A Learning Centre article by Peter Latchford explores whether TEC's have been effective, and whether their planned replacements will be any more so:

"Although the Tecs have never looked like long-term structures, argues Peter Latchford, they have added value through a risk-taking approach - a quality that their replacement bodies may lack

When, in April 2001, TRAINING AND enterprise councils are no more, few people will be upset that the government has killed them off. Conceived at the end of the 1980s to involve the local business community in government business support and training expenditure, they have never managed to gain significant local acceptance.

After two years of mixed signals, the government has at last revealed its plans for future funding. What was spent on the Tecs will be split between two new bodies: its proposed national learning and skills council (LSC) and a small business service (SBS).

Has the Tec system been a misconceived experiment or a case of successful local empowerment victimised by political “not invented here” syndrome?"

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