The future of FE in this new system is uncertain. In its short period of independence from 1993 - 2001 FE gained a consciousness of itself as a sector in its own right for the first time. Yet now, officially, FE no longer exists, having joined the other “providers of learning and skills” - private, public and voluntary sector - all contracting from the Learning and Skills Council.

The council’s immediate brief is to sort out the school sixth-forms it now funds. It faces opposition from local education authorities, school teachers and parents. The response proposed in the Green Paper is “a curriculum that is more flexible and responsive to students’ individual needs”. What this means is a tertiary tripartism: at the top of this three-tier structure will be sixth-form colleges and any surviving large school sixth-forms, leading to higher education.

Despite the inept reforms of ‘Curriculum 2000’, top A-level grades can still be recognised by admissions tutors at the old universities. Lower grades and academicised and renamed GNVQs will suffice for entry to the desperately competing new universities and HE colleges.

With the abolition of limits on student numbers for each institution, there is now a free market in student places, which the Government sees as a means to increase, if not broaden, HE participation. But this will still not meet Tony Blair’s target for half of 18-30 year-olds to go through some sort of HE by 2010, so a Department for Education and Skills internal review is “redefining higher education”. Predictably this will count many in school sixth-forms, sixth-form colleges and Centres of Vocational Excellence as HE students.

This redesignation may even extend to those on the second tier of the new tertiary structure. This “work-based” route leads (in theory) through foundation and advanced Modern Apprenticeships to foundation degrees. The Government has declared it wants one-third of students to take this route. Where this leaves the bottom tier - “non-advanced FE” - is another question. Already, “failing boys”, as Chris Woodhead called them, are “sent to college” from 14-plus. They join those with special needs and adults following basic skills courses.

In a worst-case scenario, this area may end up integrated with the employment service and benefits system, and be controlled by the Department for Work, Family and Pensions. Already receipt of benefits on training schemes such as Welfare to Work is conditional upon attendance: perhaps the same tactic may be used with those at the bottom of the learning pile.

HE will also become more divided after the latest Research Assessment Exercise. This will concentrate research funding in the traditional universities even more. The non-researching former-polytechnics and other higher education institutions may soon be asked to teach skills courses for local employers.

They could be certified by the new Sector Skills Councils, the body the LSC is establishing to replace national training organisations. Once again, we would see a separate accrediting body for former polytechnics and HE colleges, only this time run by the LSC.

Despite this extension of its powers, the demise of the LSC can be foreseen. There will be acrimonious disputes over the future of school sixth-forms and “failing” colleges. The council will also get bogged down in monitoring thousands of voluntary and private training organisations. Indeed the scrapping of the LSC seems almost inevitable given the diminishing shelf-life of the successive quangos that have taken over education and training since the Manpower Services Commission spawned the Further Education Funding Council and the Training and Enterprise Councils.

Perhaps an even bigger “TEC-over” of universities could merge the LSC with the Higher Education Funding Council minus the old universities.

What is clear is that the future will see mass education and training for the many and an elite education for the few. This is a reality that cannot be hidden by the “14-19” Green Paper proposal for an “overarching” matriculation certificate or for renaming vocational options as “applied”.

Patrick Ainley, reader in Learning Policy,University of Greenwich School of Education and Training