[ Current issue ] [ Back issues ] [ Special Issues ]

Editor's Letter - January 2008

“With Government convinced that its current priorities are the best way to achieve its objectives, how can we make a case for a genuinely broad-based adult learning offer?”

According to figures highlighted in a press release from the Learning and Skills Council at the end of last year, the number of adults undertaking full level 2 programmes grew by 42 per cent in 2006/07. At the same time, the number of adults on Skills for Life programmes grew by 16 per cent. Less cheeringly, in the same period 720,000 learners over 19 were lost to publicly funded adult education, a fall of 1,400,000 over the past two years. This important and troubling statistic didn’t find its way into the LSC’s release.

The Government deserves credit for the serious attention it has given to adult learning and skills and for the new money it had found for the sector. But, increasingly, it is clear that this success is coming at a heavy price. And that price is being paid not so much by institutions as by learners and, indeed, by society as a whole.

The problem was thrown into sharp relief by this month’s Commons debate on a Tory motion opposing the withdrawal of funding for ‘equivalent or lower qualification students’. John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, was at pains to point out that the plans, which will see £100 million in funding redirected from students taking a second undergraduate degree to students taking their first, do not amount to a cut and that institutions will not suffer as a result of the changes.

And he’s right. It is the learners who stand to lose out. It’s hard to square this withdrawal of funds with the Government’s oft-voiced commitment to lifelong learning. As Alan Tuckett observed in response to the publication of the LSC’s latest figures on adult learning, opportunities for adults to learn are dwindling ‘drastically’.

With Government seemingly convinced that its current priorities, which are proving so disastrous for the adult learning offer, are the best way to achieve its objectives both for the economy and for social justice, how can we make a case for a genuinely broad-based offer?

Some hope may be taken from the Webb review of further education in Wales, published in December. According to Richard Spear, Director of NIACE Dysgu Cymru, the review’s final report recognises the importance of adult learning to a range of agendas. His hope is that, in deciding what parts of the report to implement, the Welsh Assembly Government adopts the review’s view of adult learning as a cross- portfolio investment rather than as a solely education-related cost.

There is no question that adult learning is a central dimension of a number of different government agendas, from health and happiness to citizenship and community cohesion. The work of one project, reported in this issue of Adults Learning, demonstrates some of the different ways in which programmes of adult learning might be said to be valuable. A study of SHAID – the Single Homeless Action Initiative in Derwentside – commissioned by County Durham Learning, found that a successful learning intervention in the life of one vulnerable young person can result in a £35,586 saving to the public purse.

But perhaps more important are the social and civic benefits of projects such as SHAID. Adult learning makes an important, and reasonably well understood, difference to individual and community wellbeing, social cohesion and civic engagement. And while adult education may not be at, or near, the top of the Government’s list of priorities these concerns certainly are. The vital challenge for the year ahead is to join up these dots in as memorable and persuasive a way as possible.

Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning