.

Truro and Penwith College has a strong record of quality performance across both technical and academic routes, and has recognition at national level for promoting each of these post-16 pathways successfully.

Principal David Walrond said that against the backdrop of continual real-term funding cuts to further education spending, this needed to be just a first step in a new direction.

Mr Walrond said: “Some of the UK’s key problems of low productivity and widening skills gaps and shortages are writ very large in Cornwall.

"Addressing them, through targeted investment, is crucial to Cornwall’s socio-economic future. The Chancellor’s announcement today of investment in skills training for 16 - 19-year-olds will be even more welcome and significant if it proves to be a turning point.

“However, there is much lost ground to be made up. The Institute for Fiscal Studies last week produced the latest in a series of independent reports confirming there have been many years of steady and damaging disinvestment in post-16 education and skills training.

"Our more productive economic competitors long ago recognised that investment in post16 learning, especially in professional and technical routes, is essential to economic success.

“The parity of esteem issue is crucial, and it is exactly what tertiary colleges were established to promote and deliver.

"We are wholly committed to both academic and technical routes, and deliver an equal mix of both these pathways in the tertiary comprehensive model which has proved so successful in the South West.

"We provide vocational and academic learning side-by-side, on the same sites, with the same high quality of outcomes and progression opportunities for learners.

"This is what has made demand to study here grow so consistently. Callywith College, on our third campus at Bodmin, is part of extending that successful model and track record to give much better access to the best skills training and education for the north and east of Cornwall.

“If we are to upskill a post-Brexit Cornwall to the higher levels required, we have to get agencies inside and outside Cornwall to co-invest with us and support what demonstrably works.

"We are committed to partnership working with employers, local authorities, the Local Enterprise Partnership and other relevant stakeholders to deliver these skills, but a key issue will be adequate investment to deliver what is needed.

"The Chancellor’s announcements on reinvesting in skills are a step in the right direction. ”