Adult Education In England May Cease To Exist By 2020

Fact checked
Adult Education In England May Cease To Exist By 2020

The Association of Colleges have warned that adult education in England will no longer exists by 2020 if the government continues its current austerity measures.

They have said that nearly 200,000 adult education places will go out of business next year. Courses for health, public services and care and information and communication technology (ICT) will be hit the hardest.

Press TV reports: The colleges say if budget cuts continue at the current rate, “there will no longer be an adult education system remaining to support students aged 19 and over”.

The warning follows government plans to slash funding for adult education by 24 per cent for the 2015-16 academic year.

The Association of Colleges (AoC) is the national representative body for 336 institutions in England, including general further education, sixth-form, tertiary and land-based colleges.

The AoC’s chief executive, Martin Doel, said adult education and training in England is too important to be lost. Doel continued to say that funding cuts “could mean an end to the vital courses that provide skilled employees for the workforce, such as nurses and social care workers”.

“The potential loss of provision threatens the future prospects of the millions of people who may need to retrain as they continue to work beyond retirement age, as well as unemployed people who need support to train for a new role.”

Shadia Edwards-Dashti, who is the student representative for the Stop the War coalition, believes that government cuts in the education sector are unnecessary when London could simply bring down its costs by tweaking its foreign policy:

“Government treats education as an instrument of governmental revenue, to be honest, and they treat education as a form of profit. The monopoly of our young people’s minds today has made education a business. The cuts to education…actually widen the class gap. These cuts are dividing the society into 2 categories eventually which are those who can pay for education and those you who cannot…The government sees no difficulty in finding the fund to wage war. War in their minds is essential and the (so called) war on terrorism has cost the British government 4 billion pounds a year. Now, what is essential about that war?” said Shadia Edwards-Dashti.

The Association’s concerns were echoed by others. Professor Ewart Keep, from Oxford University’s department of education, says the AoC’s analysis is “alarming, but realistic”.

Professor Keep went on to say “the latest reductions raise the prospect of provision reaching a tipping point, from which subsequent recovery could be very difficult”.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.




This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.