ah thanks i didnt pick up on that
yes adult education stats have gone down a lot
Tbh it's always been a problem, probably dating back to the guilds. It was always difficult to find training to get into one of the more lucrative trades without paying a private training provider. There were various schemes and provision, sometimes by HE providers, sometimes voluntary sector providers and sometimes big companies themselves, but they were very low/no paid and predominantly aimed at the young who were still living with parents and had no housing costs.
There were ways round it though. You get more or less get away with taking a part time degree whilst on the dole for example. You could volunteer full time whilst on benefits and whoever you were volunteering for might invest in training. A lot of lone parents on benefits went into some form of education or training once the kids got older. Some of the more elite trades like recording studios, michelin restaurants, elite salons and the like ran exploitative and unpaid internship type schemes aimed at people on benefits (these still exist but now only go to rich kids because it's difficult fit them around benefit eligibility criteria).
There was also a network of smaller community based non profits who would bid for funding and provide training (I worked for one in the 90s). Sometimes this was targeted at marginalised groups like ex offenders, or over 50s. It tended to be low level but was popular - we ran an NVQ Level 2 Care course and it was always oversubscribed. In fact anything that would lead to a real job, or real skills, such as a forklift licence, had people queuing down the road.
A lot of the money came from Europe via local councils, big colleges and TECS who would bid and then subcontract to local groups. Funding was usually based on qualifications (NVQs) achieved. Most of that funding has disappeared, most of the providers closed, and where it does exist it's based on job outcomes, not training outcomes, meaning providers are incentivised to push people into low paid, often temporary work.
Blair's welfare reforms and the New Deal smashed all of that up as private providers like Reed and A4E outbid everyone and instead of subcontrcating out decided to run everything in house. Basically the privatised welfare to work sector took over the voluntary/public funded vocational training sector and subsequent welfare reforms were dedicated to propping that up. It took a long time to completely smash up everything but when the massively increased conditionality regime came in under Iain Duncan Smith that was the final nail in the coffin. Colleges got sick of ever changing criteria or students dropping out because they got sent on some shitty employability scheme by the jobcentre and so moved away from vocational training. Voluntary sector providers closed down because they couldn't or wouldn't compete with ever more draconian workfare style schemes run by huge profit making companies. And of course EU funding has now disappeared.
Apprenticeships were a belated to attempt by the government to address this rampant de-skilling (which they had caused). And whilst there are some good schemes as mentioned upthread, provision is patchy and those schemes are hard to find. Also a lot of Apprenticeships are basically what used to just be called entry level jobs, paid at a proper salary and not the (government subsidised) apprenticeship rate which applies for the first year. So you can be an apprentice to do bar/kitchen work or be an assistant in a hairdressers.
Tl:dr - over the last 30 years the obsession with getting people off benefits and into low paid work has destroyed the already meagre vocational training sector. Capital wants fully trained up job ready workers but won't pay for them. Successive governments have been too obsessed with job outcomes and lining the pockets of the welfare to work sector to provide decent training and has been happy to let migration fill the gap. And even when they try and launch schemes like apprenticeships to address what is now a crisis, capital will just find loopholes and use them as an excuse to not pay people proper wages whilst they train.
www.theguardian.com
