‘Unfair’: Devon college set to axe 65 jobs amid funding shortfall

A south west college has shocked staff with plans to cut 65 jobs in a bid to secure its “long-term financial sustainability”.

South Devon College, whose main campus is in Paignton, opened a consultation with union representatives about the “potential redundancies” this week.

A college spokesperson said management took the “necessary decision” to cut 65 full time equivalent jobs after a period of “rigorous financial planning and review” earlier this year.

They added: “The decision to restructure has not been taken lightly.

“But, it is essential to securing the college’s long-term financial sustainability, ensuring it continues to deliver outstanding education and support for current and future students.”

The job cuts outlined to union officials include 47 academic, nine management, and 17 other roles, some of which may be part-time, FE Week understands.

It comes as other colleges in the south west are also grappling with financial issues, including reports of up to 100 job cuts at Truro and Penwith College, and proposed mergers between Bridgwater and Taunton College and Strode College, and Exeter College and Petroc College.

South Devon College said it is facing rising costs and increased competition “like many colleges and other organisations nationally”.

Nick Varney, regional official for the south west University and College Union, said notice of the redundancies came as a “real shock” on Monday evening.

He suggested the cuts are “unfair” as they target the “hardest working” staff in the college.

A strategic assessment in the college’s most recent accounts, for 2023-24, blames short-to-medium term underfunding due to the “lagged funding model”, which caused an estimated shortfall of £800,000 during the year.

During that year, the college recorded a £739,000 deficit on a total income of £36 million, however it has £16 million in unrestricted reserves.

The college declined to share its current financial health rating, as assessed under the Department for Education guidance, which colleges typically publish in their accounts.

But according to its accounts, the college has a “clear strategy and action plan” to return its financial health to ‘good’ by 2025-26.

The accounts said: “The college is engaged in ever-ongoing work on determining where forward efficiencies will need to be made whilst maintaining capacity and the ability to grow, minimising as far as possible impact on quality delivery, and also recognising short and medium term (until 2028) demographic upside gain.”

Since 2020, South Devon College’s staff numbers have grown from 567 to 724, while income has remained at about £36 million.

The Torbay council area that the college serves has a population of about 136,000 people, nearly half of whom are aged 50 or over, with only about eight per cent of residents aged 16 to 24.

According to the council’s accountability statement, the area “suffers from several issues common to coastal towns” including a low-wage, low-skill economy that is “over-reliant on seasonal tourism and is now “one of the weakest in the country”.

FE Commissioner tells ‘inadequate’ college to rebuild reputation

A small but “vital” college in Cumbria has been told to rebuild its reputation by the FE Commissioner following an ‘inadequate’ Ofsted verdict as it battles with declining student numbers.

Furness College’s “future sustainability and long-term resilience” is currently being tested through a structure and prospects appraisal (SPA), which includes exploring whether to stay as a standalone college or merge with another.

The FE Commissioner Shelagh Legrave intervened at the college after Ofsted dealt its lowest possible grade in October 2024 due to a raft of leadership and governance failures.

Legrave’s report, completed in December but only published by the Department for Education today, detailed how a new senior management team was appointed in 2023-24 but was “comparatively inexperienced” and “many” have “little experience outside of Furness College”.

A new chair, Gary Lovatt, joined the college in October 2024 after Ofsted’s judgment and while Legrave said he is an “experienced non-executive board member”, Lovatt has “limited FE experience”.

Her report said the board “must ensure there is sufficient capacity in board membership to place teaching, learning and assessment at the core of college business”.

This is “likely” to include the appointment of new governors “and/or the appointment of a co-opted governor(s) as a short/medium term intervention”.

An independent external board review (EBR) is also needed, which should “focus on how the governing body supports and holds the college senior management team to account”.

‘Focus on improving staff morale’

Furness College, which took on Barrow-in-Furness Sixth Form College in 2016 through a merger, teaches almost 2,000 students.

Legrave’s report said the “geographically isolated college” plays a “vital role in respect of its local communities” and nationally. But it also highlighted Ofsted’s criticism that the college is making a “limited contribution” to skills needs.

