College chiefs in Huddersfield are wresting with a new headache after another big funding cut.
And now Peter McCann, principal of Kirklees College has hit out at the latest round of government education cuts in a personal letter to David Cameron.
He says courses will have to be cut but the college is doing its utmost to avoid redundancies.
The Prime Minister made a last-minute announcement of a further £400,000 of cuts, which will affect hundreds of students who study English as a second language (ESOL) in Huddersfield and Dewsbury.
Mr McCann has condemned both the scale and timing of the announcement.
It came on the day that Mr Cameron spoke of integration in his counter-terrorism speech, and 10 days before the end of the college’s financial year, after it had just completed difficult negotiations and governors had finally agreed the 2015/16 budget.
Mr McCann described the Government’s timing as “ironic in the extreme” and said it would affect some of society’s most disadvantaged people, as language was a barrier to work and access to higher education.
He said: “Through this further cut your government department has exacerbated the very problems you rightly identified in your speech.
The letter added that it: “demonstrates a lack of understanding of both the value and the complexity of adult further education in an area such as Kirklees. It also demonstrates a lack of respect for the work of the skills sector.”
The latest round of cuts is aimed at reducing adult funding for ESOL courses as well as other adult skills training.
The college has a working budget of £40m and was already struggling to cope with 7%-8% cuts year on year and a £2.3m reduction over the last two years.
Kirklees College had some 1,300 students on ESOL courses in the last academic year, and some of these courses will inevitably be cut.
Mr McCann said that nothing could be ruled out, although Kirklees had a proud history of doing everything in its power to avoid the large-scale redundancies suffered by colleges such as Bradford.
His letter said: “What is perhaps most concerning is the fact that this funding decision will impact severely in the area of ESOL when this college has been publicly applauded in Home Office circles for the Prevent work we undertake in Dewsbury, and the rest of Kirklees, to foster integration through ESOL provision and our culture of proactive, harmonious integration of students from all sections of society.”
The college has now embarked on another round of difficult budget negotiations to meet the new September deadline.
