adult education

[justalittlehelp]

I am a SAHM and am really wanting to get back into work when DS3 starts school. I have a couple of years and would love a complete career change as I did the same thing for 18 years.

Thing is, training is very expensive and although DH works fulltime, we just don't have that kind of money spare. Are there any free courses I could enrol on? Or anything that just takes my income into account, not DH?
Thanks.

What kind of course are you thinking of ? Check out Surestart children's centres and local family charities and agencies as they often have access to funding or work with others with funding for basic training such as IT and volunteering in school, but this usually non-accredited. If you already have A level education then it can be much harder to find funded courses.

Adult education has been really cut back and many courses that used to be free now require fees. The only free courses that exist now are for 16-25 year olds who do not have level 2 qualifications (5 GCSEs at grade C or above).

You can pay reduced fees if your total household income is low (below £14k or so) but they do take DHs income into account and this has always been the case. My OH was a mature student when we first married and they took my income into account then.

You may be able to pay in installments otherwise the only option is to take out a career development loan.

That's certainly true of college-based and many accreditted courses, crazymum, but less so community based ones where they may still be free in targetted geographical areas and/or to specific groups of learners (ie. parents/carers of children at a certain school or nursery). If you are on many means tested benefits (including HB & CTB) you may yet qualify for a concession. Whereabouts are you jalh ?

My OH used to work in community education and this is definitely the policy in our LEA. It may be different in other areas.

It really depends what type of course you want to do and what sort of employment you are looking for.

You need to be careful with qualifying benefits as WTC does not count.