Barrow is ranked as the 31st most deprived out of 317 lower tier local authorities and is where the BAE Systems Maritime Submarines shipyard builds the UK’s nuclear submarines.

Furness College is financially healthy, but overall learner numbers are declining – a trend which is set to worsen due to a falling demographic of young people in the area.

Achievement and retention are also in a three-year decline and work to improve low attendance is “not yet having the impact needed”, Legrave’s report said.

It added that the “generally positive outturn forecasting” for the college’s key performance indicators (KPIs) is a “reflection of leaders’ ambition and commitment to rapid reversal of decline”, but achievement of these will “necessitate relentless and rapid action”.

As part of her recommendations, Legrave said the college must ensure its reputation across both internal and external key stakeholders improves, by implementing a “comprehensive and impactful communications strategy, and that the college grows its student cohorts”.

The communications effort must involve a “very focused approach on improving staff morale but also ensuring support mechanisms are in place (CPD strategy) to enable staff to deliver high quality education and skills training; underpinned by clear lines of accountability”.

‘Progress has been made in some areas’

The report also said the strategic importance of BAE systems means that the college should consider the recruitment of a specialist contracts manager, to “both ensure the college maximises the opportunities of the Barrow Transformation Fund and the partnership opportunities with BAE systems, but also to mitigate management distraction and to ensure the current management team are fully focused on improving the college’s Ofsted grade”.

In a joint statement, Furness College principal Nicola Cove and chair Gary Lovatt said: “We remain very disappointed with the Ofsted inspectors’ findings. We do however welcome the FE Commissioner’s office recently published intervention report following their visit in December 2024, and their ongoing support as our college goes through its improvement journey.

“It is encouraging to see that at that time the report was written, it was noted that progress has been made in some areas since the Ofsted Inspection, such as continuous professional development of leaders, managers and staff and an improved use of data to enable challenge and decision making. Five months on from that visit, I am pleased to say that all of the six recommendations are already well underway.”

The college’s leaders said that the SPA “has commenced” and is being overseen by the FE Commissioner’s office and board of governors.

“As said previously, we are focussed forward and want to give our ongoing reassurance to our students, parents, employers and stakeholders that everyone across college is committed to delivering all of these improvements,” the statement added.

Adult functional skills axe makes change for under-19s more vital

After the initial euphoria following the government’s announcement about the removal of mandatory functional skills qualifications for adult apprentices, the reality has set in. While framed as a success, the decision raises several concerns.

Is this a well-intended policy shift or a cost-saving measure for the government cleverly disguised as responding to industry needs?

The reform only applies to apprentices aged 19 and over, but apprentices who begin their training at ages 16 to 18 are still required to study and achieve English and maths functional skills qualifications.

Research by the Fellowship of Inspection Nominees had previously identified the urgent need for functional skills reform, but not its removal, across all age groups, particularly for younger apprentices under 19 who arguably require the most support.

It suggested more practical and accessible functional skills with appropriate assessment methods rather than the current system that fails so many apprentices.

However, instead of addressing these concerns, the reform leaves under-19s behind, making their path more unappealing to employers, with the focus shifting onto 19-plus as a more attractive proposition.

In our work with training providers and employers, we consistently hear that English and maths skills remain critical.

Take, for example, a childcare apprentice responsible for documenting a child’s development, where good written communication is essential. Or, a young automotive apprentice who must accurately calculate the correct amount of AdBlue diesel fluid to use in vehicles.

When employers look in more depth at functional skills requirements, the additional time off the job needed to pass exams and examples of the exam papers, their opinions on them change.

Over 30 per cent of automotive learners are neurodiverse; they make great technicians but not all of them enjoyed learning English or maths in the way it is taught in schools. So instead of the currently funded functional skills model, employers across different sectors ask for their apprentices to engage in relevant and contextualised English and maths relevant to their business, such as calculating percentages.

Rather than an exam, employers would prefer to see evidence of a successful practical application of this contextualised learning in the form of a workplace assessment. For example, an apprentice hairdresser could demonstrate the calculation and communication needed to mix dye safely and correctly. The working knowledge would then be recorded in the apprentice’s handbook.

