The key authorities need to get together with the Association for Teachers and Lecturers to ensure that we provide a co-ordinated sector response to all the documents in circulation. Most importantly, we need to make sure that FE colleges become major stakeholders.

The common theme throughout all this is that people are more important than technology. Colleges can play a major part in training people in all sections of the community.

I hope we will become key players in the production of FE software, of which there is a dearth. We also need a national grid for technology. We need the FEFC to understand that this is one area where the market may not deliver. Maybe top-slicing college budgets is the answer. But it must be about investment in a national infrastructure.

I am sure industry will be prepared to put its notions of partnership into practice.