Carlisle education centre for the disadvantaged shuts down

Nacro is an independent training provider which specialises in vocational courses alongside GCSEs, offering a unique learning setting, work experience and work placements.

The social justice charity, located in the heart of the city centre, offered opportunities to disadvantaged students and last summer received a record number of high-grade results from those sitting GCSE exams in English and maths.

However, a lack of funding has meant that the centre in Carlisle is no longer seen as financially viable, and it shut down when the academic year ended on July 21, leaving around 30-50 students aged 16-18 without a place of education.

Elise Temple, principal and director of education and skills at Nacro, said: "The decision has been carefully considered by Nacro trustees, board of directors and senior management and is a result of a recent review of our education services to ensure they remain financially viable.

"We remain committed to all our learners and to keeping centres open but unfortunately, in this circumstance, this has not been possible in Carlisle."

But Kate Lindsay, who taught English at Nacro, disputed this claim in an interview with the News & Star.

She said: "The explanation that we have been given is that the Carlisle centre is not making enough money.

"However, it’s more complicated than that because we have had absolutely no investment, in terms of time and professional development, whatsoever.

"I’ve been there for a year now and my manager and I were working together very closely in terms of developing the centre to expand our provision.

"Every time we went back to senior management, it was just a closed door. There was absolutely nothing. When I took those concerns to my manager, she said ‘that’s always been the case.’

"I think there’s a very southern focus and because we’re so far north, we’re just not seen as being on the Nacro map. This has been part of our concern and conversation in my time there, the lack of professional investment.

"In a sense, it is an inevitability that this has happened. Every time we went to them, saying we need investment, there was nothing. It was just a black hole.

"When we got the news from senior management that they were looking to close us, our counter-proposal to them, which was incredibly thorough, included the argument that actually there were lots of ways in which we could save money and expand our provision.

"We are of the understanding that we are the only centre nationally with a full team of fully qualified teachers. Between us we have special education needs experience, two of us are fully qualified examiners. So, the argument that it wasn’t lucrative enough, didn’t add up. It didn’t make sense.

"We were awarded a platinum safeguarding accreditation, which is the highest you can get. Our results are outstanding. There is nothing else that we could have done. It should have been a flagship centre.

"That's the message that needs to be made very clear, this hasn't been closed because it's not a functioning centre. It's been closed because it hasn't been supported and there's been no investment in it.

"I can objectively say it's because of where we are, and it's a tragedy."

Following on from their amazing GCSE results success last year, the centre is predicted to enjoy an even better 2023, but sadly students who had signed up to return in September will now be unable to do so.

Ms Lindsay said: "We have got amazing predictions for our GCSE cohort. I can’t really imagine a resource that is more needed in that part of Cumbria and the fact that it’s not going to be there, means a huge amount of young people are going to lose out."

The English teacher is extremely concerned with what will happen to students who were 'given a second chance' by the centre in Carlisle, and suggests that for many of them, Nacro was their only hope at earning the qualifications they need to pave out a life for themselves. 

She said: "We’ve got young people at Carlisle who have only been able to make progress at Nacro. We’ve got young people who came to us with paperwork that said ‘this young person will not achieve a formal qualification, they are not capable.’ They have been expelled from other specialist provisions. Those young people have achieved two formal qualifications with us and were supposed to be coming back in September.

"The progress and the change that they were able to make were astonishing because it was about matching a young person to the right environment and to the right staff.

"We as staff worked there because we wanted to, we were massively, massively underpaid.

"I’m a senior English teacher, I’ve been teaching for 20 years. I have a master's degree, special education needs specialist and a qualified examiner, and they offered me £19,000 to work there. I was commuting three hours a day. I worked there because I wanted to work there. I loved working there.

"I’m absolutely gutted because we fought so hard to keep that place open. It wasn’t just about teaching young people. We would sit outside a bathroom if they locked themselves in, we’d sit outside for an hour if that’s what it took to talk them out.

"If it takes the first three months of a student being there to build that relationship, that’s what you do, because the next six months are nurturing them and teaching them, and then they leave there with their GCSEs.

"You can’t imagine anything more progressive. It’s like watching them climb a mountain. It’s amazing and now it’s gone.

The front entrance to Nacro hides empty classrooms. (Image: NQ Staff)

"They’re saying that they care about the learners. They didn’t do anything. The senior management made absolutely no effort at all to transition our students to other placements. Nothing.

"It’s a tragic loss. There are young people who will be lost in the system. They were lost in the system before they came to us. It’s going to have a social impact inevitably. It’s going to have an impact on the NHS and crime rates.

"They were carving out an identity through their education which is what you want for a young person. Now they’re going to have to find that identity in other ways."

A spokesperson from Nacro said: “We are incredibly disappointed that we have had to make the difficult decision to close the Nacro Education Carlisle centre.

"We are very proud of the achievements the centre and its learners have made and no current learners are affected by the closure.

"The centre has been running in financial deficit for several years and continues to do so, with the added pressure of the external climate, unfortunately, the centre is no longer viable.

"All proposals were carefully considered as part of a detailed consultation process, but no other sustainable or viable options were found.”

Ms Lindsay, who has now taken on a new role as an English lecturer at Kendal College, is taking two of her students from Nacro with her, and was keen to pay tribute to all the hard work from staff and learners at the centre in her time there.

She said: "For all the years I've been in education, they have been the most amazing people I've ever worked with. You could be doing anything else and being paid a lot more, you're there because it means so much to you and it matters.

"There's nothing that we wouldn't have done for each other or those learners, and that's what made it such a joy to work there."