A specialist education provider for 16-18 year-olds has gone into administration, with pupils and parents being given one day’s notice of the colleges closing.
But the Basildon training provider administration sparked demonstrations Friday 14th October 2022.
LifeSkills did have independent centres in Suffolk, Essex and Yorkshire that provided learning for those who weren’t engaged by the school system.
Furious families and students protested against the closure of a college after it was announced it had gone into administration immediately after an ongoing dispute with the government.
The aunt of one pupil, who didn’t want to be named, said her niece, 16, was in tears at the sudden closure.
LifeSkills, which is located in Town Square, Basildon told staff and students that the business would be put into administration.
LifeSkills said 80 jobs would be lost.
The social enterprise was formed in 2002 in Bethnal Green with training centres later set up in Basildon, Lowestoft, and Rotherham.
According to the latest 2016 Ofsted report on LifeSkills, the company was a national independent learning provider with its head office in Rotherham.
Families, students and teachers rallied around on the 14th of October, in Basildon Town centre with placards and megaphones demanding the college be kept open.
Numerous students in the study programmes have low prior achievement, particularly in English and mathematics, and have complex personal and social needs.
Mandy Balding, 54, from Basildon whose son Harry goes to the college said that it had made a massive difference in his life, that he suffers from autism, epilepsy and also social communication disorder, where he doesn’t integrate well with other people.
Talking to BBC Radio Suffolk, the aunt of a student at the Lowestoft college, said her niece rang her on Thursday in hysterics, crying, and that everybody was totally devastated.
The college has been a lifeline and for some of these youngsters it’s the only thing that gets them out of the house, otherwise, they would just sit indoors and do nothing, and the closure will have a terrible impact because basically, it will mean they will be losing their life.
In a statement, a LifeSkills representative said that an ongoing dispute between the Education and Skills Funding Agency and Department for Education had affected funding and made the social enterprise unviable.
Amy McManus, 32, from Wickford an ex-teacher at the college said that she taught at the college for a little over six years and that each of the children that came there goes into small class sizes that they need to be able to succeed in education.
The company said that over the last 20 years, LifeSkills had done some fantastic work and they’re proud to have helped the education of over 22,000 young people.
In Basildon, there’s nothing else like this and other colleges are too large for these young people because they require smaller classes and fewer students per staff, so these classes are so important to these young people.
But while they have tried everything to save the company, it’s not been possible and they’re extremely sad to be in this situation, and they would like to thank their brilliant team for all of their hard work and for creating a really great company.
A Department for Education representative said that they can confirm that LifeSkills Solutions Limited had informed them that they had gone into administration following a funding audit that identified data anomalies and that they were working with LifeSkills to find alternative high-quality training providers for the students affected so they can complete their training.
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