This service has existed as part of Telford & Wrekin Council for over 20 years and has always been focussed on providing high-quality learning opportunities for the people of Telford & Wrekin.
The service receives funding from Central Government via the Education & Skills Funding Agency for the provision of adult education and community learning.
Although the service has existed for over 20 years it has changed a great deal in that time. Education policy is constantly changing and evolving, which means the service is always having to adapt to the new directions, initiatives and funding that comes hand-in-hand in policy change. This is also set in the context of reductions to local government funding which has challenged the service to run as efficiently as possible.
Originally the service operated with a wide range of sub-contractors delivering courses on our behalf, with only family learning courses being delivered directly by us. However, this has changed significantly over the few years and today almost all courses are delivered directly by our team. One of the main reasons for this change was to ensure we could deliver the highest quality learning opportunities we could, directly to our local communities.
The service is inspected by Ofsted and through all the changes has maintained an overall rating of ‘Good’, however the most recent inspection in 2016 highlighted that our information, advice and guidance services (through the Council’s Job Box service) were outstanding. You can access our latest Ofsted report here.
Through our course provision we support around 1,500 people per year to learn new skills, through a wide range of courses. The reasons why people choose to come on our courses are many, but three quarters of them go on to further learning or employment shortly afterwards.
We aim to widen participation so that as many sections of the community as possible can experience the joy of learning and take advantage of the wider benefits that participation in learning brings, such as improved confidence, reduced social isolation, improved wellbeing, improved social cohesion and increased civic participation.
The service also aims to contribute to improving the skills and employment levels of the borough by supporting with adults who are low-skilled, unemployed or otherwise distant from learning and employment through learning to improve their skills and employment prospects.
