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* The government has been accused of baffling students and college heads over individual learning accounts after ministers admitted that there had been problems with the new service.

Phil Willis, the Liberal Democrat further and higher education spokesman, was alarmed by a letter from a student who had found his local college provided virtually no information about ILAs, and the free ILA helpline service was not working.

In a letter to Mr Willis, education minister Baroness Blackstone said the colleges should be promoting ILAs and admitted that the helpline had been affected by "an intermittent fault" that had now been rectified.