WEA North West Region

The WEA North West Region provides stimulating and diverse learning opportunities for adults targeted at some of the most deprived communities in the UK. Our courses dramatically improve confidence as we re-introduce people to study and move people towards active engagement with their own needs and those of their community. We encourage an active response, promoting change at a personal and community level through challenging tuition using democratic adult-centred learning methods.

How we work

The WEA in the North West has a growing membership of over 4,000 people who have joined to show their support for the work of the organisation. Some of them volunteer in local branches in the region, which along with our professional staff organise a range of educational courses and activities within their area.

The WEA seeks to involve its membership in organising various forms of learning in their own communities. Our courses provide a wide range of learning opportunities for adults organised into three contexts:

Second Chance to Learn

These courses offer adults the opportunity to re-engage with learning, often after compulsory education has for one reason or another been less than successful. It provides a range of skills for personal progression and development. Course examples:

• Skills for life, including literacy, numeracy and English for speakers of other languages
• Helping in schools - helping to prepare and train class room assistants.
• Community interpreting - to help informal interpreters in the community develop their skills and underpinning knowledge
• Counselling and mentoring.
• Courses for Trade Union members based around their trade union activist role or around their progression needs
• Courses providing an introduction to teaching adults.

Community Involvement

Here we work with a range of organisations and authorities to develop the social capital of our local areas, with courses ranging from bringing communities together to getting active and involved in community needs. Course examples:
• First Steps into Learning (based around a wide variety of subject areas, such as Painting, Creative Writing, History, Cake Making)
• Active citizenship
• Citizens Advice Bureau – Training for Volunteers
• Computer skills
• Lip-reading Skills
• Learning Champions
• Digital photography

Cultural Studies

These courses help support the needs of adults to follow their cultural and leisure interests. They enable students to apply a wide range of learning to their intellectual, personal and community needs, stimulating thoughtful and critical responses to the challenges facing them and their communities. Course examples:

• Introduction to Visual Art and Drama
• Modern Foreign Languages (French, Italian, Spanish)
• Literature
• Local History
• Story Telling

In partnership

We work in collaboration with a wide range of organisations from large statutory bodies such as local authorities or health care trusts to small voluntary and community organisations at local level. Typically we provide courses and projects for their service users, clients, staff and stakeholders.

As well as meeting our own social objectives to promote democracy and undermine educational disadvantage for adults, the WEA in the North West helps deliver the aims of our partners through collaborative work, sharing our experience, our approach and of course by providing stimulating and challenging learning opportunities at the heart of communities. Examples include:

• Providing helping in schools courses for parents wishing to become classroom helpers in a range of junior schools across the North West.
• Helping four local authorities to meet a range of needs including basic ICT, Lip-reading and family learning.
• Working with Action for Children in Cumbria to re-engage parents with learning.
• Helping the Manchester Chinese Centre run a programme of English courses.
• Working with a day centre for students with learning disabilities in Liverpool to create beautifully crafted animations.
• Assisting the GMB trade union to meet its representative training needs.

Who learns?

There were over 13,700 enrolments in 2010/11 for our courses across the region. Statistics for the year show the reach of our provision and the diversity of our learners:

• 56% live in postcodes which indicate deprivation (as defined by the government)
• 45% did not have to pay fees for economic reasons (as defined by funders)
• 49% had qualifications below Level 2 when they joined their courses
• 22% had a declared physical disability
• 9% had a declared learning disability
• 32% were from a declared ethnic minority

Where we work:

The table shows the number of WEA courses and enrolments across the North West in 2010/11.

Contacting WEA North West Region

Our WEA office for the North West is based in Liverpool.  You can view contact details here, visit the North West Region website here, or see a listing of local WEA branches here.  To find out about courses in these areas visit our online course search.