If Carlisle College were ever to close it would a heavy blow for the city, and for Cumbria more widely.

It teaches 1,932 full and part-time students and has an annual turnover of £10.6m. It provides trainees and apprentices for a wide variety of Cumbrian businesses. More than 90 per cent of its students go into jobs or on to further study.

And it’s long been part of the furniture in Victoria Place, in the heart of the city.

So the proposal to merge it with another body naturally sounds alarming. The term “merger” can often equate to “takeover”.

But college principal Moira Tattersall is keen to reassure people that that isn’t going to happen.

College authorities want the college to merge with the Newcastle College Group, or NCG – a body of further education colleges led by Newcastle, but which also includes others such as West Lancashire College, Newcastle Sixth Form College, Kidderminster College and the training bodies Intraining and Rathbone.

She insists that the plan doesn’t mean the end of Carlisle College. In fact it should help guarantee its future.

“The building will still be here, the staff we’ve got will still be here,” Mrs Tattersall says. “To the outside world we won’t look very different.”

And it’s not going to be absorbed by Newcastle. “We are going into a group,” she adds. “We will be one component of it.”

Money is one of the motivating factors. There have been harsh reductions in the funding for FE in the last 16 years, as there have been for so many publicly-funded bodies.

Adult learning budgets have been cut by approximately 35 per cent since 2010. The cash for 16 to 18-year-old courses has also been slashed, particularly in the last 18 months.

And now the Government has announced the Review of Post-16 Education and Training – known as the area review – to look at how many FE colleges there are in different parts of the country, whether they are training students in the skills local employers need, and whether there are too many of them.

The Association of Teachers and Lecturers believe it is all to do with money, and nothing to do with education.

“How can Newcastle College really understand the labour market, never mind the educational needs, of communities in other parts of the country?” asks Janet Clark, the ATL’s education policy adviser.

“We can only conclude that this review is actually about college finances and costs savings, rather than meeting skills needs of employers and those people trying to enter the labour market.”

It is likely that some colleges could be closed or forced into mergers with others under the review. 


Moira Tattersall Mrs Tattersall concedes: “The successive cuts mean some colleges have been weakened. They want larger, fewer, more resilient colleges.”

And Carlisle College is among the smallest 20 per cent of FE colleges in the country. So it believes doing nothing is not an option.

Joining the group will help its financial stability. But she also argues that there are other benefits. The opportunities for students and staff will increase.

And vitally it will also allow it to keep its own identity.

“That’s really, really important. We’ve got a very strong brand identity, the college is an important player in the local area.

“Many employers who now work with us are ex-students, and look to us for young people or apprentices.

“We will keep the Carlisle College logo, the signs on the front doors.”

Membership of a large group will bring many advantages. “It’s about making sure we can give our learners better opportunities.”

So there could be new courses on offer here, by drawing on the expertise of other group members.

She offers examples. “One area for development in Carlisle could be the airport. We’ve been over to Newcastle to see the aviation training there, how that works.

“They have a rail academy in Gateshead, with apprenticeship and training in areas like track maintenance. It’s not that NCG are going to come in and stamp their mark on everything we do. It could become something we can offer here. It offers us more potential.”

But precisely which new courses could be offered depends on those local businesses ask for. “A local college has got to meet local needs.”

It could also work the other way, with Carlisle helping other group members.

“One of the areas we have developed is food and drink engineering and manufacturing. The other colleges could benefit from our expertise.”

Another of Carlisle’s strengths is accountancy. “We could export that.”

It’s not just the curriculum that could expanded. “It’s also about teaching and learning – the use of technology in the classroom, for instance.”

And there could be savings on costs such as computer software licensing. “If you go in as a group you can get a better deal.”

The college isn’t expecting any cuts among its teachers and lecturers. If it starts offering new courses and attracting more students, then it will still need the staff to teach them.


Related article: Carlisle College launches NCG merger consultation


Kidderminster College joined NCG last year and Mrs Tattersall says: “The Kidderminster experience showed no loss of any staff on the front line.”

There could be fewer jobs in corporate services, but the reduction should come through employees retiring of moving to new jobs. “That would come over a period of time, through natural wastage,” adds Mrs Tattersall..

“Change is always a worry, but we will be very open with staff about where we are.”

A consultation will be run until Monday, April 25 and will seek the views of staff, students, employers “and everyone we think we’ve got a relationship with,” she says.

“But it’s a public consultation. Anyone can have their say.”

Questionnaires are available online at www.cumbria.ac.uk/merger-update and on paper from the college.

After that there will be the legal and financial details to finalise. And they expect the merger to happen on Monday, August 1.

Mrs Tattersall retires on July 31 so won’t be at the helm when the merger goes live. “I’ve been part of this college for more than 20 years, and what I want is to know that it’s in a safe place,” she says.

And she stresses again that it will be retaining its identity, as an integral part of Carlisle.

“On the first of August it will look just as it did on the 31st of July.”

We’ve got a very strong brand identity, the college is an important player in the local area. We will keep the Carlisle College logo, the signs on the front doors