Adult Education Slashed in Liverpool
Revol | 06.06.2006 15:49 | Education | Workers' Movements | Liverpool
Learner in Liverpool received a bitter blow today as details began to emerge of the coming cuts in adult education in the city.
More than three hundred tutors received letters this morning, telling them that compulsory redundancies will be made after a three month consultation. The council claims that 'only' 120 will go.
This all comes after a government report published in January declared that one in five lessons in Liverpool were "inadequate". As a result, the government cuts its grant to the city by one fifth. Yes, you read that right, that is their crazy 'logic'. If they had ADDED 20% to the budget then it might have improved the 20% of lessons!
Short-term courses with no end qualification are believed to be for the chop. Many people join these courses to build up their confidence, after having been out of education for decades. They then move on to GCSEs, A levels and degrees.
But perhaps more importantly, this is yet another example of how the government considers that anything which fails to yield a financial profit is somehow worthless. Ok, so some people won't further their career by attending these classes. But might they meet people with similar interests? Might they take up a new hobby? Might they (whisper it) have fun?
Labour councillor Joe Anderson - leader of the opposition in Liverpool - said: "The government is not going to throw good money after bad.
"I understand funding has been reduced, but we have to look at why that happened. I believe it was because Liverpool was not producing a quality service."
The council is powerless, the opposition is spineless, the only thing that can save the local services that ordinary Liverpudlians depend on is action from ordinary Liverpudlians.
This all comes after a government report published in January declared that one in five lessons in Liverpool were "inadequate". As a result, the government cuts its grant to the city by one fifth. Yes, you read that right, that is their crazy 'logic'. If they had ADDED 20% to the budget then it might have improved the 20% of lessons!
Short-term courses with no end qualification are believed to be for the chop. Many people join these courses to build up their confidence, after having been out of education for decades. They then move on to GCSEs, A levels and degrees.
But perhaps more importantly, this is yet another example of how the government considers that anything which fails to yield a financial profit is somehow worthless. Ok, so some people won't further their career by attending these classes. But might they meet people with similar interests? Might they take up a new hobby? Might they (whisper it) have fun?
Labour councillor Joe Anderson - leader of the opposition in Liverpool - said: "The government is not going to throw good money after bad.
"I understand funding has been reduced, but we have to look at why that happened. I believe it was because Liverpool was not producing a quality service."
The council is powerless, the opposition is spineless, the only thing that can save the local services that ordinary Liverpudlians depend on is action from ordinary Liverpudlians.
Revol
Additions
Adult Learning Cuts: Comments from UCU
08.06.2006 18:47
The Liverpool Echo article of 6th June 2006 quoted Council bosses as claiming that a £1.5m funding cut in the city’s adult learning service was “brought in after the standards of classes were panned by government inspectors”, and Councillor Joe Anderson as stating “I believe it was because Liverpool was not producing a quality service."
Both these statements are incorrect. Let us put the record straight.
The funding cuts originate from two sources. The major part of the funding cut represented 20% of the overall budget of £5 million. This was imposed by the government and is part of a national strategy which places little or no value on courses which don’t lead to employment. On top of this and following an unfavourable inspection report, the Learning And Skills Council (“LSC”) has penalised LALS further so that the total budget cut has increased from £1 million to £1.5 million.
Even without the penalty imposed by the LSC, we would still be facing a massive cut of £1 million due to current government cut backs in adult learning nation-wide. These cuts don’t only apply to LALS, they also apply to Liverpool Community College which is itself facing massive cuts of £1.5 million, despite having had an excellent inspection report from the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI). This leaves the two biggest providers of adult education in Liverpool facing combined cuts of £3 million.
We were assured by the council that there is still a policy of no compulsory redundancy but rather that it will do it’s best to redeploy employees elsewhere. We will be calling on the council to carry out an analysis of employees' transferable skills so that those who are at risk can be redeployed.
We realise that the council's decision is led by the government setting strict funding priorities in the hope of plugging the national skills gap. However, we do not believe this should be at the expense of many others adults who study a broad range of courses that fulfil their social and self development needs.
