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Commentary - May 2007

Adult Learning Matters

Does Adult Learners’ Week make a difference? The positive evidence, in terms of participation, awareness, enrolment and job-seeking, is overwhelming, writes RACHEL THOMSON

Rachel Sims is a single parent bringing up twin daughters and a son in Bristol. She spent 23 years working as a butcher. As her children grew older, she decided to go to college. Juggling home, work and college life, Rachel achieved qualifications in beauty therapy and ear-piercing and, at 42, she now runs her own business. ‘I’m particularly proud of being able to kick-start my brain again’, she says. ‘It was always active, but the cogs needed oiling. Adult learning opens up new opportunities, like branches on a tree – one path leads to many more options. I didn’t want to get old and say “if only I had pushed myself to do something else”.’

Rachel is one of dozens of people whose achievements will be celebrated during Adult Learners’ Week, which takes place from 19 to 25 May this year. The stories which will be told – in the press, on the radio, at award ceremonies, at local events – range from the butcher-turned- beautician to the man in his 90s who has just completed his eighth degree; from the ex- Marine who, after a period of homelessness, is now a qualified support worker for vulnerable adults, to the former prisoner, expelled from school at 13, who now runs a successful football training programme for children.

We’ll also be hearing about endeavours in group-based learning – school cleaners from Stourbridge who’ve grasped the ICT nettle wholeheartedly; union learning reps who have transformed the culture at their supermarket depot; the wives of servicemen who have become army learning champions from their base in Dorset. Family learning will be celebrated too, as well as projects and programmes which have opened doors to adult learners – young, old and in all their diversity. And, to coincide with the awarding body’s 25th anniversary, there will be a suite of awards for 2007 presented in association with the National Open College Network. Whatever they’ve learned, whatever their circumstances, a common thread runs through all these learners’ stories. They have all recognised the passion learning can unlock; the way it opens doors, transforms lives and touches other people.

Across the Week, there are thousands of opportunities to take part in learning activities, to try our hands at something new, through local events and outreach programmes. A visit to the online calendar – www.alw.org.uk/calendar  – reveals the breadth of learning that takes place, everything from flagmaking and Chinese calligraphy to talks about local sanitation and ‘Bringing Sophocles into New Labour Britain’. Every little helps, as a current advertising campaign is keen to remind us. For 16 years now, Adult Learners’ Week has been the highlight of the sector’s promotional calendar. At its core, the campaign is about raising demand for learning, about inspiring others to give learning a go, but importantly, too, it affords opportunities for reflection, for the airing of serious contributions to the policy debate.

2007 is the European Year of Equal Opportunities for All and the themes for Adult Learners’ Week are, as ever, wide and inclusive: learning at, and for, work; community, citizenship, equality and diversity; Skills for Life – including literacy, language and numeracy learning, ICT, media literacy and financial education; arts, culture and creativity; learning, health and fitness – including mental health issues, learning in later life and learning for active living; and learning in a global context.

One of the successes of Adult Learners’ Week each year has been in broadening popular understanding about how, why and what adults learn. ‘Who participates and who’s missing?’ has been a central question for NIACE over two decades and the findings of our annual participation survey highlight the groups of adults who remain under-represented in learning. In the wake of the Leitch and Lyons reports, NIACE’s Policy Conference this year will consider adults’ journeys to the workplace, with a focus on learning, equality and the modern global economy. Across the Week, and through our advocacy work, we’ll be asking how we can create both a skilled and knowledgeable workforce and a socially inclusive community. Ministers, officials, Learning and Skills Council officers, heads of institutions and organisations, large and small, will meet learners: to hear about their experiences and to get a taste of what the triggers and barriers are to succeeding as an adult learner.

But does Adult Learners’ Week make a difference? Year after year, NIACE’s Campaigns and Promotions team is almost as busy collecting evaluation data in the weeks after the end of May as it has been in the months running up to it – and the positive evidence, in terms of participation, awareness, enrolments and job-seeking, is overwhelming. But a concluding anecdote provides, perhaps, the best proof we need. One Adult Learners’ Week Award winner wrote to us 12 weeks after collecting his award: ‘I have been amazed at the interest that receiving the Award has generated. I have received more than 25 phone calls – two from people I thought had passed away, two from school pals from the 1930s, one from New Zealand, one from a girlfriend of 1941, one from the sister of a girlfriend I had in 1943 and lastly a strange lady who rushed up to me in a crowded car park and gave congratulations and a big kiss.’ Adult learning matters: it changes the lives of individuals, families and communities.

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