The big problem is providers are unable to access funding for this type of provision and the latest reforms may exacerbate it, creating a wave of instability across the sector.

And what about Ofsted? English and maths have been a firm favourite and highly valued by the inspectorate as an essential backdrop for all industries. Therefore, regardless of funding, inspectors are very likely to still judge a provider on how well maths and English is being developed to maximise career opportunities.

Under its present leadership, Ofsted’s focus will be on the most disadvantaged, many of whom will have struggled with these key subjects at school. And yet the government’s new policy will lead to providers having less funds available to teach them within an apprenticeship.

The decision to leave younger apprentices behind contradicts the very need for reform that stakeholders have identified.

As the study of functional skills is not exclusive to apprenticeships, we hope the Francis review will lead to the curricula becoming more ‘functional’ – always our preferred solution to removing the requirement to study for a test or assessment. “Nuanced” changes won’t be sufficient.

In the meantime, ministers are probably being advised to wait and see how the age-split decision will impact apprenticeship starts over the coming months for younger and adult apprentices respectively.

For 16 to 18 year olds, around 79,000 start a programme each year, almost a quarter of the whole cohort, and from our conversations with employers and providers, the Fellowship of Inspection Nominees can see the negative impact already.

Some young apprentices are missing out because when employers see over-19s come with a choice over functional skills qualifications, they become a more attractive option. And some 18-year-old applicants are being given a start date after their 19th birthday.

We must not wait to realign the English and maths requirements for apprentices who are aged under 19.

Don’t believe the hype – Skills England isn’t doomed to failure

After much debate and scrutiny, the legislation dissolving the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE) has passed through Parliament and the process of moving its functions to Skills England has officially started.

I have read a lot of articles arguing Skills England will have no teeth, that it does not possess the resources to make a difference and that, as an executive body of the Department for Education, it will not be able to make use of statutory powers as IfATE did, something that those with an understanding of constitutional law and process will know is not true.

This week the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI) highlighted the narrative that Skills England will “feed into” and “inform” policy rather than having teeth. The Financial Times reported that a shrinking vision and lack of “clout” would lead to an agency that would, to all intents and purposes, be stillborn.

With so much talk about the “significant headwinds” Skills England already faces, it is worth taking a moment to consider the ways in which this period of change offers opportunities to the education sector, as well as industry.

This is a chance for us to really shape and inform its development to ensure we get what we need. Skills England will need educators, employers and representatives of industry to be effective in the current challenging fiscal environment, where every arm’s length body will have to justify its value to the public purse. So, what can we do?

Mobilise as a cross-sectoral group

Our greatest strength as providers and employers is the way in which we have established close working relationships to understand the capabilities and needs of one another. We have long undertaken the activities at a local level that Skills England seeks to coordinate and streamline. We need to demonstrate this to Skills England as it establishes itself. By entering the conversation as a united front, we can help to shape the way in which Skills England operates, engages and supports the solutions we need.

Lend our expertise

We need to demonstrate our support for Skills England by offering to aid its mission in any way we can. As specialists in the areas in which we operate, we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to really show the government what is needed to make the skills system work, to ensure it is a system that ‘enables with us’ rather than ‘does to us’.

Supporting Skills England to meet our needs

Skills England has been criticised for a narrow focus on industry priority skills, but it has a much more critical role to play in speeding up qualification approval and revision, bringing clarity over funding, and providing a focus on innovation in delivery and meaningful FE/HE integration. We need to ensure these matters remain high on the list of priorities and are not lost in the surrounding noise.

Be the solution

Linking to our expertise, we have the opportunity to show Skills England the solutions that work, the methods we have tried, those that have succeeded and those that have failed. Radical new action is not necessarily what’s needed here. Instead we need to double down on the things that do work, especially as content and mode of learning is reformed to meet oncoming technological and societal challenges.

