Job losses in colleges – things did not get much worse last year

The college sector has had a bad few weeks. As a consequence of the funding squeeze, especially the painful reductions in adult skills budgets for 2014/15, there have been redundancy programmes announced at FE colleges across the country: Brighton, Kingston, St Helens, Stratford-upon-Avon.

There was some slightly brighter news tucked away in the Skills Funding Agency release of 2012/13 financial accounts for the college sector. Tucked away in the numbers, the number of teaching staff full-time equivalents in colleges fell by only 1% last year compared with 5% in 2010/11 and 6% in 2011/12.

This is not a good news story. There are still over 100 FE colleges in deficit and the number of sixth form colleges with losses doubled. We are only half way through the Coalition’s austerity programme and things won’t be much easier with a different government. The 2013/14 figures might well see an acceleration in job cuts.