Rt Hon Ruth Kelly MP declares in her speech on January 11th 2006 at the BETT Conference:

"Technology will support our aims to improve young people’s career
aspirations and life chances by helping to provide the information,
advice and guidance that they need to identify the right route for
them. And e-learning will be a fundamental part of this offer to all
young people to have more and better choice in what, where and
how they study.

E-portfolios for example are personal online spaces for students to
access services and store work. They will become ever more
useful as learners grow up and start moving between different
types of learning and different institutions. And with 14-19 learners,
even the best institution could not be expected to provide the new
entitlement alone.

Technology will help promote the partnership working and effective
collaboration that will turn reforms into reality. It will help the
professionals to pool resources and exchange good practice. And
it will allow the range of people and schools, colleges and
employers that could be involved in a young person’s course of
study to make the whole process as coherent and integrated as
possible.

To make that coherence and integration possible, we must have in
place the common infrastructure and standards. And the National
Education Network will be one of these layers that will link schools,
FE and Lifelong Learning sectors and provide learners with a
single sign-on access to the range of resources they need."