Why is a further education college cutting lecturers teaching core skills crucial for Wales’ economy?

Martin Shipton

Concerns have been expressed about plans by one of Wales’ biggest further education colleges to make redundant lecturers who teach core construction and engineering skills essential to the nation’s economy.

Coleg Gwent has five campuses in Newport, the eastern Valleys and Monmouthshire.

Among approximately 40 jobs proposed for deletion are lecturers teaching carpentry, brickwork and electrical skills at the Newport campus; engineering and automotive skills at Crosskeys; and plumbing in Blaenau Gwent.

‘Worried sick’

A lecturer at the Crosskeys campus told Nation.Cymru: “They are looking at cutting lecturers who are training students in the very skills the UK and Welsh governments say will help grow the economy. It makes no sense.

“In terms of the impact this is having on those whose jobs are at risk, the only messages we seem to be getting from senior management is ‘are we considering taking redundancy?’ This is happening every few days, before we may have to move to compulsory redundancy. A number of us here are either single parent families or sole wage earners: we are worried sick. It seems to us like healthy programmes are being cut just to increase the college’s reserves.

“My job seems to be going and all I’ve been told to do is look at the college website for new vacancies. But many of these are jobs with much lower money and I can’t afford to take that sort of loss.

“They are spending tens of millions of pounds on new buildings at Crosskeys and the work is going to be all around us, but many staff here are wondering if there will be any staff left to run courses in these buildings and whether the money couldn’t have been better spent on keeping staff.”

‘Proposals’

A spokesperson for Coleg Gwent said: “It is important to stress that at this stage, these are proposals subject to an ongoing 45-day consultation; therefore, we cannot provide a detailed response to the comments.

“The consultation period closes on May 2.”

A document issued by the college to staff states: “In 2023 we agreed a financial recovery plan with the Board, which we would put into action over three years. We wanted to take our time to get it right and to make sure that we still offer an excellent experience for our learners.

“As part of this plan, last year we formed working groups to look at savings across the college and had our first round of voluntary redundancies. This saved around £2.5m and met our initial targets of delivering a cash surplus of 0.1% for 2024/25.

“Our plan for next academic year (2025/26) is to get to 3.1% cash surplus, which we predicted would take around £3.5m of efficiencies. While some of our funding is predictable, we will always need to adjust our plans when things change. As we have now had our predicted funding allocation for next year, we have used the latest figures and adjusted our plans to reduce that £3.5m figure. The proposal that we have put together will deliver our 3.1% target for next year with £2.5m of efficiencies.”

‘Shocked’

The scale of the cuts has shocked teaching staff. The lecturer at the Crosskeys campus said: “Literally dozens have been called in for one to one meetings about whether we will have a job next year. We are told it’s just a consultation but the college has also told us how many staff we need to lose in my area. They say they want to offer us voluntary redundancy, contract reduction or redeployment but at the same time they won’t rule out that they will make us compulsorily redundant. A lot of us are scared and morale is low and we’re told not to tell the students anything in case we upset them but we’re all upset ourselves! They said in the union meeting the other day that the college wants to get rid of 41 staff by the end of July; we are concerned one of those will be us.”

Another Coleg Gwent source said: “One of the problems is that in recent years the college has got rid of campus managers, which means that liaison with local communities is not as good as it used to be.”

One consequence of the cuts would be the end of A-level Welsh being taught at the Ebbw Vale campus in a move that would bring to an end the post-16 teaching of the language in the county borough.”

Blaenau Gwent Labour MS Alun Davies is due to discuss the proposed cuts with Coleg Gwent managers on Friday April 4.