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Commentary - March 2007
More things in heaven and earth
As advocates of adult learning, we too often allow our agenda to be set by the state and its institutions rather than recognising lifelong learning as an independent cultural force in civil society, writes ALASTAIR THOMSON
In March 1987 Margaret Thatcher was the British Prime Minister, preparing to announce an election that would see her returned for a third term with a three-figure majority. Ronald Reagan was the forty-first President of the USA, Mikhail Gorbachev led the Soviet Union and Nelson Mandela was still in prison.
Me? I was preparing to abandon the security of a permanent job as a Whitehall information officer in the Department of Education and Science, for a two-year contract with a voluntary organisation in the English midlands that had 18 permanent staff plus a few dozen more on temporary contracts.
Twenty years on, having experienced the education and training policies of Conservative and Labour governments in equal measure, I’d like to use the coincidental opportunity of this Commentary to reflect on two different things the years have taught me.
The first and most depressing thing is not to do with adult learning at all, it’s to do with English secondary schooling. Like many people in education, I am reluctant to criticise fellow professionals, particularly since so much of the criticism of the state system in the media is driven by an unrepresentative metropolitan elite. As a parent of a child who will move to secondary school in 2008 though, I’d be lying if I said I was relaxed about the mediocrity of so many of my local secondary schools. This isn’t simply middle-class whinging, it’s about a system that too often fails to engage the disaffected, to help all pupils to realise their potential and to build a motivation to be a lifelong learner. It’s about a system that sometimes seems keener on excusing weaknesses than overcoming them. As I write, the lead story on the education section of the BBC news website concludes with the familiar refrain ‘More than one in six youngsters left school unable to read, write or add up properly’. Although I know to take this kind of reporting in my stride, the depressing thing to recognise is that there is so little confidence in schools.
The consequences of this malaise cast a long shadow over adult learning. It’s the elephant in the room that we never mention. An example lies in how politicians plan to respond to demographic change. Between 2009 and 2020 there will be about 60,000 fewer people leaving the school system every year. An excellent opportunity to rebalance spending between children and adults without robbing Peter to pay Paul you might think. But no, the Government’s inclination is to use the money to gold-plate provision for a smaller cohort of children. Gordon Brown’s wish to raise per capita spending in the school system to levels found in the independent sector may be understandable – money will certainly help – but is unlikely to solve the deeper-seated cultural problem. Similarly, although the Conservative opposition is coming up with a refreshingly inclusive vision of the purposes of adult learning, it is hard to believe that their parallel concern about what they term the ‘remedial’ dimension of further education won’t see money diverted into helping schools do their job better.
The second thing I think I’ve learned is that, as advocates of adult learning, we have too often allowed our agenda to be set by the state and its institutions rather than recognising lifelong learning as an independent cultural force in civil society. Attending the recent World Social Forum in Nairobi reminded me that adult education is not simply a public service, nor is it just a private transaction between teachers, learners and employers to meet skill needs or personal development goals. Surely we need to rediscover the role adult learning has played and could yet play in building the kind of society we want to live in and find ways of re-engaging with social movements, even if the learning falls outside whatever employers and ministers want to prioritise? Perhaps we collude in our own marginalisation when we start to believe that the latest circular from a quango is what really matters!
Before becoming too much of a grumpy old man, it’s worth saying that, on a personal level, the rapid succession of politicians and civil servants who’ve had responsibility for bits of adult learning over the past 20 years has included relatively few who were downright nasty! Quite a lot end up ‘going native’ and carrying a fondness for the rich untidiness of adult education into their future roles. Twenty years ago the world was a very different place:
Scotland and Wales had less ability to grow their own systems, and in England, Local Education Authorities dominated the landscape, controlling polytechnics and further education colleges as well as schools, and the most visible contribution of universities to adult learning was through extra-mural departments and Access courses.
Structures change, often too frequently. The political climate changes, often too slowly. Resources are always more or less insufficient and yet adult education and training continue – the Ground-elder in the policy garden! I still live in dread of the day that NIACE’s personnel department learns to use a calendar and tells me I should have left 18 years ago!
Alastair Thomson is NIACE’s Senior Policy Officer
