THE sight of a large and successful company hitting the rocks is not one that brings anyone pleasure.

RM Education’s latest planned jobs cull is part of a pattern since 2011 that has seen hundreds of jobs go.

And there is no clear sense of where things go from here.

The firm is unable to say how many jobs will go locally – but, remarkably, it also does not know how many people it employs at its Didcot base at the moment.

In a county that is in many respects flush with cash, it is sometimes easy to forget the struggles that many businesses are facing.

And RM’s plight embodies this with worrying clarity.

But its troubles point to a wider issue the country is currently facing.

As the Government continues to make cutbacks in what it says is an effort to balance the books, schools and other services are being hacked back.

For businesses like RM, this appears to have had a devastating impact.

Of course, it is not for the Government to keep companies afloat that otherwise cannot survive – and competition from massive global competitors has not helped them.

But when we hear about public sector cutbacks, we think about teachers, nurses and others who might be in the firing line.

RM Education, it seems, may be one of the unfortunate forgotten victims.