Alliances

We have already made contact with several organisations that may be helpful to continuing Continuing Education classes in Reading, and there are likely to be more. Please tell us who you have talked to or whom you think might help. This page lists some.

Reading University

We are grateful to Reading University for setting up Continuing Education short courses, and building them up to their current level of excellence. We hope that they will change their minds about closure. But if not, we hope that the university will help others to take on academic short courses for the people of Reading. There is lots the university can do to help. We hope to tell you here about what they have done or have said they will do.

Workers Educational Association (WEA)

The WEA have a long history in Reading and used to have a Reading branch. They don’t currently offer any classes in Reading, although several Reading tutors run courses for the WEA in other towns. WEA headquarters are aware of the announcement from the university and have had conversations with some of us, and WEA Southern Region staff have meetings scheduled at the end of April with us and with a group of current tutors.

We are aware that some of the financial pressure that has been felt by the university also applies to the WEA. We should not assume that the WEA will arrive like a Fairy Godmother and make all right with short course provision in Reading. However, they have relevant expertise that they seem prepared to share, and they may well become an important part of the way forward.

Reading Faith Forum

Reading Faith Forum is one of the organisations of faith groups in Reading (others include the Reading Interfaith Group and Churches Together In Reading). Faith Groups are not by any means the only relatively low-cost provider in Reading of rooms that might be used as classrooms (RISC is another), but a 2009/10 programme that is not based at the university is likely to use some rooms rented at places of worship. We suspect many worshipping groups will welcome this as an opportunity to build community in Reading.

Thames Valley University

Some have suggested that TVU might host short courses. However, informal talk with some people there suggests that (unsurprisingly) they would be under the same financial pressure as Reading University, and probably don’t have the very-much lower cost structure that would help relieve this. However, it may be that there is scope for some kind of co-operation (for example, holding classes on their site). If anyone knows more, please let us know.

University of the Third Age (U3A)

Some have suggested that U3A might be a host for some of our short courses. U3A Reading have around the same number of groups as the university runs short courses each term. There is probably lots we might learn from them, and there may well be opportunities for synergy, and we have emailed them suggesting contact. The U3A normal model is different in many respects; most obviously, they don’t normally pay tutors. However, it has been suggested to us that they might provide an umbrella for courses lead by paid tutors. We will be interested to talk with them. If you have particular knowledge of how U3A operated, please let us know.

Reading Borough Council

The recently-issued government White Paper “The Learning Revolution” gives local authorities a remit to support local initiatives to foster life-long learning. We hope to co-operate with them to help them fulfil this remit. We quote from the White Paper, paragraph 22 on page 8:

A national vision for informal learning needs to be translated into action that genuinely affects people’s lives. We need innovative local partnerships to facilitate the provision of diverse learning opportunities. To make this happen more effectively we will expect local authorities to show clear leadership and give them the remit to do so. This will allow them to secure a broad range of opportunities for people in local areas, working with local partners to reach out to more people.

Lindsay Mullaney has put a question in an open session of Reading council, and had a response which was sympathetic to our situation. We have now scheduled a meeting with a council officer, and look forward to exploring possibilities for co-operation.

Other groups round the country who are continuing “continuing education”

We are on the lookout for other groups who may have been through the same problems that we are facing, and perhaps have come through with a successful model which we might learn from. The first of these has been passed to us by regular tutor Sandra Smith. This is a group of tutors in Leicester who have passed through the same experience as we are going through in Reading, and have set up “Writing School Leicester” www.writingschoolleicester.co.uk. We look forward to learning from them.