Adult learning is crucial to the regeneration of Liverpool. As we are working towards the year 2008 and our recognition as European Capital of Culture, we should be promoting and expanding adult education, especially in the 'cultural' subjects such as music, local history, languages and dance. Adult learning has always been about more than just training for work. It's been about gaining knowledge and skills that make individual lives more purposeful and communities more cohesive.
We also question why instead of relying on government funding for further education passed down through the LSC, Liverpool City Council can not put some of its own money into running its adult education service. Is adult learning to be one of the casualties of the council achieving one of the lowest council tax increases in England?
Finally we are dismayed at the LSC's decision to transfer some £600,000 of provision to Liverpool Community College. This is a divisive move which will only add to the predicament of Liverpool Adult Learning Service. Bearing in mind the unfavourable inspection report, we believe the service should be supported in order to improve before the next inspection in September 2006, not financially penalised. The 'recovery rate' for providers reinspected by the Adult Learning Inspectorate during 2003-04, before penalties and cut backs were introduced, was very high. Of the 142 learning providers fully reinspected, 127 (89 per cent) received grades of satisfactory or better. We hope to join forces with the community college to campaign together against these destructive government cuts.
Terry Clarke
UCU Branch Secretary
Liverpool Adult Learning Service
Both these statements are incorrect. Let us put the record straight.
The funding cuts originate from two sources. The major part of the funding cut represented 20% of the overall budget of £5 million. This was imposed by the government and is part of a national strategy which places little or no value on courses which don’t lead to employment. On top of this and following an unfavourable inspection report, the Learning And Skills Council (“LSC”) has penalised LALS further so that the total budget cut has increased from £1 million to £1.5 million.
Even without the penalty imposed by the LSC, we would still be facing a massive cut of £1 million due to current government cut backs in adult learning nation-wide. These cuts don’t only apply to LALS, they also apply to Liverpool Community College which is itself facing massive cuts of £1.5 million, despite having had an excellent inspection report from the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI). This leaves the two biggest providers of adult education in Liverpool facing combined cuts of £3 million.
We were assured by the council that there is still a policy of no compulsory redundancy but rather that it will do it’s best to redeploy employees elsewhere. We will be calling on the council to carry out an analysis of employees' transferable skills so that those who are at risk can be redeployed.
We realise that the council's decision is led by the government setting strict funding priorities in the hope of plugging the national skills gap. However, we do not believe this should be at the expense of many others adults who study a broad range of courses that fulfil their social and self development needs.
Adult learning is crucial to the regeneration of Liverpool. As we are working towards the year 2008 and our recognition as European Capital of Culture, we should be promoting and expanding adult education, especially in the 'cultural' subjects such as music, local history, languages and dance. Adult learning has always been about more than just training for work. It's been about gaining knowledge and skills that make individual lives more purposeful and communities more cohesive.
We also question why instead of relying on government funding for further education passed down through the LSC, Liverpool City Council can not put some of its own money into running its adult education service. Is adult learning to be one of the casualties of the council achieving one of the lowest council tax increases in England?
Finally we are dismayed at the LSC's decision to transfer some £600,000 of provision to Liverpool Community College. This is a divisive move which will only add to the predicament of Liverpool Adult Learning Service. Bearing in mind the unfavourable inspection report, we believe the service should be supported in order to improve before the next inspection in September 2006, not financially penalised. The 'recovery rate' for providers reinspected by the Adult Learning Inspectorate during 2003-04, before penalties and cut backs were introduced, was very high. Of the 142 learning providers fully reinspected, 127 (89 per cent) received grades of satisfactory or better. We hope to join forces with the community college to campaign together against these destructive government cuts.
Terry Clarke
UCU Branch Secretary
Liverpool Adult Learning Service
Terry Clarke
e-mail:
tclarkells@hotmail.com
Comments
Hide the following 2 comments
The Iraq war has cost our Treasury £6bn.
06.06.2006 17:41
And for what?
Setting fire to the Middle East.
