THE Government has announced a £19.5m bonus for training and enterprise councils - but the Heart of England TEC, which covers Oxfordshire, will not receive any of the extra cash, writes Chris Koenig.
It is one of seven TECs, out of a total of 74 in England, that has not received a performance-related award.
TEC spokesman Susan McKellar said: "The Heart of England TEC decided not to compete for a performance-related funding bonus."
She added: "The reason we did not participate in the bonus scheme is because we could not agree baseline figures with the Department for Education and Employment.
"The targets they wanted to set us did not accurately reflect the make-up of the Oxfordshire workforce." The DfEE allotted the money to TECs that had achieved their targets in five specific areas: people with disabilities; people from ethnic minorities; Investors in People; education strategies and career development loans.
The Heart of England TEC said it had developed its own Equal Opportunity Strategy, and was also on track to achieve the national target for Investors in People in 2000.
It added that it had built a solid reputation for working well with educationalists and would not only have met the bonus targets but would have exceeded them, had it participated.
Ms McKellar added that the Heart of England TEC had made a conscious decision not to actively promote career development loans.
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