A call to action

Industry and educators must work together to shape how Skills England evolves, and support the translation of national priorities in regionally contextualised action that can be delivered locally within our communities. As City & Guilds CEO Kirstie Donnelly said last year when speaking about the new body, we have an opportunity to really come together to influence and build something great.

I have heard too much talk of Skills England being a divisive tool that will not effect change. Together we can change the narrative.

We had to face facts, our college didn’t deliver what it needed to

No college wants to be faced with an Ofsted downgrading but that’s exactly the situation we were confronted with almost a year ago. I won’t lie, it hurt.

Yet here we are 12 months on and in what many would call a ‘remarkable turnaround’, SCCB has been recognised as the most improved further education institution in the UK, following publication of the latest National Achievement Rates Tables (NARTs).

For 16-18 full-time education and training provision, SCCB secured an improvement rate of 13.3 per cent. That’s something to be proud of!

Whilst some may argue that ‘the only way was up’, we’d rather focus on the fact that our achievement rates have enjoyed such a significant improvement.

Yet this is about more than statistics. It’s about the journey our whole college community – everyone from the governors, to teaching staff, management and students, and everyone else in between – has been on, and the invaluable lessons we’ve all learned along the way. Lessons, we believe, that stand as an example to other colleges in a similar situation.

Following our Ofsted inspection (in which we were rated as ‘requires improvement’), we made it our mission to not just improve, but to become the best college in the country.

Of course that doesn’t happen overnight, and it very much remains the goal that we’re all working towards.

However, setting that level of aspiration served as the starting point for a series of steps that we’ve worked through – and in many instances, continue to work through – that helped to cement our focus and commitment and to justify the investment that would drive forward our path to improvement.

From the outset this has been a collective experience across the entire SCCB community. We’re a college spread across eight distinct campuses which means that silos of information or communication could so easily occur. We couldn’t allow that to happen.

We’ve strategically refocused all areas of the college so every department aligns with the overarching goal of creating a high-performance culture.

This has been complemented by significant investment in staff development, the implementation of a robust quality assurance programme to better support teaching and learning, and a steadfast focus on the learning experience in the classroom.

However, the step we took that I believe made the greatest impact is one that stemmed from a position of humility. Our college wasn’t delivering what it needed to, and we needed to improve that quickly.

This experience wasn’t unique; other colleges have gone through similar and turned a corner. We knew there were lessons to be learned.

With support from the Association of Colleges, we engaged with around 25 colleges across the country from which we believed valuable lessons could be learned.

Key figures from throughout our college’s leadership and management teams spoke with counterparts nationwide to discuss best practice across a broad range of topics that included attendance, work experience and employer engagement.

This approach required us to take an often-difficult look at ourselves but was absolutely the right way to proceed.

All the college staff we met demonstrated support and a willingness to share their own experiences.

Among those who deserve special mention for taking the time to not only speak with managers from SCCB on MS Teams but also welcome them to their own colleges are Zoe Lewis at Middlesbrough College, Dr Fazal Dad at Blackburn College, and Tony Mangan at Moulton College. We also took away valuable guidance and learnings from the teams at Leeds Luminate, Chichester, Hull, Burnley and Kirklees. 

Our journey is ongoing, and we’re determined to not lose any of the momentum that we’ve gained over the past year. There is an air of optimism at SCCB and we’re looking forward to continued improvement in the months ahead.

‘Gateway’ colleges must be key to Labour’s growth plan

The central pledge of Labour’s election manifesto was to ‘kickstart economic growth’.  

But one element holding that growth back is the lack of appropriate skills among our workforce, with 80 per cent of organisations reporting they struggled to recruit skilled talent last year.   

To address this skills gap, we need to recognise there is a huge educational divide in the UK.

While the largest proportion of the population holds a qualification at Level 4 or higher (27.2 per cent), almost one in five adults in England and Wales have no qualifications, and a further 23 per cent only hold Level 1 or 2 qualifications.

This educational shortfall ramps up pressure on government finances through universal credit claims, given essential skills attainment reduces the likelihood of being out of work or education by half.  

If ministers truly want to kickstart economic growth they must tackle this huge deficit in essential skills. Doing so will increase the supply of badly-needed intermediately-skilled individuals, and widen the pipeline for those able to progress to higher levels of education.  

