Three of further education’s finest institutions were left red-faced when they held a fringe meeting to discuss basic skills at the Labour party conference in Brighton.
Hundreds of leaflets were handed out advertising a lunchtime meeting on basic skills provision, to be addressed by Ivan Lewis, the minister for skills and vocational education.
The leaflet amply demonstrated the need for such education, however, because its title read Basic Sills and Beyond.
Alan Tuckett, director of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, one of the three sponsors of the meeting, said: “It was not the best window to the world of FE. On reflection, it was a bit of a pain.”
The error was spotted by Paul Mackney, general secretary of Natfhe, the lecturers’ union, but too late to be corrected. City and Guilds, whose director general Chris Humphries spoke at the meeting, was the third sponsor.
