More than £630 million in adult education funds has been given to seven mayoral areas across England as part of the first wave of skills devolution.
The adult education budget cash has been allocated to six mayoral combined authorities and the Greater London Authority over a two-year period, with the sums for 2020-21 set to increase.
The metro mayors will then work with their combined authority colleagues to implement their respective skills plans using the budget that has been devolved from the Department for Education.
Read more: Devolution will widen skills gap, principal warns
More news: Need to know: what’s in London’s skills strategy?
Background: Authorities to receive almost £1m to help implement adult skills devolution
Devolved skills strategies
London receives almost half (49 per cent) of the funding over the two years. In London, devolution rules mean the funding was allocated to the Mayor of London and will be transferred to the Greater London Authority.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan released his Skills for Londoners strategy last June, which “aspires to create a single, integrated skills and adult education offer for London to deliver a more strategic, whole-system approach to post-16 skills”.
Last May, Mark Ravenhall, a senior research fellow at the Learning and Work Institute, said that the skills devolution would offer a chance for more "cross-cutting" between different policy areas under the control of mayors, like public health and transport.
Adult education budget funding allocations
- Cambridgeshire and Peterborough – £7,212,927 (2019-20), £4,300,125 (2020-21)*
- Greater London Authority – £191,987,714 (2019-20), £114,457,161 (2020-21)*
- Greater Manchester – £58,013,818 (2019-20), £34,586,051 (2020-21)*
- Liverpool City Region – £32,189,715 (2019-20), £19,190,516 (2020-21)*
- Tees Valley – £18,448,244 (2019-20), £10,998,275 (2020-21)*
- West of England – £9,234,233 (2019-20), £5,505,165 (2020-21)*
- West Midlands – £78,712,985 (2019-20), £46,926,257 (2020-21)*
- Total: £395,799,636 (2019-20), £235,963,550 (2020-21)*
*The final allocations for 2020-21 will be confirmed in January 2020 and will be higher.