One way to achieve this is by supporting the creation not just of the technical excellence colleges that the government is planning, but also complementary institutions with a focus on essential skills. These provide the gateway to further learning and employment opportunities that could help overcome the impact of the recently announced 6 per cent cut in the national adult skills budget for non-devolved areas. 

The creation of LSBU Group has tested this concept by repositioning Lambeth College to focus on gateway provision.

With an emphasis on essential skills, including English and maths, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), adult education and special educational needs and disability education, the college offers programmes designed for people from a wide range of backgrounds so they can re-engage in education.

We’re providing progression routes into higher levels of technical or vocational education and – through links with local employers – good job prospects. 
 
For example, health is one of the fastest–growing employment sectors in Lambeth and surrounding boroughs.

Lambeth College’s expertise in English and maths has enabled us to develop a Higher Development Award programme supporting clinical and non-clinical staff to progress in their careers, providing a pathway into nursing associate, allied health professionals or registered nurse roles.

The programme teaches management skills and, crucially, includes English and maths at Level 2. As a result, several hundred students have been able to achieve on programmes previously out of their reach, with at least half of those completing the course progressing onto nursing associate and other health-related apprenticeships. 
 
In addition to the opportunity for immediate employment opportunities, because of Lambeth College’s position within LSBU Group, the curriculum has been designed so direct pathways exist for learners seeking to progress into local higher levels of education at London South Bank Technical College (levels 3 and 4) and London South Bank University (levels 5, 6 and 7), where the curriculum has similarly been designed in close partnership with local employers. 
 
A network of local gateway colleges across the country would be well placed to serve those who have previously been failed by the education system or face some form of societal or economic exclusion.

With their focus on ensuring students develop essential skills for lifelong learning and vocational skills for employability, gateway colleges not only offer a chance to boost economic prosperity but enable learners to improve their wellbeing.

Such an ambition will never be possible without adequate funding within the adult skills budget and additional funding for 16-19 ‘catch-up’ learners who lack these qualifications.

If the government is serious about growing the economy, then investing in tackling our basic skills crisis should be the first step. 

Locked-up young offenders know each other… now we know why

My first visit to a Young Offenders Institute (YOI) left me reeling. I’d been inside adult prisons before, but nothing prepared me for the heart-wrenching reality of children in that environment.

I remember my sadness at seeing a pile of familiar children’s books, including Jacqueline Wilson’s book Sleepovers, outside the cell of a boy who had to be unlocked by three prison officers wearing riot gear.

The biggest shock was that the children seemed to know each other from before they were incarcerated.

To understand why this is shocking, you need to understand what’s actually a huge success story. For the last two decades, the number of incarcerated children has fallen drastically; from almost 3,000 in 2008 to around 400 now.

There are roughly two million 15-17 year olds in England and Wales. Yet when these 400 arrive in custody and are asked to name anybody they know inside (to help minimise gang problems), many reel off a list.

Some in the sector have long suspected the only way this is possible is if many of these children came from a very small number of hyper-localised areas, but we’ve never been able to prove it. Until now.

In February, groundbreaking data was released by the Children’s Commissioner’s Office. By matching local authority data for each child in custody between 2017 and 2022 with the National Pupil Database, we could see for the first time at an aggregate level where this group went to school. The results are fascinating.

The headline findings paint a clearer picture as to how these children know each other. What jumps out is startling geographic concentration – 36 per cent of children in YOIs had attended schools in the West Midlands. And 20 per cent of all those in custody between 2017 and 2022 went to the same six schools!

It’s also striking that the most common setting for these children pre-custody was FE college (30 per cent). 

So, what needs to be done?

Many children in custody are extremely challenging, but most are also hugely vulnerable. Rather than lowering our expectations of what they can achieve, we need to hugely ramp up the support we offer them to get there.

Educational attainment, specifically English and maths GCSE, is the strongest protective factor against becoming NEET, and one of the most common traits seen in prisoners is functional illiteracy and innumeracy. 

