Adult education lecturer : Employers and vacancy sources

Adult education is being offered by a widening range of organisations, although most courses are still provided through local authority adult and community centres. The borderline between adult and further education is extremely blurred and a significant amount of alternative provision is delivered by organisations such as the Workers' Educational Association (WEA)  and universities. Types of work and conditions of service can be similar, as much of this work is funded by the Skills Funding Agency .

Over recent years government initiatives, such as Skills for Life  and the continuing targeting of funding towards people with less than NVQ Level 3 qualifications, have greatly increased the number of courses aimed at basic literacy, numeracy and IT skills. There has been a corresponding shrinkage in what many regard as the core subjects of liberal adult education such as history, literature, art and languages, compounded by a general shift in funding across the education sector to 16 to 19 year olds.

A shrinking number of universities offer continuing education or lifelong learning programmes to their regions, often in collaboration with adult community colleges and the WEA. In what is a sure sign of a sector in crisis, there has been a growth in the number and work of campaigning organisations supporting lifelong learning, such as the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL) .

Adult residential colleges also offers opportunities for teaching, more generally in special interest subjects such as archaeology, painting and philosophy, although these are clearly determined by geographic availability.

Private training companies offering work-based skills training are another potential employer. Details of many of these can be found in The Training Manager's Yearbook .

Sources of vacancies

• Search graduate jobs on this site.
• Times Educational Supplement (TES)  
• Times Higher Education (THE)  
• Jobs.ac.uk  
• Guardian Jobs  
• Local Government Jobs  
• Open University (OU)   
• Local and regional press.
• Local authority and adult education centre websites.
• Workers' Educational Association (WEA)  

Not all jobs are advertised so be proactive in jobseeking. Use placements, visits and voluntary work as opportunities to network, and be prepared to contact providers directly by cold calling and even enquiring about the possibility of working on a voluntary basis initially.

Use The Adult Learning Yearbook , Education Yearbook  and the Directory of Vocational and Further Education  to search for potential employers.

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