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Authorities to receive almost £1 million to help implement adult skills devolution

Authorities to receive almost £1 million to help implement adult skills devolution

Plans to implement adult education devolution were delayed by a year, but now authorities have been allocated cash to get the ball rolling

6th March 2018, 5:34pm

George Ryan

Metro mayors will get almost £1 million of matched funding to implement the devolution of the adult education budget.

Letters were sent to six mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) and the Greater London Authority (GLA) today outlining the amount they would receive in the next two months to prepare for devolution.

Implementation activities were set out by each authority in the business cases to the Department for Education (DfE) last autumn. A total £914,491 of matched funding will now be made available for the combined authorities and the GLA.

Starting in 2019

The seven areas will take on responsibility to deliver adult education, and receive the funding for it, beginning in the 2019 academic year - subject to meeting the DfE’s “readiness conditions”.

A transitional year for MCAs will start in September, at the beginning of the new academic year, to give authorities time to trial their adult education policies and frameworks before devolution fully comes into force.

During the transitional year, the Education and Skills Funding Agency will continue to manage the adult education budget nationally, and will be responsible for calculating allocations and notifying all providers.

The adult education budget was due to be devolved from August 2018 but the government’s Industrial Strategy - published in January 2017 - announced a delay to the timeframe.