Skills for Londoners Fund Announced

The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has announced £9 million of Adult Education Budget (AEB) funding will be available for London Adult Education Providers. The Skills for Londoners Covid-19 Response Fund will allow providers to respond to the current needs of adult learners within London. 

The intention of the fund is to ensure that learners are given the opportunity to continue to access learning opportunities whilst other means of classroom learning are unavailable. In particular the fund aims to:

• Help learners develop skills to access new employment opportunities
• Allow learners to gain confidence in digital skills as we move to a more online working and learning approach
• Support the wider social and economic outcomes of participation in learning

The fund is to be used to support providers in meeting the training needs of the following key groups:

• Those who have been furloughed and the self-employed whose incomes fall below the London Living Wage as a result of COVID-19
• Those made redundant as a result of COVID-19
• Key workers requiring additional training to meet the changing demands of their roles
• Learners who are at risk of digital exclusion

The Fund will have two strands of activity:

• Strand 1 will support additional provision to meet the immediate demand for learning and skills in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. AEB grant-funded providers will be able to apply for an additional grant allocation of a minimum of £100,000 and up to a maximum of £500,000. The deadline for bids for this strand is 31^st May 2020.
• Strand 2 will support one-off grant allocations to support the costs of building capacity in the London skills sector. This strand is open to applications from both AEB grant funded and procured providers. The value of grants available will be determined based on the provider's AEB allocation/ contract for 2020/21. The deadline for bids for this strand is 30^th June 2020.  

All providers who have an existing AEB contract with the GLA or are eligible for an AEB Grant allocation beyond 2020-21 are eligible to apply for this funding.

 For more information on the fund please click here.

Qualifications which support the Adult Education Budget

Education Providers and people like yourself are using the below qualifications with their Adult Education Budget and to support adult learners during this pandemic: