Now we can all lay foundations.

The North-East has been awarded funding for around 620 extra places for foundation degrees.

This equates to around pounds 340,000 of the pounds 5.5m which the Higher Education Funding Council for England has allocated to create 10,000 new full-time equivalent places on courses in 2004-2005.

The Government believes foundation degrees are a key part of re-engaging people back into education and encouraging more people to go to university.

It also sees it as a significant step to improving the skills base and making people more employable.

Alan Johnson, the Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, announced the expansion in foundation degrees yesterday. He said this will go a long way to ensuring there are 50,000 full time equivalent foundation degree places available by 2005-2006 up from just 9,500 in 2002-2003.

This should mean at least 70,000 full and part time students studying foundation degrees in two years' time, up from the 12,400 that were on courses last year. Institutions and further education colleges funded by HEFCE were yesterday invited to bid for the additional foundation degree places and for funds to develop new programmes.

Mr Johnson said: "We have made it very clear that higher education expansion does not mean more of the same. We need expansion to reflect the needs of the economy and the economy is telling us it needs more graduates with specific skills at a particular level.

"We expect three-quarters of a million new jobs over the next decade to be at the associate professional level, from medical technicians to aircraft engineers and teaching assistants.

"Foundation degrees are higher education qualifications of academic rigour and clear vocational relevance which have been built with employers to help meet the needs of the workforce. They are proving successful and popular which is why it is right to create an additional 10,000 places to be made available exclusively for foundation degrees in September 2004.

"I want more employers and higher education institutions to take the opportunity to grasp these additional places and make them a bigger success."

Mr Johnson denied that while he was trying to encourage more students with extra places on foundation degree his Government was discouraging them with its plans to allow universities to charge them up to pounds 3,000 a year each.

Under the Government's proposed method of paying back students' debts, the "graduate contribution scheme", universities could raise top-up fees from the present level of pounds 1,125 to pounds 3,000 from 2006. The scheme will be part of the forthcoming Higher Education Bill.

Mr Johnson told Education Journal: "No one pays until they reach (a salary of) pounds 15,000 and this will be after their course not before."

He said the Government remained committed to increasing the percentage of 18-30-year-olds in higher education from 43pc, at present, to 50pc by 2010. Foundation degrees, added to the fact many of the poorest students would not have to pay fees, would boost the widening participation agenda, he said.

Liz Beaty, director of learning and teaching for HEFCE, said: "The investment will help establish foundation degrees as a valuable component of higher education provision in this country, extending choice and opportunities to both students and employers."

Second chance opens up whole new world

Jenny Gibson says that at the age of 34 she has been given a second chance.

After leaving school at 16 and pursuing a number of jobs in the music industry, she was made redundant.

"It was really hard to get another job in the business up here and it was all that I knew" said Jenny, of Heaton, Newcastle.

But since beginning a foundation degree in multi-media design at Newcastle College, she says she is much more positive about the future.

"I have really enjoyed being on the course and more than anything else, I have learned so much which can help me to get a new job," she said.

"I love computers and surfing the net. And I have always had a passion for design and this course combines the two. I am retraining at something else and hope that, if the second year of the course is anything like as good as the first, I will be able to get a job in computers or design.

"It's been amazing how much progress I have made in such a short space of time and this has also given me a lot more confidence.

"It was really frightening to take the plunge and go back to college at 34, but I feel like I have been given a second chance."

College vice-chancellor Roger Lowans said foundation degrees had led to either employment or higher education through the college's links with Northumbria University.

"They are also an excellent way for companies to help retrain staff and to add to their skills, expertise and knowledge," he said.

Head laments cost of divorce paid by children

Society is failing to send out strong enough signals about the dangers of divorce and drug abuse, says a leading private school headteacher.

While many single parents gave excellent support, heads knew that children who lived with their mother and father needed less care at school, said Graham Able, chairman of the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference (HMC).

He also backed heads who were calling for a three-year sixth form, saying much of the testing should be scrapped to leave a "progress check" in English and maths.

He also announced a move to stop issuing private schools' A-, AS-level and GCSE results to the media a week after candidates received their grades in August, saying league tables led to a narrower choice of subjects.

The HMC's members include leading boarding schools such as Eton and Harrow.

Mr Able told members at the HMC annual conference in Dublin they had traditionally set high standards in pupils' pastoral care.

"The need for high-quality pastoral care has, sadly, never been more crucial than it is today and unless society can start to reverse selfish and self-indulgent attitudes, this trend will continue.

"Unfortunately, there is more interest in and concern for individual rights than there is in our duties to one another, to society at large and especially to our children," he said. "Whilst there are many examples of single and divorced parents who give excellent support to their children, we all know that those growing up under the same roof as their mother and their father are much less likely to require additional pastoral care at school than those who do not enjoy that advantage.

"The problem of absent or non-existent fathers can be particularly difficult for adolescent boys. It would be refreshing if society and our legal system concentrated rather more on the duties of parents to their children, rather than their rights to self-gratification no matter what the cost to others."

Because the Government is downgrading cannabis to a class C drug from January, possession of small amounts will not normally be an arrestable offence.

Mr Able said research in the Australian state of Victoria showed a strong link between regular cannabis use and rising teenage male suicide rates.

Given this evidence, it was worrying that people still called for cannabis to be legalised.

Last week, a group of leading headteachers called for a three-year sixth form, which would be made possible by trimming a year of the 11 to 14 phase.

The Government's working group of reform of 14 to 19 education, under former chief schools inspector Mike Tomlinson, has proposed a "diploma" that could eventually replace A-levels and GCSEs. Mr Able said: "I will personally be very disappointed if the outcome of the Tomlinson report does not reduce significantly the examination burden on our students."