Our compulsory education system ends at 18, but funding to support young people falls off a cliff at 16. Meanwhile, FE disproportionately picks up those with furthest to go: over 90 per cent of students retaking English and maths GCSEs are not in mainstream school settings.

In FE there are twice as many students who were eligible for free school meals in year 11, but many 16-17 year olds still need intensive help to engage with education.

Targeted funding for disadvantaged young people, provided to schools through pupil premium funding, needs to extend post-16. It can then be spent on, amongst other things, helping them catch up with literacy and numeracy.

I sit on the board of FE tutoring charity Get Further, and see firsthand how hugely impactful targeted interventions can be for this cohort.

Teacher pay in FE is also considerably less than in schools, making it harder to attract and retain the best staff.

Ten years ago, I contentiously suggested that schools subsidise FE colleges to help fund maths and English retakes. This isn’t feasible in the current funding climate, but the rationale is sound: we need to reallocate funds to those institutions that serve the young people who need more support to achieve academic success.

When I speak to children in YOIs about what works, they talk about highly structured education settings with high behaviour expectations and intensive pastoral care. It’s notable that only 8 per cent of children in custody came from an education setting rated outstanding by Ofsted.

Early intervention isn’t a silver bullet: some people will get great education and wonderful support but still make terrible decisions and have to be remanded in custody.

But there are too many avoidable cases of young people without the right support. We need to be more deliberate about meeting additional need with extra resource.

The AI evangelism is class war…this is the last chance to resist

“You wouldn’t pass the Turing Test!” As a nerdy teenager, it was my go-to burn for sportier tormentors.

It’s doubtful they understood my reference to the test of a machine’s ability to pass itself off as human. Now, adults who wouldn’t pass the Turing Test dominate news-column inches with their evangelism for a technology that has just bluffed its way to surpassing them.

In the mid-1980s I had the game ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’ on my Amstrad 464, which learned from each round you played with it.

AI was lame then, and its 2025 descendants, ChatGPT, Gemini and DeepSeek, aren’t much better. It’s not that I haven’t tried to engage, it’s just that what they produce is usually plagiarised, or wrong, or garbage quality.

But you have to know what good looks like to see that, I suppose.

Neither they nor the technology know what they don’t know

It’s one thing to waste your own time creating inane images of personalised action figures to post on Bebo, but no filter is being applied before wasting education funding that would be better spent on teachers and CPD.

Those clueless about pedagogy are advocating we hand it over to AI, because neither they nor the technology know what they don’t know.

That couldn’t be better illustrated than in the recent news of a government-funded tool to assess the quality of students’ soldering in technical qualifications with an AI app. It will save teachers “minutes”.

Let’s leave aside for a moment the inherent benefit of a teacher having an opportunity to meaningfully check a student’s progress. After all, we wouldn’t want to do anything to suggest FE teachers add a professional, human value beyond what an app can do. Otherwise, we might have to give them a pay rise.

Let’s also ignore that you don’t need AI to test soldering, you could just try running a current through it.

Instead, let’s consider all the progress made in feedback and assessment in the last two decades. In theory, the days of students seeking validation for first attempts with no self-improvement are long gone. The sheer number of dull meetings I’ve attended about green and purple pens, and self-marking, and Directed Improvement and Reflection Time (I still shudder at that acronym) would certainly make me hope so.

But rather than having a student grab a multimeter and check their soldering themselves, this app bypasses the actual learning.

Let’s be honest, circuit-boards are mass-soldered by machines anyway. In the minds of the edtech bros advocating for this AI nonsense, we’re only humouring disadvantaged students on technical courses with the dream of working in electronics until they can drive the van that delivers new, Chinese-built electronic goodies.

Real educators see something different. They see mountains of e-waste and the value that a skilled human can bring to ensuring the sustainability of technology.

They don’t begrudge a student formative feedback, although they probably expect that the student does their own diagnostic work first. And teaching how to use a multimeter is higher on their agenda than a wasteful and damaging taxpayer-funded gimmick.

