About Adult Education UK
Adult Education UK is a free, independent guide to government-funded courses for adults in England. We help you find courses, understand the funding, and check whether you’re likely to be eligible, before you contact a college or training provider.
What we do
- Explain the funding. Funding rules for adult courses are complicated and change every August. We explain them in plain English, with links to the official sources.
- List courses. Each course page shows the qualification number, awarding body, level and how it’s usually funded.
- Help you check. The “Am I eligible?” check on each course page gives you a guide based on the 2026/27 rules, and shows which providers we’ve found offering that course.
What we don’t do
- We’re not a training provider. We don’t run courses, enrol learners or award qualifications.
- We’re not part of government. We’re not connected to the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions or any local authority.
- We don’t decide who’s eligible. The provider checks your details and makes the final decision.
- We don’t pass your details to providers. If you use one of our forms, your details stay with us. See our privacy policy.
Who runs the site
Adult Education UK is run by Michael, who has worked in adult education. That experience is why the site exists: many adults don’t know what they can study for free, and provider websites are often out of date or hard to compare.
The site is run independently. No college, training provider or awarding body has any say in what we publish.
How the site is paid for
The site is free to use, and the person who runs it pays the costs. At the moment:
- there are no adverts
- there are no affiliate links, so we don’t earn anything if you click through to a provider
- no provider pays to be listed, or to appear higher in a list
The providers we name for each course are ones we’ve found offering it, with a date for when we checked. We don’t link to them yet, so you can compare them on your own terms.
Our aims
We want more adults in England to know about the courses they’re entitled to, and to start one with confidence.
In future, we may help people who ask for it to get in touch with checked, reputable providers. If we do, it will always be your choice. We’ll ask for your clear permission first, and we’ll update this page and our privacy policy before anything changes.
How we check our information
Every funding fact on the site comes from an official source, such as GOV.UK or the Department for Education’s list of qualifications approved for funding. Each page shows when it was last reviewed and the sources we used. Read our editorial policy to find out how we check courses and fix mistakes.
Get in touch
If you’ve spotted a mistake, or have a question about the site, contact us. We can’t give advice about your own eligibility for a course. For that, speak to the provider, or the National Careers Service.
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