Adults without A-levels to attend college for free under £3.2bn Labour plans

All adults without A-levels will be able to attend college and study them for free, under £3.2bn Labour plans to ensure “no one is shut out of education”.

Free vocational courses – including for the equivalent of undergraduate degrees and diplomas – will also be made available if Jeremy Corbyn wins the general election, the party says.

The poorest adult learners will receive maintenance grants – and all workers will have the right to paid time off for education and training.

The retraining package is a response to what Labour has called a “catastrophic fall” in adult learners after the trebling of university tuition fees and harsh cuts to further education.

Angela Rayner, Labour’s shadow education secretary, said she wanted to “throw open the door” to adults, to help tackle “a severe skills shortage”, particularly in higher technical skills.

And Mr Corbyn added: “I see education like an escalator running alongside you throughout life, that you can get on and off whenever you want.”

Meanwhile, on the election trail, the Liberal Democrats will pledge a £5bn fund to try to prevent a repeat of this month’s devastating floods in Yorkshire.

“These floods are devastating for local communities and highlight the need to invest our flood defences,” said Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader.

The Labour package build on proposals for a “cradle-to-grave” National Education Service, set out by a Lifelong Learning Commission that reported in the summer.

It quoted 2018 figures from the Institute for Fiscal Studies, suggesting that funding for adult learning and apprenticeships has fallen by 45 per cent in real terms since 2009-10.

Participation in government-funded adult further education continued to fall by 3.5 per cent between April and September last year, official figures showed.

Labour’s pledges, to be set out in a speech in Blackpool, are to:

* Enable any adult without A-level or equivalent qualification to attend college and study for them for free

* Give every adult six years’ free study for qualifications at level 4-6 – enabling them to study part-time, or dip in and out of courses

* Provide maintenance grants for low-income adult learners and give workers the right to paid time off for education and training

* Give employers a role in designing qualifications to make sure training is equipping learners with the right skills

Ms Rayner said: “Labour will throw open the door for adults to study, whether they want to change career, are made redundant or didn’t get the qualifications they needed when they were younger.

“For many, adult education is too expensive, too time consuming or too difficult to get into.”

Labour estimated the policy would cost £3.2bn by 2023-24, including around £2.6bn on providing courses and almost £600m on grants.

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