Friday 21 July 2017
The Committee for Education, Sport & Culture can confirm that a review of the charges for Adult Community Learning is currently underway as part of measures to realise essential savings on the College of Further Education's budget.
'The reality is that many of the adult learning, specialist interest or craft courses run by the College of Further Education do not actually cover their costs, or in some cases anywhere near their costs,' said Committee President, Deputy Paul Le Pelley.
'We know that these courses are important to the community but we cannot continue to lose significant amounts of money by operating them in the way we do now. The Committee is working with the College to look at offering these courses on a full cost recovery basis as part of a move to bring the College's budget back in line with expectations.
'We have a very challenging task to realise the savings target we have been given by the States and have to look at all areas of our operations and make savings wherever we can. This means we have to make some difficult decisions and unfortunately we can no longer subsidise to the same level these adult community courses which have been running at a loss,' said Deputy Le Pelley.
College of Further Education Principal, Louise Misselke, confirmed that the new charges had not yet been finalised.
'We are very aware that the price increases will be challenging and we are working with the Committee to ensure that the College can continue to meet the community's expectations and provide a range of courses and opportunities to support lifelong learning. The fees have not yet been agreed although we do expect there to be increases. We are working on developing a pricing structure that will be published as part of our new prospectus which will be issued at the end of August,' said Mrs Misselke.
Deputy Le Pelley confirmed the Committee remained supportive of community learning and adult education.
'We know these courses are important to our community and provide a great level of enjoyment and participation which we don't want to lose. These courses are delivered by qualified tutors who are experts in their subject areas and we continue to believe they offer very real value for money. We must make sure we get the pricing structure right to continue this level of participation but also make the savings we have been tasked to make. We are aware there is a fine balance between the two,' said Deputy Le Pelley.