As with every edtech fad, it’s students from poorer backgrounds who are inevitably the guinea pigs and who pay the price in their outcomes and experience.

I imagine AI probably can plan lessons and mark better than the least effective teachers. But the real solution is more funding for better recruitment and training.

If teaching is just about meeting a low bar, and an app beats the weakest 5 per cent of human staff to it, then pay will plateau at that percentile. What we need is for teacher pay to be set aspirationally to raise the profession to an elite.

When state-funded education ends up palmed off onto a jumped-up Tamagotchi, those with the resources to make the choice will opt to pay extra for skilled and compassionate humans. And so the disadvantage gap will widen. The AI evangelism is class war.

This is the last chance to resist. Keep planning your lessons because planning your lessons makes you a better teacher and exercises the professional creativity that is part of what makes the job brilliant.

Keep marking because it makes your students feel valued, and good lord, they need that.

Most importantly, keep remembering AI is a parlour trick that couldn’t exist without the sum of human knowledge and creativity it feeds on.

Mayday for adult education this International Worker’s Day

International Workers’ Day—also known as Labour Day or May Day—is a global celebration of labourers and the working classes, promoted by the international labour movement and marked each year on 1 May, or the first Monday in May in the UK.

While traditionally associated with trade unions and campaigns for better pay and safer working conditions, May Day also invites us to consider another essential worker’s right—access to lifelong learning. And in 2025, that right is increasingly under threat.

The Working Men’s College (WMC/ WM College), founded in 1854, was created in response to the same inequalities that gave rise to the first May Day marches. At a time when education was the preserve of the privileged WMC opened its doors to working people, offering access to liberal and technical education—equipping them not just to work, but to think, create and lead.

This vision is shared by many adult community education organisations and Holex members, including the WEA which has championed education for social justice and community empowerment since the early 20th century.

Together, these institutions demonstrate that adult education is not just about qualifications. It’s about opportunity, confidence, participation, and creating space for working people to reimagine their futures.

The modern struggles facing adult learners

But today, that vision is being tested.

In recent months, many sector voices have raised concerns about the erosion of adult learning opportunities in the UK. The government’s emphasis on skills for productivity—while important—often overlooks the broader value of adult education in supporting mental health, personal growth, community cohesion, and active citizenship.

Funding cuts, a squeezed adult education budget, and ongoing uncertainty around devolution have created a tough environment for adult education providers—including colleges, local authorities, and third-sector organisations. At the same time, the rising cost of living—especially in cities like London—means working people face more barriers than ever when trying to access education. Time, travel, childcare, and course costs all act as obstacles.

Without meaningful investment, thousands of adults’ risk being locked out of the opportunities that could transform their lives. This is happening at a time when over one million more older workers have moved into economic inactivity since the pandemic. In many cases, these are people who want to reskill, re-engage, or contribute differently—but lack the support and access to do so.

Adult education is a workers’ rights issue

This May Day, we should remember that the right to learn is also a workers’ right. From retraining after redundancy to accessing creative outlets that support wellbeing, adult education is a lifeline for millions.

Adult education as a driving force of social mobility and equality is key —something that The Working Men’s College has championed since its founding by social reformers like Frederick Denison Maurice and John Ruskin.  Adult education helps workers stay current with new tools, systems and best practice, it gives choices over career paths and often improves self-esteem, confidence and economic independence.

We believe that adult learning should not be a luxury or afterthought—it must be a priority. One that is embedded in any genuine effort to support working people through economic change.

Standing together for the future

This May 1st, as we commemorate the struggles and triumphs of the working class, we are reminded that the right to learn—like the right to fair wages and safe working conditions—has always been central to the fight for dignity and justice. Just as May Day was born from the desire for better working conditions, today we must continue that fight by demanding greater access to adult learning opportunities for all.

At WM College, we honour the legacy of those early social reformers who understood that true empowerment comes from knowledge. Our mission remains rooted in their vision: providing accessible, inclusive, and empowering learning opportunities that enable people to adapt, thrive, and lead.

Let us remember that the fight for workers’ rights, including the right to education, is as vital today as it was on that first May Day.