POOR pay is threatening the Government’s post-16 learning revolution, according to the very man charged with bringing it about.

One year after the Learning and Skills Council was formed, chief executive John Harwood, says he worries that an underpaid workforce will not be able to make further improvements.

He raised the issue of inconsistent pay rates in colleges. But colleges have responded that the key problem is a lack of funds to pay staff.

Mr Harwood’s comments come in the week the Association of Colleges, the employers’ body, joined forces with unions to lobby Parliament for more money.

In a letter to the AOC chief David Gibson, Mr Harwood wrote: “It is right to express our more general concern over the longer-term trends in FE pay.Great improvements have been made in productivity. We are concerned that these are increasingly incompatible with a long-term decline in the comparative pay of an increasingly professional and successful workforce.”

He suggested a joint study with the AOC to look at why some colleges are unable to pay lecturers as much as others. But the AOC insists the problem is about funding, not the way that colleges are managed.

“We agree with his sentiments,” said Mr Gibson. “But, for me, core funding is the issue. If colleges have enough they can pay their staff more.” FE pay has increased by just 10 per cent since 1996, compared with an average of 25 per cent for salaries in general.

The AOC and the unions want pound;2.6 billion over four years to close the pay gap with schools, restore six years of erosion in real-terms pay and finance a national launch of the education maintenance allowance pilot schemes.

Tuesday’s mass lobby was organised by the AOC, the lecturers’ union NATFHE, the Association for College Management, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, the GMB, Unison, the Transport and General Workers Union and the National Union of Students.

Representatives met Margaret Hodge, further and higher education minister, and gave her a rough ride as she tried to highlight the investment the Government has made. She blamed the media for misrepresenting Labour’s approach to FE, and Conservative governments for under-investing.

“FE had been completely starved of resources for a generation,” she said. “Previous governments allowed a completely untrammelled market to exist.”

An extra pound;1.4 billion will go into FE between 1997 and 2004. There is 50 per cent more cash for the teachers’ pay initiative, which includes lecturers, compared with last year. The Treasury says it will give priority to education in this summer’s spending review.

But, as Ms Hodge spoke, there were jeers of “where’s the money?” from the back of the committee room. Frontline staff insist new cash has not reached them.

Paul Mackney, general secretary of the NATFHE, said many lecturers were “putting their families first and going into schools”.

Describing the lobby as the “most successful rally ever on behalf of FE”, Mr Gibson said: “I want to believe it will make a difference. I have to believe it will. I think the sector matured by a couple of years in coming together and finding a political voice.”