‘If I hadn’t been able to return to education as a young mother I don’t know what would have happened to me.’

The Further Education sector has seen cuts to EMA, the adult skills budget carved up, the slashing of ESOL funding, the axing of courses and adult student numbers crashing.

And now after all the successive cuts made to further education over the last five years, the government has decided it is time to “rationalise” the sector, and their ‘area review process’ aims to create “fewer, larger, more efficient and resilient” institutions and we expect a number of mergers to take place between colleges.