Written evidence submitted by WEA [PDE 010]

1. The WEA is the UK’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult education in England and Scotland. Founded in 1903, the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) is a charity dedicated to bringing high-quality, professional education into the heart of communities. With the support of nearly 3,000 volunteers, 2,000 tutors and over 10,000 members, we deliver friendly, accessible and enjoyable courses for adults from all walks of life.

2. We have a special mission to raise aspirations and develop educational opportunities for the most disadvantaged. This includes providing basic maths, English and IT skills for employment; courses to improve health and wellbeing; creative programmes to broaden horizons and community engagement activities that encourage active citizenship.

3. As a national organisation focused on very local delivery we have considerable interest in devolution. Most of our students travel less than 3 miles to attend courses and our structure supports local branches and volunteers. We have developed partnerships with hundreds of community-based organisations usually to provide the local venues which host our courses. At the same time we operate in every English region and have received funding at a national level while our management and governance structure supports a fully integrated organisation not a federated one.

4. We would like to provide evidence to the Committee to illustrate the implications of devolution for national organisations such as ourselves who are committed to local delivery and also maintain a national structure. Our style of delivery creates opportunities for adult learners, often in disadvantaged backgrounds, to learn close to home and alongside people from their own community. Our national structure enables us to set a consistent strategic direction (recently updated in a new Strategic Plan which takes us to 2025) and to align resources where need is greatest. While devolution has presented new opportunities for us, it also brought unintended consequences which have disrupted and in one case curtailed our local delivery.

5. The Adult Education Budget (AEB), which is a core part of our funding, has been devolved from the central Education & Skills Funding Agency (ESFA) to Mayoral Combined Authorities and the Greater London Authority in cases where combined authorities have applied for this and have met the DfE readiness conditions. We have successfully bid for contracts and grants in nearly all devolved areas. We expect to engage with the skills and education strands of Local Industrial Strategies as they emerge across the country and we have built up strong links with partner organisations in all devolved areas as well as with the MCA/GLA skills teams.

6. Before the devolution of the AEB our main source of government funding came through a single national grant administered by the ESFA. Many other providers had a similar nationally administered grant even where their work did not cross regional boundaries. For the WEA, this national award allowed for maximum flexibility to deploy funding across regional boundaries to where the need was greatest. It also required only one interaction (with the ESFA) for receiving and reporting on the grant.

7. With the move to devolved funding, this single interaction was replaced by a much more complex process of bidding to multiple agencies – the GLA and the MCAs. At the same time, for provision in areas which are not covered by a devolution deal, the ESFA grant funding is continued. This results in a challenging hybrid funding system which increases administration costs. In devolved areas, teams are deployed to work on bids for grants and contracts and as multiple awards are secured, each has a separate set of reporting requirements which run parallel to the national award.

8. MCAs differ in how they relate to national providers. In some areas (four out of the seven areas) the WEA was regarded as a local provider and qualified for a grant. In other areas, despite a history of delivering similar provision locally, WEA was defined as a national provider and required to bid competitively.

9. More crucially, this hybrid funding system raises the likelihood of inconsistent provision creating effectively a “postcode lottery” for adult learners:

• Areas which retain ESFA funding will be able to continue with provision which is flexible to local needs just as before devolution.
• Those areas which are covered by devolution deals and where the WEA has secured a contract will receive high quality provision but only along the lines of the contract as defined by the MCA. This may, for example, prioritise provision which assists adult learners to find employment whereas provision delivering other outcomes (such as health and wellbeing) may diminish through lack of funding.
• In the few devolved areas where the WEA has not been successful in obtaining a contract or grant, then provision which was funded previously may stop completely unless alternative funding sources can be found.

10. The WEA has prepared over the past few years to adapt to this mixed funding model – and in addition to national and regional grants and contracts, has also secured funding through the Lottery, European programmes and other sources. We have developed strategies which have aimed to maintain high quality and increase student numbers and we continue to receive strong results from our impact surveys and OFSTED. Nevertheless we have seen provision affected by the unintended consequences of devolution such as in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough where popular and well attended courses have had to be dropped because they are not in line with new MCA funding priorities.

11. Looking ahead to the possibility of further devolution in the future, we would like to see a number of safeguards and transitions which could alleviate the impact on national organisations and the people they serve. We believe that adult learners should not be disadvantaged by where they live – either within a Combined Authority area or not – and we hope to see funding maintained by national government in areas which do not have a devolution deal, and an expectation that adult and community learning continues to be funded through the AEB by both the ESFA and Combined Authorities.

12. If devolution gathers pace again then the position of national providers – or previously national providers – should be considered. There are precedents for this as exceptions were made for some residential adult education providers affected by the initial devolution of AEB. Such providers had their national grant extended for two years to cushion the transition period as they moved towards fully devolved funding. We would wish to see similar transitional arrangements considered if new devolution deals are advanced.

13. We also believe that Combined Authorities should include community learning providers in wider cross-cutting strategies, offering funding for delivery of outcomes and priorities in areas beyond employment and skills. Outcomes related to issues such as health, social inclusion, community cohesion, engagement and participation, culture and creative industries have yet to be explored by the Combined Authorities and yet they are all areas where learning providers have made a positive contribution.

14. We welcome the Select Committee’s open-minded approach to reviewing the progress of devolution in England and the willingness to make recommendations which could avoid negative consequences of future roll out. Although this evidence focuses on the experiences of a single provider we hope that there are wider lessons to be drawn relating to any organisations who deliver local services through a national structure. “National” need not imply a lack of nuanced understanding of local need. By fragmenting an agile national model, devolution can sometimes unintentionally lose flexibility and economies of scale. Local users of services – in our case adult learners – may still have a strong identification with the local branch of a national organisation and WEA students place considerable value on the community nature of our courses. When looking at how devolved budgets are aligned with devolved powers, we urge the Committee to consider where this enhances existing delivery and where it may in some cases disrupt and potentially diminish it.

October 2019