City Conservative Leader Councillor Wendy Thompson said that the Council had failed to learn lessons from previous enquiries because the inconvenient truth was that a large part of the joblessness problem lay in poor educational attainment.
"Wolverhampton is now firmly the top of the unemployment league table across the UK and study after study has shown that we need to improve young peoples' skills base, especially in English and Maths, but also in basic life skills. Ofsted have now criticised the local education authority for failing to spread best practice across all of our schools, with the result that secondary schools in Wolverhampton have to work harder to help children catch up with the skills that they are not obtaining in primary school.
"To most people, the one problem follows on from the other. Why do we need to spend another £20,000 when all of the clues to reason for our current situation, and how to get out of it, are already there?
"At least two scrutiny reviews have looked into unemployment in the City over recent years and skills have been identified as one of the biggest reasons for our high rates. Does the Council still not get the message that this is where we ought to be concentrating our efforts?"