Leading in adult education: “Chartered status helped me verify my skills”

“We’re helping the people who need it most,” says William Pickford CMgr MCMI, principal of the Redbridge Institute of Adult Education. “But times change and we have to respond to current economic and social needs. We have to please our paymasters; it’s as simple as that.

“Funding bodies want organisations like ours to help get people into work. It is much more business focused than it used to be and the wider benefits of, for example, creative courses don’t get as much of a look in. It’s sad and it upsets some people. But that’s just the reality today.”

William has spent 25 years working in further education. Over the past decade alone, he has worked at south-west London-based Hillcroft, now part of Richmond and Hillcroft Adult Community College, at Stanmore College in north-west London and Westminster Kingsway College in central London.