Listen to this story Members can listen to an AI-generated audio version of this article. 1.0x Audio narration uses an AI-generated voice. 0:00 0:00 Become a member to listen to this article Subscribe Budget and cost pressures have forced a council to consider switching its adult education services to a fully subcontracted model. Croydon Council’s cabinet unanimously approved a 21-day consultation on plans to allow colleges, charities and independent training providers to provide Croydon Adult Learning and Training (CALAT) courses. The council said its in-house service – one of London’s biggest – was no longer financially viable after forecasting a £500,000 overspend on CALAT this year, which reported achievement rates below the London average. The decision follows a wave of cuts to adult education across the country, including centre closures in Cornwall and Derbyshire. Croydon’s Conservative mayor Jason Perry tabled the proposal after a rapid review of the service recommended fully commissioning out adult education as having the “strongest potential” for long-term financial sustainability. “This is not a proposal to cut adult learning funding, which is grant-funded through the [Greater London Authority]. It is about outcomes,” he said. “We cannot ignore these findings.” CALAT, rated ‘good’ by Ofsted in 2023, faces financial pressure on its 2026-27 budget. Consultancy Mime projected staff costs this year at £4.5 million, roughly equal to its grant income, and a doubling of property costs due to increases in service charges and rent. Additionally, the GLA recently cut grants by 1.65 per cent a year for two years, which is expected to fall more heavily on tailored learning budgets than adult skills. CALAT’s costs per successful learner remain among the highest in the capital at £819, against a range of £365 to £990. Jason Cummings, the council’s deputy mayor and cabinet member for finance, said as one of London’s biggest adult learning services, its cost bill “should be one of the lowest per head”. Mime’s analysis also revealed low enrolments – of 855 courses, 465 ran with fewer than 10 enrolments. Meanwhile, adult skills achievement was 84.6 per cent against a London local authority average of 87.3 per cent in 2024-25. CALAT’s Ofsted report said nearly 1,400 learners were enrolled at the time of its 2023 inspection. New direction The consultation will run from November 1 to 21, with procurement starting from December 1 if approved. If a subcontracting model is chosen, Croydon would join Lambeth, Merton and Greenwich councils which have fully contracted out adult education. At least 13 other London boroughs partly subcontract provision. The council considered outsourcing in 2016 but councillors rejected the proposal after finding it would cost rather than save money. If subcontracting goes ahead, courses would be delivered through the existing facilities of “established” education and training providers in the borough. “This should mean the courses are more accessible across the borough,” Perry added. The council would also keep 20 per cent of its £4.53 million Adult Skills Fund allocation, or £907,000, for commissioning and quality assurance. The largest share, 43 per cent, or £1.95 million, would fund accredited provision including ESOL, English and maths up to GCSE, digital and vocational courses. A further 15 per cent (£693,000) would go to employment brokerage organisations, and 16 per cent (£726,000) to tailored learning, run by community and FE providers. An additional 3 per cent (£136,000) would be directed to a learner support fund, and another 3 per cent (£122,000) would be “retained” as an innovation reserve to fund pilot schemes. ‘Deliberate scaremongering’ The council’s report lists 197 CALAT staff, of whom 49 are permanent, four are temporary, and 144 are casual or sessional tutors or support staff. Redundancy and TUPE implications would need to be considered early to mitigate employee relations issues. Cummings said claims that 200 jobs were at risk were “deliberate scaremongering”. “We are not cutting the courses, and we are not getting rid of staff,” he said. Labour’s Brigitte Graham, shadow cabinet member for children and young people, said the matter had been “handled poorly” due to poor communication with staff and students. She added staff were “essentially evicted” from CALAT’s central Croydon base the Clocktower, and that Strand House in Thornton Heath, where most classes have moved, was now overcrowded. The University and College Union also recently reported Strand House had “unsafe temporary classrooms” and “a sense of chaos” across the service. But Perry said the building was “underutilised” until the recent moves and that “consultations have to start somewhere”. Sarah Jones, MP for Croydon West, urged the mayor to “stop this now”. “CALAT is used by hundreds of people across the borough. I have received loads of letters and emails urging the mayor to act. Over half of the users of CALAT live in Croydon’s most deprived areas,” she said in a social media post. “My plea to mayor is stop this now, talk to the people who work in CALAT and get a proper plan.” The council has backed plans to convert Strand House into homes for care-experienced young adults, but said the timeline for CALAT moving out would rely on the consultation’s outcome.
