FALLING student numbers are forcing a college chain to cut almost 50 staff from its Oxfordshire campuses.

Activate Learning yesterday confirmed it was consulting staff on plants to make 69 full time positions redundant, after a disappointing number of 16-year-olds applied to study with it in the 2016/17 year.

The low numbers mean it will receive less cash for the 2017/18 year, due to the one year ‘lag’ applied when college funding is calculated.

The group runs City of Oxford College and Banbury and Bicester College, which has a campus in each town. The Bicester campus will see its opening times changed.

Activate Learning chief executive Sally Dicketts said yesterday that she did not expect pupil numbers to rise again until 2019.

She added: “This is a national issue but obviously we recognise it is an awful situation for some of those affected.

“We are reducing staff numbers but maintaining provision because we believe there will be an upsurge again in two years time and so we want to be sure we can grow again.

“At the moment applications for next year are looking strong, but the applications for this current year were much lower than in 2015/16.

“That is partly because in 2015/16 they were above what we would normally expect.”

The biggest fall in applications had been in creative subjects, Ms Dicketts said, while applications for some areas, such as business studies, had risen.

She added: “We think that is because the Government has been heavily promoting STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] subjects and some schools have been cutting back on creative, so pupils know less about them.

“We are not closing any creative subjects though because Britain is known for its creative industries and so we hope government will wake up to the need for funding.”

The chief executive also said the falling number of students was largely because there were fewer 16-year-olds coming out of the secondary school system.

This is a legacy from the fall in the UK birth rate during the 1990s, which hit a record low in 2001.

Many children born in that period are currently finishing secondary school, but there are fewer of them than in previous generations.

Professor John Howson, an Oxfordshire county councillor and education expert, said it was an issue affecting further education colleges across the country.

He explained: “Like the university sector, they are just now at the tail end of this problem. It has passed through primary schools and is just now ending in secondary schools but there is still very much a decline in numbers. We need to make sure colleges are not decimated during this period because funding is already a big problem. The Government needs to pay attention, particularly if it wants to put a big focus on its proposed T-Levels.”