Mary Ward steps closer to Newham College merger

An historic adult learning college in east London is expected to merge with nearby Newham College to rescue it from financial turmoil.

The 130-year-old Mary Ward Centre, also known as the Mary Ward Settlement, is in government intervention due to financial difficulties linked to a campus relocation, rising costs, depleted reserves and insufficient tuition fee income.

In recent months, Therese Reinheimer-Jones, the college’s CEO, or “warden”, quietly left the organisation. It is now being led by deputy CEO Sue Craggs.

The proposed merger with a larger general FE college follows the same pattern as other standalone adult education institutions that have struggled with funding over the last decade, including Northern College, Hillcroft College and Ruskin College.

Colleges focusing on adult education have been increasingly strained by the government’s focus on the 16 to 18 age group.

An FE Commissioner-led structural prospects appraisal (SPA) was launched after the Mary Ward Centre asked the Department for Education for a £500,000 emergency loan last year.

According to the college’s accounts for the 2024-25 academic year, signed off in March, the “most likely outcome” of the merger is a transfer of assets and activities to Newham College.

However, neither college has made an announcement, and the decision remained subject to “a process of due diligence” and formal approval by the Mary Ward Centre’s board, the accounts added.

Commenting on the decline of historic adult education colleges, director of policy and external relations at Holex Sue Pember said: “As these historic institutions increasingly merge into the wider FE system there is a real risk that something special will disappear.

“We understand the financial and operational pressures behind these decisions, but the impact will be felt far beyond the institutions themselves and solutions could have been found.”

Updates as ‘process progresses’

Both Mary Ward and Newham College declined to provide details of the merger plans but promised “further updates in due course as the process progresses”.

It would be the second merger for Newham College in two years, after it absorbed Newham Sixth Form College in late 2024 following its ‘inadequate’ Ofsted rating.

The east London college group ended 2025 with an ‘outstanding’ financial health rating.

Newham College appears to be preferred over Capital City College, which also expressed interest in a merger, noting in recent board minutes that the Mary Ward Centre had debts of £4 million and an annual turnover of £4 million.

Craggs said the merger plans remained “in early discussions”.

When questioned about the reasons for Reinheimer-Jones’ departure, Craggs said she was “not at liberty to discuss personnel matters”.

Reinheimer-Jones’ exit came to light when FE Week received an automatic reply from her email address confirming she had left the college.

The former CEO, who joined the centre in 2023 and was previously director of student services at Sussex University, could not be reached for comment.

Cash crisis

The Mary Ward Centre’s financial crisis came in the aftermath of a major relocation of the so-called specialist designated institution from its central London base to Stratford, east London, in 2023.

For more than a century it had been based in Holborn, originating from the Victorian philanthropist “settlement” movement that fought to improve living conditions for the urban working-class through education and community.

The centre’s move to a new building in Stratford, that it refurbished and expanded at a cost of at least £14 million, was funded by loans and grants, including from the Greater London Authority.

But according to an FE Commissioner intervention report, the college was surprised by low cash levels due to “inadequate financial oversight” that included “manual” monitoring of student numbers and costs.

It ended the year to July 2025 with an operating deficit of £556,000 on an income of £3.9 million.

The Mary Ward Centre’s own assessment of the year was that its relocation resulted in “higher than expected” building running costs and required “significantly more” investment in curriculum, marketing and resources.

However, the college also said its enrolments and tuition fees were “up to 30 per cent” higher than during its final year in central London.

Its accounts added: “Our expectation is that in the short term, the centre will work towards a merger with Newham College, and that in the medium to long term, operations from The Mary Ward Centre in Stratford should ultimately see a return to much stronger financial sustainability, with the support of the merger partner and with corresponding careful budgetary management, increased student enrolments and higher average class sizes.”

Andy Forbes, director of the recently launched Centre for Advancement of Lifelong Learning (CALL), said the situation at the Mary Ward Centre was the “latest sad chapter in the story of the dismantling of adult education in England over the last decade”.

He told FE Week: “It’s an act of economic and social self-harm, contributing to the decline in community cohesion and the fragmentation of British society.

“In an era when people are living longer and experiencing more changes in technology during their working lives, we need more adult education, not less.”