Friday 21 December 2007

Theological training threatened by cuts

(Ed: According to the article, these cuts will not affect trainee imams.)

THE UPTURN in young ordinands coming forward for training in the Church of England could be checked, after a government move to redistribute £100 million to finance more first degrees.

The Higher Education Funding Council has been forced to find £100-million-a-year cuts by the Treasury. On 7 December, it announced that it plans to save the bulk of this by not funding second qualifications that are equivalent to, or less than, a person’s existing qualification. Most theological qualifications come into this category.

The cuts, due to be implemented next autumn, would leave the Church up to £1.5 million a year short, experts warned this week.

The Archbishop of Canterbury said on Monday that he was very worried about the cuts and had already received representations about them. But he did not yet know the full extent of the likely impact on the Church. The cost to the Church was likely to be about £2500 per candidate. Read more
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1 comment:

Peter Kirk said...

(Chelmsford)

Is it right that the church should rely on state funding for training its clergy? I guess trainee imams are not affected because they don't get state funding anyway.