A COMPUTING centre which has transformed the lives of some of its 600 students each year is among those being forced to close because of cuts to Oxfordshire's adult learning budget.

Oxford and Cherwell Valley College has announced that the largest of its IT Outreach Centres in Manorsfield Road, Bicester will close on Friday, July 14.

Students will be able to complete their free courses at the town's main campus in Telford Road, but future students will need to travel to the other centres and will have to pay £50 course fees for the Level One and Two IT courses. If they take the course exam, they will be charged a further £30.

It is understood that similar centres in Didcot and Carterton, run by Abingdon and Witney College, are due to close down for the same reason.

Subsidies for adult courses, including IT, have been diverted to the Government's new priorities basic skills training and vocational courses for underachieving 16- to 19-year-olds and adults with no formal qualifications.

But Ruth Wigham, Information and Communications Technology curriculum manager at Oxford and Cherwell Valley College, said the free IT courses at Bicester had provided many adults with the basic skills they needed to find employment.

She said: "People could come with absolutely no skills whatsoever and a number of them go on to get jobs. It has been very successful.

"Our achievement rate was 30 per cent above the national benchmark.

"It's really unfortunate that we have to close.

"We've also had a lot of disabled people in Bicester and people from the homeless shelter who have now got jobs after doing their courses here. It's been a really good, widening participation programme.

"We have tried to fight this it is affecting all our centres and we're going to have to charge for these courses. We are hoping the fees we charge to employers will subsidise other courses.

"Our students are very unhappy. Some of them are on benefits and they can't afford to pay fees. It's dreadful really and we feel so powerless.

"I just can't see how they can say that ICT isn't a basic skill."

David Thompson, a managing director of a dental engineering company, is towards the end of a free word-processing course at Oxford and Cherwell Valley College's Kidlington ICT centre.

Mr Thompson, 59, of Kidlington, said: "I'm taking the course so I can use the computer better both for my job and the clubs I belong to. Everything is all done on the Internet these days.

"A lot of people are shocked that the funding has been withdrawn. It's not so bad for me because I can afford the fees, but I feel that the numbers are going to drop dramatically.

"Middle-aged people like myself who didn't learn about computers at school need to learn how to use them and it's wrong that this funding has been withdrawn.

"I've learnt so much on the course."