Cumbria Adult Learning

About us

What we offer

Adult Learning is a hosted service delivering learning for Westmorland and Furness Council and Cumberland Council, with a wide range of courses for people at all levels and interests, both accredited and non-accredited, in a broad range of subjects (English, Maths, ESOL, Arts and Crafts, Languages, Digital, Family Learning, Employability, Greener Curriculum, Health and Wellbeing and Multiply). 

Operating an area-based model with teams based in the 6 main localities (Barrow, Carlisle, Kendal, Penrith, Whitehaven and Workington and surround areas) our vision is to deliver 'a service that continues to provide outstanding adult education opportunities by inspiring adults across Cumbria to improve their well-being and potential through learning and development of skills, values and behaviours'. 

The service is aimed at supporting not only the delivery of Westmorland and Furness Council Plan and Cumberland Council Plan, but also supports key priorities of the Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) and confirmed in the Education and Skills Funding Agency Funding and Performance Rules 2024 to 2025. 

As a service, we have set out our delivery plan to deliver against the following 4 strands:

  • Reach out to the most vulnerable adults in the community by focusing resources on those who are socially and economically disadvantaged
  • Work in partnership with communities to maximise access to adult learning by promoting health and wellbeing and in doing so support Cumbria communities to thrive. 
  • Enhance the career prospects of adults by meeting their education and training needs as well as supporting local employers to improve the English, Maths, and Digital Skills of their workforce. 
  • Increase participation in adult learning by giving our choice and easy access to learning environments and curriculum.

Strategic aims and objectives

Cumbria Adult Learning delivers adult education and tailored learning provision across both Westmorland & Furness and Cumberland Council areas.  The service is hosted by Westmorland & Furness Council on behalf of both authorities. 

Our strategic aims for Cumbria are as follows:

  • Establish our Service as an outstanding and leading provider of adult skills provision in Cumbria
  • Use learning to empower communities to live healthy, fulfilling, and independent lives
  • Provide skills pathways to help people into work and to progress their careers 

Linking to both Council Plans and the Cumbria Local Skills Improvement Plan (LSIP) we will use adult learning funding to support the following collective objectives:

  1. Seek a balanced population and healthy happy lives for young and old 
  2. Enable confident, empowered and resilient communities 
  3. Promote prevention, collaboration, and active lifestyles to improve health and wellbeing for everyone 
  4. Promote sustainable inclusive economic growth across boundaries
  5. Support the transition to a strong, inclusive and green economy by focusing on our businesses, our people and our assets 
  6. Support vulnerable people and reducing inequality
  7. Address worklessness and youth unemployment
  8. Make provision more accessible and address barriers to progression.

Matrix accreditation

In July 2022 Adult Learning, was successful in being accredited against the current matrix standard and the new BETA version, and in March 2023, the service completed their annual review and was successful in maintaining  our accreditation.  

The Matrix Standard is a unique quality standard for organisations, it is awarded to organisations in recognition of their ability to meet strenuous standards relating to the provision of information, advice and guidance. The Matrix standard is a really useful way to give our learners and stakeholders the security of knowing that Adult Learning takes its responsibilities for supporting learning to enroll on appropriate courses that will help them to achieve their own goals very seriously and that we strive to constantly improve our service to ensure the best outcomes for all learners. 

The Matrix Standard is an outcome-based standard. This means that the allocated Assessor looks not only at processes used to support IAG (Information Advice and Guidance) delivery but also the results achieved.

The audit was undertaken over a full week and involved our assigned Assessor interviewing staff, senior managers and learners across the county before making a judgment on whether our service continued to meet the standards.  Our Assessor was able to make a judgement on the effectiveness of the processes used to support IAG delivery, including the impact on our learners.  We are very pleased to advise that our re-accreditation was confirmed and we worked with our assessor to agree a forward plan to make further enhancements.  This plan is reviewed each year and Adult Learning is required to provide evidence of progress made. 

Adult Learning is committed to achieving the best possible outcome for each and every one of our learners; the Matrix Standard helps us to support this commitment and we are very proud of our record of success.

Extracts from our Matrix report published July 2022

As a service we are:

  • An effective and efficient service with excellent systems, processes and procedures around IAG and that these are used to good effect to inform decisions that make a difference to our learners life’s and progress.
  • able to align IAG across the region, district and local communities ensuring everyone is supported through high quality differentiated IAG.
  • a service that responds to the needs to the individual effectively.
  • ensuring IAG is clearly embedded into our quality systems and is seen as part of the continuous quality improvement journey rather than a static process.
  • ensuring IAG is seen as important to all levels of the service. 

Ofsted

Ofsted is an acronym for the Office for Standards in Education, Children`s Services and Skills. Adult Learning is subject to Ofsted inspections as we are a provider of education and skills for learners. Ofsted is a non-ministerial department of the UK government and it reports to parliament, it is impartial and independent.

Ofsted carries out inspections, against the Education Inspection Framework, and then awards a grade to an organisation based on evidence it finds in 4 areas:

  1. Effectiveness of leadership and management
  2. Quality of teaching, learning and assessment
  3. Personal development
  4. Behaviour and welfare outcomes for learners

At the end of an inspection the organisation is awarded one of four grades:

  • Grade 1 - Outstanding
  • Grade 2 - Good
  • Grade 3 - Requires improvement
  • Grade 4 - Inadequate 

Adult Learning was last inspected in January 2018; at this point our service was rated as Good.

Key strengths

There were a number of key strengths identified in the report which we continue to develop such as;

  • Senior leaders and managers have been relentless in successfully eliminating the weaknesses identified at the previous inspection.
  • Many learners develop very effective personal, social and employability skills, including improved confidence and self-belief through good-quality teaching, learning and assessment. 
  • Learners benefit from effective guidance and coaching from skilled tutors that assist them to progress to their next steps.
  • The large majority of learners make good progress on their courses, gain new skills and acquire new knowledge, which helps them to realise their personal targets and move to their next steps.

Areas for improvement

There were also some areas for improvement; again we are working very hard to make improvements in these areas, as we continue to work towards achieving an outstanding grade.

The areas for improvement identified in January 2018 were:

  • Too many learners on accredited courses in 2016/17 left their courses early and did not achieve their qualifications
  • A small minority of learners do not make the progress of which they are capable.
  • Leaders and managers have not yet implemented an effective English and mathematics strategy to ensure that learners enhance consistently their existing skills and experiences.

Adult Learning has a staff that are committed to making the improvements required to move to be an outstanding provider. We work with relentless ambition and passion for delivering the best service we can to the people of Cumbria. We always welcome comments from our learners, partners and stakeholders on how we can improve and we hope that you will choose to share your learning journey with us!