The Helena Kennedy Foundation promotes the equality of opportunity achieved through education and training.  We work with disadvantaged students in the Further Education sector, helping them to realise their potential as they move into fulfilling careers across a range of sectors.  Background should not be a barrier to accessing high quality education, and all the students we support have faced significant personal obstacles in their education.

It is in this spirit that HKF welcomes the Skills for Jobs White Paper and the government’s new commitment to the FE sector.  As a trusted partner of many FE colleges, we understand the important contribution made by this sector, and welcome the recognition that FE colleges are ideally placed to understand the education and skill needs within their communities.

Dr Julie Mills OBE, Chair of HKF Trustees says, “We recognise the growing demand for higher technical education as an alternative to a degree and will look to respond to this challenge in the support we provide.  With loans set to remain the main plank of student financing, we believe that organisations such as ourselves have a critical role in providing top-up support to disadvantaged students, via our well-established bursary scheme. We have seen first-hand the transformational impact of developing higher level skills and look forward to working with our college and university partners to ensure that we support even more talented young people to succeed”.