So why are ministers choosing to cut budgets rather than raising taxes on those with the broadest shoulders in this grossly unequal society of ours?
You can see the press release from the WEA – the Workers’ Educational Association, here. The successive cuts to lifelong learning budgets over recent decades has had a devastating impact on their ability to organise and put on programmes for learning. They used to be a prominent part of civic life in Cambridge until the late 20th Century.
Given the huge challenges facing society, and given how a lifelong learning renaissance has to be at the heart of the response, it’s astonishing that ministers are proposing further cuts. As even their own MPs asked in the face of the announcement on cuts to disabled people’s support funding (something likely to affect me as a PIP recipient), why a Labour government of all parties in power, is proceeding with such policies when there are so many other alternatives.
Larry and Paul called them out just before the 2024 general election.
What the WEA is calling for:
- “Reverse the short-sighted cuts to the national and devolved Adult Skills Funds
- Restore the adult education budget overall to 2010 levels by the end of Parliament
- Rebalance the responsibility for community adult education across multiple Government departments to reflect its contribution to health and community building
- Ringfence an uplift for the post-19 workforce who are yet to see the same funding uplifts as teachers and college lecturers“
Above – WEA Press Release March 2025
I agree – this is something that I’ve complained about for years. In Cambridgeshire’s case I’ve focused on:
- the lack of funding (in particular the inability of the Combined Authority to tax the wealth generated in the economic sub-region to pay for retraining of adults that want to switch careers
- the lack of venues and institutions capable of providing and hosting retraining workshops and courses
- The narrow focus on vocational skills for a small fraction of the wider community – noting that alternatives don’t need to involve re-slicing the cake/pie, but making a much bigger one in the first place.
*Where is the holistic approach to adult education and lifelong learning that research recommends?*
I wrote about the above in the context of citizenship education.
“I tell you what: if someone put on a course of six months where they taught you:
- how different public services work,
- how funding is provided and allocated,
- how strategy is made in these services,
- how success is measured and current policy debates for each one …I would sign up like a shot”
Because as the WEA said in 2014, Democracy Matters
Above – via Ann Walker on Bluesky here
More than a ‘Nice to have’
The title of a conference from a couple of years ago – with all of the focus being on Sci-Tech, the risk is that the spaces the creati
Above – “Greater Cambridge’s adult education offer, Autumn 2023” – where I looked at a number of the shortcomings of the time.
Which also reminded me of a conversation I had with Naomh Campbell, Co-op Organiser for Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire who rocked up to my local co-op this lunchtime (The old Budgen’s on Perne Road/Cherry Hinton Road roundabout) on the need for outreach at community events – and some new, larger ones to find out what people want and need – and not just for employment. This was a follow-up to a conversation we had at the Museum of Cambridge a few months ago. Obviously the cuts in funding to both adult education and also Personal Independence Payments feel like a double-gut-punch. Because it’s gone in the opposite direction of the way – on adult education at least, I had hoped we would have gone in.
“Again, I remain stubborn in my call for an annual Cambridge Societies Fair which I first wrote about in 2012.”
Cambridge Town Owl – 19 June 2022
The Combined Authority Elections
A bold move for ministers to be taking such controversial decisions in the run-up to elections? As things stand, Phil Rodgers for the Cambridge Independent has predicted that the Conservatives are most likely to win the mayoralty (you’ll need to buy the paper to read his analysis). I still think it’s too close to call – not least because we’re still waiting to see if both The Greens and TeamNigel or an Independent will step forward as they did in 2017 – only that time the Single Transferable Voting System was used. Ministers have shown no indication that they will reverse the Tory change to First Past The Post. It would speak volumes if Labour lost the mayoralty because of incompetence in central government rather than because of the strength/weaknesses of the candidates actually standing.
Of the declared candidates, you can see their details here. Start sending in your questions to them!
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A reminder of the CPCA’s Shared Ambition consultation – which must include lifelong learning – surely?
The Cambridge Town Owl 