Every penny spent on war could have gone on the health and education of our people.
This cannot continue.
Matthew Edwards
e-mail:
matthewedwards999@gmail.com
Homepage:
http://blairwitch.typepad.com
Adult learning is the latest victim of cutbacks in public spending...
07.06.2006 13:18
It started with the Tories 1988? 'Great' Education Bill known as 'Gerbil', with this bill Higher Education was to be privatised with the Polytechnics taken out of local council and community control and accountability and be turned into private education corporations. Further Education (F.E.) colleges were also to be taken out of local council and community control and accountability, this led to many college sites here in Liverpool ultimately being closed down and demolished, leading to the over concentration on the city centre and greater enrolement of out of town students bringing in more income.
In the North East of Liverpool I was a student union president at the Millbrook College (formerly North East Liver Tech' College) 89-91 and it was a vibrant centre of learning, a vast cross section of students attended it, foreign students attending the highly regarded science courses at the Muirhead centre, which also catered for Liverpool Poly' students as well.
In the Adult Education sector, which included basic reading, writing and numeracy skills, there was art, creative writing courses, computer courses, music courses based in the community within walking distances of many educationally disenfranchised working class communities. The F.E. sector and the Adult Education sector have been variously described at the 'cinderalla' part of education, it has to be said that the sector catered largely for working class people, many of its best staff strived to encourage new learners into the centres and helped boost their morale and displace their negative experiences of organised learning at school.
There was more access and ways of obtaining learning on everyone's level, the basic requirement simply being 'wanting to learn' obtain knowledge and to study a subject. In this ever increasingly commodified consumer society Adult Education is now to suffer the fate of F.E. what business and industry wants and needs comes before the requirements of the students, thus in F.E. for example art and creative courses were moved away from centres providing business and science courses in the early 1990's. Adult Education provided hope and a social environment for many isolated unemployed young people aged in the 1980's when there were jobs for us at all and there was literally nowhere for us to go, it was widely acknowledged as an asset to the city of Liverpool and well regarded nationally. Elsewhere in Britain the Adult Education sector was cast out early from F.E. colleges which had become more commerically and financially driven with their private sector and big business dominated board of governors.
Back in 1995 I put together a leaflet opposing the closure of community college centres in Norris Green, Wavertree, Aigburth, City Centre and distributed it to councillors at the council's full education meeting, it stated that by moving out from the communities the 'Community' college could no longer claim to call itself a 'community' college, it also questioned why the college had millions of pounds kept hidden in an account meant for building upgrades while at the same times sites were being allowed to fall into serious disrepair and students being turned away from certain site and redirected to others which meant those sites had falling attendances. Concentrating the college in the city centre would mean greater travel expense for poorer students having to travel into the city centre. It would mean loss of resources, jobs and access in some of the most marginal and forgotten parts of Liverpool.
The colleges sites have been sold off, demolished and -yet more- private housing estates built upon them. In the North East of Liverpool it meant Norris Green, Fazakerly, Sparrow Hall, Croxteth lost access to it's local college, later on the Adult Education outreach centre in the middle of Norris Green at Welsbourne was also closed meaning the entire North East of Liverpool was cut out of F.E.
Incidently a little known fact: The City of Liverpool Community College has had no elected Student Union since at least 1998, the reason? The Principal Wally Brown didn't think it was needed. In place of an elected student representative the college employs a member staff as the so called 'student liason' officer, in no way accountable to or representative of students.
The ultimate solution:
To end these attacks on our services and rights we have to look at the bigger picture, fight the causes of inequality, destruction of public services due to EU, GATT and other policies supported by this anti-working class New Labour government. Capitalism the system whereby a society is run for the benefit of the few takes evermore rights, services and resources away from the majority - us, the working class. To remedy that situation, we have to firstly abolish capitalism and establish a socialist society whereby the needs of all citizens are the primary concern. Anything less than that is tinkering with inequality, exploitation and deluding the majority that capitalism can be reformed and made fairer - it can't.
Kai
e-mail:
aokai[AT]tiscali.co.uk