Tyldesley Community Education Centre was opened as an adult education and community centre in 1999. The centre was purchased from Wigan and Leigh College who for a number of years ran the centre as part of the Wigan and Leigh Campus. Tyldesley Top Chapel Ministries purchased the centre, and after the building being closed for 3 years re-opened it as “Tyldesley Community Education Centre”, the centre was opened for everyone in the local community to learn new skills, gain qualifications to help with job prospects, learn interesting new hobbies and a general meeting point for the community and surrounding areas to use and enjoy. The board of elders at Tyldesley Top Chapel purchased the centre and set it up in the centre of Tyldesley's community. It enables everyone to be able to access education, and is a meeting place for everyone to join in activities and events run in the centre.

In 2004 the building was 100 years, because of the age of the building and some years of neglect we had to undergoing a major refurbishment of the building, we had to have the whole building treated and repaired from the damage caused by wet rot, we have had a new roof, windows and electrics throughout the whole of the upper floors, this will now allow us to use the rooms previously out of use upstairs, giving us more classrooms to put on more courses. We have also this year updated the whole of the buildings fire alarm systems, this covers 3 floors and is a brand new state of the art system incorporating emergency lighting in the event of a power cut. We are continuing modernising the facilities at the centre and have gone on to complete a total refurbishment of all the toilet facilities, front entrance and coffee lounge. The majority of the classrooms have had new furniture and have been redecorated. We have also updated the IT equipment with the installation of an interactive Smart board.

The centre has an established partnership with Wigan & Leigh College; through this partnership we are able to offer vocational courses in a variety of subjects. These courses give students to qualifications they need to help with job prospects and further career development.

We offer a wide variety of short courses funded by ACL - Adult Community Learning, with this funding we can offer courses free with all materials and tuition supplied. This has been a tremendous success for people who would really like to get back into learning but due to a lack of finances can not achieve this. One group which we have successfully targeted this year is single parents, we have run courses for the parent to get some time to themselves by doing one of our courses, socialising with other people and learning at the same time, this can be so beneficial to people who don't have much confidence to go out and meet people because of the ties of being a parent, while the parent is learning the children too can enjoy themselves by playing with other children in the centres crèche, Noah's Ark is a playschool that takes children from 2 to 5 years of age, it is run by fully qualified staff as is ofsted inspected. We also run courses through family learning where the child and parent can learn together. With our ACL funding we been able to implemented specialist courses that we couldn't run through our other areas of funding; we go into this in more detail further on through this report. Other facilities offered at the centre include Learndirect and UK Online, this offers everyone the facility to use a computer and access the internet. With Learndirect a student can choose from a wide selection of courses, Basic IT, IT Specialist, Business & Skills for Life, The courses carry small fees depending on the type of courses a student wishes to study, there are some free courses available to students who receive certain benefits.

Tyldesley centre has also now established some very good connections with other groups in our community, we have Connexions who work with young people from the ages of 13 to 19, they help with early school leavers, further education issues, retraining, careers advice, substance abusers, children with disabilities and financial problems.

We have job centre plus who we liaise with, we notify them of our course portfolio and they regularly place people with us for further training and qualifications, they also have a project currently running where they are aiming to help single parent families re-train and get back to work. Tyldesley centre and Sure Start work very closely with each other to help the families in our local community, Sure Start organise projects to bring together children and parents by involving them in projects where they can learn and play together, this encourages better family relationships. We are running several projects through Sure Start funding e.g. family finance discussion group, here we help parents with finance issues such as chid tax credits, debt control, childcare & crèche funding and general financial advice. It is an informal group where parents can come and discuss any financial issues they may have, and get any help they may need from our qualified tutor. We are also looking at future projects to run with Sure Start in the coming year.

It is the aim of TCEC to provide a safe and professional environment, in which both student and lecturer are treated with respect, and that every effort is made to meet the highest standards of all available courses and necessary equipment in order that the time spent here would be fruitful and enjoyable.

We will always look to improve our services and facilities while maintaining a high standard of Health & Safety and communication within our structure, treating all feedback, both negative and postive with equal importance. This establishment is a community based education centre, all staff present and future are and will be police cleared.