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Editor's Letter - March 2006

Despite relatively high levels of adult participation in learning, funding rounds for this year and next promise hard times for adult learning. Behind this, suggests Martin Tolhurst in this month’s Adults Learning, lies the view that adult learning, and especially that classed as ‘other’, is ‘a relatively meaningless pattern of provision – a pot from which other priorities can be funded without full consideration of the impact on existing learners’.

For the first time in 15 years as college principal, Tolhurst continues, this kind of risk is viewed as acceptable by government. How can this be redressed? According to Tolhurst, we need ‘a comprehensive vision for adult learning’, one in which its roles in both economic development and social inclusion are recognised. Government should start listening to those at the front-line of delivery to formulate reform that addresses the education and skills needs of the entire adult population. Such reform, Tolhurst suggests, should include an entitlement for adults up to a first level 3 qualification and funding for adult learning that is ring-fenced. But we won’t get these things unless we have a comprehensive vision for adult learning, of which a skills strategy is a central part.

According to Simone Delorenzi, the case for an adult entitlement is often hindered by a tendency to oppose the image of ‘the disadvantaged but eager adult learner’ with that of ‘the reluctant teenager’. These, she says, are often snapshots of the same person, taken at different stages in their lives. Delorenzi suggests a four-year entitlement to learning between 16 and 25 and up to level 3 as a means of bridging the divide between the pre- and post-19 phases. Rather than appealing to a difficult opposition with teenagers, a case needs to be developed whereby ‘different types of adult learning can stand on their own’.

Which types of learning should the education system prioritise? Geoff Mulgan points to what he sees as a mismatch between the sorts of skills currently delivered by the education system and those employers say they want. Research shows that employers are less interested in formal qualifications than they are in so-called softer skills of communication, problem solving, flexibility, willingness to learn and so on. Failure to recognise this fact has meant that government policy has had little impact on the number of young people not in education, employment or training (so-called NEETs). Unless we turn our learning towards the qualities needed by an advanced service economy, Mulgan concludes, many adults and young people will continue to be by-passed by economic growth.

Martin Yarnit’s review of the Government’s testbed learning community initiative shows how valuable collaboration and partnership in service delivery can be in widening community engagement. He would agree with Martin Tolhurst’s suggestion that those involved in front-line delivery should be placed at the heart of planning for adult learning. As Alastair Thomson writes in this month’s Commentary, teachers and trainers need less measurement and meddling, and more trust.

Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning