To think night classes don't seem to exist anymore?

[Mongrelsrbeautiful]

Will soon have more time on my hands and have been looking at local colleges. What's happened to night classes? In the past you could do anything from cake decorating to Italian, to car maintenance. There seems to be nothing going on for adults in my area. Are night classes a thing of the past?

As as a result of this thread I've just looked & my local authority does have a lot of courses, Quite a lot are during the day & also on the expensive side. I was just completely unaware. In the past you used to get a newspaper type publication through the door & my parents used to pore over it. It's not quite the same on line if you don't really know what you are looking for.

I re-took A levels at evening classes, and later a book-keeping course. My mum did cookery and art appreciation, my dad did car maintenance and statistics. It was always suggested as a way to "meet new people". But that was a long time ago.

Too easy to simply blame the Tories yet again. (And is lazy thinking).
The world has changed. You can do anything online - which is generally far more convenient. (It's hard after work to get the bus in the dark and know you won't be home til 10.) You-tube tells you how to do almost anything. Distance learning is now the default.
People are lazier - there's a lot on tv, there's gaming, and we have WhatsApp and phones so we chat. Prior to that you needed to get out to chat or "meet people" - now there's on line dating.
Respect for learning has dwindled . You see it in schools and universities - students are likely to challenge the teacher or complain if they don't get what they think they paid for. Teachers have to provide slides and materials and additional support and back up everything with notes. The workload is huge for two hours pay.
It's a shame - I agree OP - but the budget cuts are only one factor.

Not sure if this might help https://www.northumberlandskills.co.uk/adult-learning

Thanks for starting this topic as I’ve just found a couple of free courses I’m interested in

The cheap adult ed college I used in the 90s was sold off and turned into luxury flats in the 00s.

There are a number of factors.

1. Government Funding- there are only a few funded adult courses now so colleges have to charge. They will need a minimum number of students to break even which can vary. This needs to cover the teacher’s time, site staff that have to be on site the cost of the course and the resources that are needed (including lights, heating, print outs or practical resources).
2. Lack of teachers/lecturers. Like Primary and Secondary colleges are struggling to get new teachers or retain current ones. The ones they do have are utilitised for every single minute of their contract they just don’t have the time to run evening classes.
3. People don’t have good memories/experiences of school and don’t want to return to education meaning there just aren’t enough people to run courses.

You can always send an enquiring email to your local college if you want some evening classes as those enquiries help colleges decide whether or not to run a class/course.

Take a look on eventbrite, in my area there are lots of small businesses that offer evening classes independently rather than through the council.

Makes me really nostalgic for the 'word processing' night class I took in the 90s... I got an NVQ to put on the cv thank you very much 😂

I used to love the paper list of classes coming through the door. I used to aim for 3 a week. Usually badminton, Spanish conversation and something like dress making, upholstery, or embroidery.

I also remember classes with names like... Make the most of your bread making machine.

Have you looked at any language or cultural centres - La Dante for Italian and Alliance Francaise (I'll let you work that out ) And I think the Goethe Institute for German. They're all supported by the respective governments and often offer a range of language or cultural events and courses.

There are still courses to attend in my town but mainly in the afternoon. I can only think that courses in the evening might be undersubscribed because the venues are in dodgy areas and you need a car.

It's not just that though.
Plenty of free high-quality learning material online and groups for like minded people.
If you look on the Meetup app there are groups for everything you could possibly imagine knitting, car maintenance.
Why should the public fund this?

OP have you tried other avenues like posting on your local FB page, checking your council or any community websites?

Yes, it's the Tory way. The plebs don't need or have time for fun, they just need to be fit enough to keep working till they drop dead a few years after retirement.

University of the Third Age is about the only thing doing adult learning for fun, and that's very variable One place may do medieval dance and the next one along do nothing more intellectually taxing than rambling and beginner's French.

YANBU. In most areas you can only really do basic skills based.stuff, now. Everything else is more likely to be privately run.

We used to get prospectuses delivered, offering watercolour courses, conversational Italian, dressmaking, calligraphy, or more formal qualifications. Nothing now.

We still get the prospectuses, but they’re far more limited than they used to be. Twenty years ago, you could sign up for Russian, belly-dancing, felt-making, DIY for women, stained glass or palmistry, amongst many other things.

Nowadays, the focus seems to be on learning basic literacy, numeracy and IT, plus book-keeping, becoming a teaching assistant, drawing, yoga, BSL, French and Spanish. The courses are spread all over the county, so the one you want might only take place at one venue 50 miles away. Also, many are in the daytime, when I’m at work. I’d quite like to take an art class, but I’m not free from 10-12 every Thursday.

Try putting your postcode into this, might bring up something local you'd enjoy:

https://www.wea.org.uk/

So, so tired of the utterly boring and predictable knee-jerk 'blame the Tories' rhetoric.

1. Evening classes for leisure stopped running, largely, because people stopped enrolling. Older people didn't want to come out in the evening and younger people had other things to do.

1. It was in the Gordon Brown years that funding was switched from classes for leisure to Basic Skills. People just wanting to learn for pleasure could use the internet, was the argument.

1. Adult Ed now is catering to a vastly different demographic from what it was 30 or 40 years ago. Then, there were many people who might have left school at 14-15-16. Now, you're looking at people who have A Levels, one or maybe two degrees, professional qualifications.

No-one wants to come to evening classes to learn shorthand, typing and book keeping any more. There probably aren't many people wanting to learn basic computer skills. It's cheaper to buy clothes ready made than to make them.

1. In lockdown, when classes couldn't run, many switched to Zoom. Some have never returned to face to face.

There's your answer. Do you mean state funded? Labour reallocated a huge amount of that funding for 16 - 21 specifically, citing greater needs there, and of course necessity for building employment skills.

There's stuff going on in my local area but it's mostly private. My sister also said there's zero in her local area. Ours are at a community association, the fees are very reasonable but they run fundraising events and have donors, and rent some classrooms as meeting rooms. Mum was saying to take advantage as she feels it's unlikely they'll be able to keep prices low.

I did A level English at night, then cooking on a budget & a sewing machine course.

I remember it differently. I briefly worked in Further Education during the Brown government, and I remember that we saw a large increase in applications for college courses, especially from young adults. This wasn’t surprising, as unemployment levels were high and the cost of going away to university was rising.

The Brown government, in its wisdom, decided to slash FE funding. At the time, I thought this was a poor, long-term economic strategy and I still think that. Surely unemployed adults were better off taking courses in art, motor mechanics or hair-dressing than sitting at home on the dole?

Most teachers are exhausted / utterly broken at the end of a working day these days. The last thing they want to be doing when they have their own children to look after whom they rarely see, is heading out for the evening to teach their parents!

But we're not talking about courses for the unemployed. Those still exist. Maybe depends on where you live but near me there are lots of courses delivered by various private providers, skills bootcamps etc funded by the government and free for certain categories including lower earners and the unemployed.

We're discussing night classes for fun and pleasure here. For things that you can easily find a YouTube video for. If you are unemployed obviously you can do a normal daytime course like any other student.

Our local university offers night classes for £110 starting in Jan or Sept