Thursday 26 February 2015

2015 adult skills budget cut

The adult skills budget will be cut by 11 per cent in the next financial year, it was revealed this morning.

in a letter, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), said funding through the Skills Funding Agency for adult skills in 2015-16 will be reduced by more than £249 million, an 11 per cent cut on 2014-15.
the total budget from BIS for adult FE and skills funding will fall by 5 per cent to £3.91 billion.
however, the SFA has set an apprenticeships budget of £770 million, and in its own letter published this morning, has estimated that funds available for other non-apprenticeship adult skills will be reduced by almost a quarter (24 per cent) as a result.
by 2020, if the next government continue to cut at this rate, adult further education will be effectively a thing of the past. The situation is now urgent. This could be the end of adult education in every city, town and community in England and the consequences will be felt by individuals and the UK economy for years to come.
at edudo, learning is, first and always, about improving life-chances. It's what people do when they want to make sense of the world!

Wednesday 11 February 2015

is cutting adult skills budgets the right move for uk plc?

The answer to that question has to be a resounding no! 

indeed it should be a resounding no at any time of year and especially before an election. Certainly the sector as a whole has not adopted its usual tone of phlegmatic resignation. There is an active backlash going on and Nick Boles, our skills minister, is doing quite a bit of meeting local MPs on the subject. The budget this year may contain a surprise in this area. Then again it may not.
of course the government claim it is a modest cut given that apprenticeships, English and maths, traineeships and other elements of the adult skills budget are protected from the cut. But this only means a more swingeing cut for the rest of the budget. On some estimates by over 30% - or 24% if you take the Association of Colleges figures.
the result of the cut means there is now a lacuna in funding for many 19-23-year-olds. Treated differently from their university colleagues, who can access loans, this group can either compete for the dwindling state funding available to pursue the vocational qualification they want to, or cough up themselves. Which is the whole point of the exercise. For the government does not believe the public purse should really be supporting a whole range of courses that it believes either employers or individuals should be paying for. Austerity means you can drive through a neat argument. 'We cannot afford it' masks the argument that 'we really do not believe we should be paying for it'.
at edudo, learning is, first and always, about improving life-chances. It's what people do when they want to make sense of the world!