Happy New Year!

A happy new year to one and all. The festivities seem a long time ago now. This is the start of the second week back and we are as busy as usual. We have a number of courses starting this week. Some were delayed because Mary was unwell last week. It's always nice at the start of a new course to see how many people you recognise that have been through the centre before. It's nice to welcome people back as well as welcoming a few new faces.

This week we are trying to get our heads around some of the returns we have to make regarding our activities. With our First Time online sessions that we run courtesy of UK online, we have to report back a whole series of general details. We don't give them addresses or anything like that but they need to know how many people in, say, each age category there are. It's not easy to get all that information but, unfortunately, to get the money from UK online, we need to collate the information. There are also a series of returns that we need to do for Cumbria Adult Education Service that need to be done by the middle of February. It can be quite taxing at times but, thankfully, Jocelyn has in place a number of systems to make life easier. Phew!

As far as finances are concerned, we don't get a lump sum at the beginning of the year like, for example, a school does. We have to earn our money as we go. We receive an amount for every learner from the government for all our accredited courses. With our Easy courses, it's a little simpler. We only bring in what the learner pays. But unless we get learners coming through the door, we end up not being able to pay for things!!!

Thankfully, in the years since All Saints' Learning Centre started, we've made a small surplus each time and ploughed this back into the Centre's activities.

We have a Numeracy course that has just started on a Friday afternoon. This is for people who want to brush up on their maths. Lots of people would like to improve their maths and if you're one of them, let us know. We also have a family fitness course starting tonight in the school hall here at All Saints. After the Christmas rush, it will be nice to get rid of a few pounds. It's a course for parents and their primary age children.

So, that's enough for now - there's paperwork to be done. See you soon.