Friday Rant 16 October 2026 Cost per successful unit is such an unsophisticated and blunt metric when it comes to people, though has its uses in manufacturing. It’s a favourite toy of bean counters. What is ‘success’? (completing a course, achieving a certificate, getting a job, community cohesion?). When they say ‘learner’ do they actually mean course or enrolment. If it is really learner, what about partial achievement / success? Even the basic mathematical concept of ‘cost per successful learner’ doesn’t really work for ranking purposes, because no two providers are the same. Here are some obvious examples: 1. Funding has multipliers based on deprivation. A higher proportion of deprived learners, results in an increased ‘cost per successful learner’. (should we therefore target provision towards the affluent to keep cost per learner down…the more affluent will likely also have higher achievement rates because they are better equipped to overcome barriers – double bubble, an accountants dream, just ignore it’s divisive). 2. Differences in provision length. If you predominantly deliver longer more costly provision (because there might be a valid need to), then your cost per successful learner will be higher. 3. Differences in achievement rates exist between subjects – If a provider focuses on certain subjects (because there might be a valid need to) and those are genuinely difficult to deliver, this creates drag on achievement rates. Which therefore means higher cost per successful learner. What they really desire is shorter cheaper courses so a bunch of vanilla metrics go up in an ecosystem where funding is static, falling or being eroded by inflation. This isn’t about a programme being successful, this is about a programme looking successful. Of course the other attraction, which has happened in all cases where adult learning gets outsourced, is the buildings get flogged off or re-purposed (a balance sheet bump from asset stripping & pressure on primary school places being classics in London). We shouldn’t forget that capacity is hard won, but easily lost. The ongoing problem for adult and community education is that the outcomes are hard to measure, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have value. When the accountants get in on the act, if you can’t quantify the value in terms of cost, you’re on the wrong side of their spreadsheet. The tragedy is that in trying to measure it to convince an accountant, you divert resources away from the very thing that creates the value… delivery. (the accountancy equivalent of: heads I win, tails you lose) Here’s a thought, how about viewing it as ‘investment per successful outcome’? (go on, break free of that narrow and limiting austerity mindset, flip your race to the bottom graph – think about people as an investment, not a unit of cost)
Dave Spart 22 October 2026 Absolutely this. Huge amounts of work have been done over the years that consistently demonstrate that the wider social benefits of adult learning massively outweigh the cost: post-2010 there were multiple ‘social return on investment’ studies conducted, as the narrative was that the Treasury only understood data that had a £ sign attached. Once that benefit has been established, to ask for it to be specifically measured at provider or even individual learner level would be hugely wasteful at a time when resources are already stretched to breaking point. Whether someone has achieved a qualification or got a job are easy to measure; whether they have improved their quality of life, reduced demand on health or care services or strengthened their community, much less so. But would anyone argue those things are not important? Sadly, I think there is a bigger context however: for the past 30 years there has been a progressive narrowing of the vision of what publicly-funded adult learning is for. This reached its apotheosis in the 2022-3 FE Funding and Accountability consultation, which attempted to limit the purposes of Community Learning funding to narrow economic outcomes (and, for example, did not even mention Family Learning in the entire document). That was partially reversed, but the language of the current funding rules makes clear that any wider purposes are considered to be clearly subsidiary; the push to eliminate them altogether will undoubtedly return. This is the same cynicism that provides the justification for university tuition fees: we all only pursue learning so we can earn more money, right?