To ask the Minister for Employment and Learning for his assessment of the effectiveness of the Learner Access and Engagement Programme in addressing educational underachievement and social disadvantage.

The Learner Access and Engagement (LAE) programme was initially introduced in 2008 as a pilot programme to engage with and encourage those most hard to reach and to provide learner support. The three year pilot was established in the absence of any other focused provision at that time. A longitudinal evaluation of this pilot in 2012 reflected that the programme had been successful on several fronts and demonstrated emerging evidence, at that time, of a need for this type of intervention, and the programme was mainstreamed as a result.

The last full year of the pilot programme recorded a total of 3,359 enrolments. However since mainstreaming, enrolment figures have been steadily declining with 2013/14 activity reflecting a total of 1,698 enrolments against a target of 4,500. Third party providers have not been as successful in attracting and retaining learners on the programme.

One of the significant impacts of the programme has been that further education colleges themselves, outside of LAE and within mainstream provision, have since built the capacity, awareness and expertise in targeting and engaging those most hard to reach into further education provision and increasing retention and delivering successful outcomes.