Boris, Beer and FE cuts - Ian Nash's Blog

As further huge cuts in state spending on key areas of adult education begin to bite could the new Mayor of London Boris Johnson emerge as an unlikely saviour?

After a one-year reprieve from severe cuts in such funding, the capital faces a massive shortfall in central Government support needed to meet expected demands in particular for English for speakers of other languages.

For example, East London College, one of the largest in the UK dealing with a substantially migrant population, reckons it will be £500,000 short and, like most colleges, may have to review staffing levels.

London, and to a lesser extent Manchester and Birmingham, escaped proposed draconian cuts last year after Bill Rammell, the further and higher education minister, admitted that the Government had underestimated the levels of ESOL demand. And, though it exceeded Treasury agreed levels, extra cash would be found for a stay of execution to large parts of provision.

The u-turn by ministers followed a massive campaign led by the University and College Union. Now after a short postponement, however, big cuts will come. The Association of Colleges and National Institute for Adult Continuing Education are concerned that colleges cannot even predict the extent of the cuts, or plan properly, since the announcement of specific budgets from the Learning and Skills Council has been delayed.

However, Simon Beer, Niace regional development officer for London, is clear that the cuts will be extreme. “We know there is demand we cannot meet and the cuts will be worse next year. In fact, the waiting list is worse than it has been for 10 years.”

Two developments could rescue some of the provision. First, the new Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has surprisingly sanctioned the relatively liberal adult education package drawn up by Ken Livingstone and the London Skills and Employment Board. With decentralised control, colleges hope some of the cash can be earmarked for ESOL and other crucial needs.

Second, and this is likely to figure more prominently in developments nationwide, Niace is training-up people to do volunteer and self-organised work outside and alongside colleges and other formal structures of education. This is a well-trodden path historically and led in its time, with the help of the trade unions, to the creation of organisations such as the Workers Educational Association. It will cause more than a frisson with the same unions now, however, if free or cheap labour is seen to undercut salaries of staff for who redundancy may loom. So care must be taken in the implementation of such policies.

Increased emphasis on the voluntary organisations - what New Labour described as the “third” sector - is now seen as a central policy driver by all the main political parties. Again, Boris Johnson is keen on it. But how will it work? Like the National Lottery, it starts as a fund for good causes beyond the mainstream, with a promise that it will not be a substitute for state funding. But such definitions change over time and such clear distinctions are bound to blur then vanish.

The real test therefore will be the extent to which third sector organisations will gain access to state support though criteria based on newly identified need and not as a means of under-cutting more costly - but maybe more effective - mainstream provision. In other words, volunteer labour must be linked to expansion, not contraction.

Simon Beer believes this can be an effective route to growth in urgently-needed provision. “This is part of a much wider development for London where we hope, through the new strategy, to see a clear alignment of resources across different parts of government - education, health, social welfare, offender support and the rest.”

But, wait a minute, surely this was the pledge of New Labour ten years back for lifelong learning under the stewardship of the then Education Secretary David Blunkett. If so, why did they delay for so long? Not that history lessons count for much in government thinking. And if it means better deployment of resources and effective joined-up government, the needy who benefit will not care which party wins the kudos.

However, this will require more than a rubber-stamping by Boris of an existing plan for greater London. There are, for Simon Beer, a whole lot of other issues that need to follow in its train. He and others are concerned that, with the Government emphasis on “skills” and the Mayor’s demand for tougher punishments for crime, some of the best provision - mainstream or voluntary - may not stand a chance.

There is likely for example, to be increased emphasis on “parenting skills” at the cost of broader “family learning”, he says. “We should be able to maintain spending on family learning and offer a shift towards parenting.”

Then there is Boris Johnson’s punitive reaction to crime in the capital. “I have concerns about this. At Niace, we did a study around guns and gangs for the Government. What we found was that adult learning organisations were not doing what they could if they had the resources - and it would not cost a lot.

“All this punitive stuff worries me. I agree we need more discipline but we also need more diversionary education away from gangs and crime.”

What Niace is also seeing is a growth in educational neglect of the “nearly poor” - women on low incomes are suffering badly, he says. “There’s single parent families in employment, low-paid black and minority ethnic groups, the lower-paid, lower demographic groups. And in London and the big cities it is exacerbated by the poverty traps around the costs of housing and how much you need to earn in order not to be struggling.”

The Livingstone adult learning plan for London, agreed by Johnson is skills-driven but has an in-built facility to avoid the narrow definition that critics feel dominates Government policy. “We are waiting to see just how far Boris will help make that happen,” says Simon Beer.