Adult skills funding cuts have lead to a college running out of funds for the academic year by early September, its principal has said.

Speaking at a Labour Party conference fringe event hosted by thinktank SMF this morning, Croydon College’s chief executive and principal, Caireen Mitchell, said: “Adult funding has been cut by 45 per cent. By 5 September this year, I’d used all my adult skills funding for the complete academic year.

“I’ve got 200 people on a waiting list who want to do English, maths etc. It’s a real issue for us. We have applied for extra funding but we won’t get any until January or February time, we have a list of 200 people who we can’t provide an education for at this time,” she said.

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Not enough attention

Speaking at the same event, Labour’s shadow FE minister acknowledged the party had not focused sufficiently on further education in the early 2010s. 

He said: “Our party to be frank, at a point, in early 2010, didn’t give enough attention to FE either… that’s one of the reasons why we’ve been bolder, and much more straight-forward and put so much more emphasis on FE and particularly on lifelong learning.”

He added he hoped the report of lifelong learning would be published by the end of the year, and said that FE would be a key in many of the report’s recommendations.

Mr Marsden said that a lack in funding had taken away the sector’s ability to take action. He pointed towards his local college in Blackpool, and said that there was a palpable frustration at the college for not being able to help 19 to 24-year-olds due to a lack of funding.

He stressed that being able to offer a wide range both pre and post-19 courses was vital to the survival of colleges.

“These things do not exist in silos, although they seem to exist in silos for [Department for Education] civil servants and some ministers, but if you’re a college you need a mixed economy, this is a practical thing. You need to have pre and post 19 learners.

“If you don’t get those funding streams with that mixed economy, it’s not just vital for their inclusion and the communities the colleges serve, it’s vital for their survival by sustaining a wide range of courses and income,” he said.