By Rashleigh MacFarlane
County Hall is bracing for a volley of tough questions about adult education, following devolution of the service from Whitehall to Truro last year.
The adult education service specialises in literacy, numeracy, information technology and English as a second language. The latter has proven particularly popular with Ukrainian refugees. The service also offers a wide range of training in arts and crafts.
But the first thing that Cornwall Council did when it got its hands on an extra £10 million from the Department for Education last year, as part of its celebrated "level 2" devolution deal, was to hire three members of staff tasked with cutting the adult education budget.
These officials looked at the usual metrics, such as the number of “clients” and the costs of delivering what Ofsted had previously rated as a “good” service.
Aiming for “value for money” the draft adult education budget is now out for consultation.
As a result, seven of Cornwall’s 17 adult education centres are now facing closure. Five of those on the hit-list are in North and South East Cornwall.
The centres facing the chop are based in Camelford, Callington, Torpoint, Saltash, Launceston, Penzance and St Austell. Centres in Bude, Newquay, Liskeard, St Dennis, Bodmin, Helston, Truro, Camborne, Hayle and Falmouth will remain open.
A petition against the cuts, launched only last week, has already attracted nearly 500 signatures.
County Hall aims to start commissioning its “home-grown” version of an adult education service by January. Successful providers will be notified by May.
The implications of the council’s slash-and-burn approach to the North and East of Cornwall, however, go far beyond adult education.
Many people resident in these areas also look to Devon for their healthcare, with acute hospitals in Barnstaple, Exeter and Plymouth closer to home than Truro. As centres for economic activity, these parts of Devon provide many more jobs than Cornwall.
