Adult education institutions are being dismantled by stealth

As the country’s need for a skilled and adaptable workforce continues to grow and evidence increasingly demonstrates the role that community education plays in improving wellbeing, social cohesion and life opportunities, it is deeply concerning that policy and structural changes appear to be moving in the opposite direction. Rather than strengthening and investing in specialist adult education institutions that have successfully delivered these outcomes for generations, government-led reforms are accelerating a trend towards their merger into larger further education colleges, often driven by financial pressures and structural restructuring.

This is not an isolated phenomenon, but part of a broader pattern that has emerged gradually over recent years. It is a worrying direction of travel. While one or two mergers may be regarded as successful, the longer-term jury is still out. There has been little robust evaluation of whether these changes preserve the distinctive qualities that made these institutions successful in the first place, or whether something important and irreplaceable is being lost.

There is also a wider question about the policy decisions that have brought us to this point. The erosion of specialist adult education institutions has not happened through an open public debate about their value or purpose, nor through meaningful consultation about whether their distinctive role should continue. Instead, it has occurred through changes in status, governance and funding arrangements. The move to statutory college status has weakened institutional independence and reshaped governance arrangements, while funding methodologies designed around mainstream provision for young people often fail to recognise the distinctive costs and benefits of residential and specialist adult education models.