More, Different and Better

Austerity or investment in learning and skills?

It’s been a busy few months at NIACE: preparing for Adult Learners’ Week, developing our proposals for the spending review, interpreting the figures coming out of this year’s participation survey, thinking about the impact of the benefit changes and skills for those in and out of work, working through the challenges in funding and structural changes and contributing to the growing debate on skills and economic growth in localities. All at the same time as considering the European context in our role as the national EU coordinator for adult learning. The list could go on and on, but we also see this through the lens of the change agenda playing out for many of our members and supporters at the frontline of teaching and learning in terms of changing learner profiles and needs, decreasing resources and the need for a new curriculum for difficult times.

One of our major roles as the national charity for adult education is to draw all of these issues together into a set of coherent messages about the role that learning and skills plays in people’s lives and to support the confidence in the economy – learning for work, to build resilience and for hope for the future of communities and families.

A key argument we are making in our spending review document – Spending Review Proposals – Learning for Adults - is that the UK should aspire to spend the OECD average on tertiary education by 2020, a date not too far away – it’s the end of the next parliament. The OECD average spend on tertiary education is 1.6% of GDP, the UK only spends 1.3% of GDP – 0.3% of the UK GDP is serious money, approximately £4.25 billion a year.  We are also well below the European average of employer investment in skills – both critical when we think about economic growth.

You can imagine some of the serious discussions we have had about this: how can we be this ambitious at a time of austerity and cuts? How can we not be this ambitious when it is skills and learning that underpin the sustainable economic growth everyone desperately seeks? We have been very clear about the need for a changed narrative for current times and the need to quantify the benefits of adult learning – this is about the hard factual case of the net present value (NPV) of investing in learning and skills. It is about the national evidence on productivity and on wage progression, as much as the equally important impact on well-being and the wider benefits on learning. A quick look at the long term scarring effect on earnings of a period of not being in education, employment or training as young people tells us this is an issue that needs a radical long term re-think.

We present a list of practical and technical policy “asks”, but our main message is much bigger and simpler: we need a long term cross-party consensus that investing in adult learning and skills at all levels, not only provides the scaffolding to enable everyone to contribute in a vision of future economic sustainable growth and resilience that meets both local and national needs, but also shows savings on other budgets to make this happen. But this needs to be a consistent long term approach and not subject to continual changes in policy or tweaks in direction.

And if you have any doubts about what our call for increased investment in adult learning and skills means, just take a quick look at the achievements of the national and regional winners for Adult Learners’ Week, the reality of the human capital debate that it is impossible to ignore.

Friends or enemies of promise? How to survive your family, save the planet and stop dreaming in html!

The Rootstein Hopkins drawing exhibition at Morley College.

I like it when a well turned phrase shows up in our generally bad tempered national debate on education, especially where it is carried out in the letters pages of the newspapers. For example, Michael Gove recently dubbed his critics “enemies of promise” (well they had called his draft national curriculum ‘Michael Gove’s pub quiz’).

“Enemies of promise” is a phrase borrowed from the title of a 1930s book by the critic Cyril Connolly, in which he comments the arts were “under a blight”. Ever thus, you might think.

As part of the arts and culture strand of Adult Learners Week 2013, I recently agreed to be one of three judges for the Rootstein Hopkins drawing exhibition at Morley College. It was hard work: 70 drawings had to be selected for inclusion from over 400 entries and winners identified. If you are in the vicinity of Lambeth North between now and 8 June, you should go and see the exhibition.
On the way in, the walls of the gallery are posted with the names of participating adult learning centres/colleges and short statements the participating learners gave on the subjects of  ‘adult education’ and ‘’why I draw’. The responses (“it’s a lifeline”, “changed my life”, “I’m finally following my dream”) are familiar testaments to the transformative power of learning and creative expression. I always think such one-liners act as a teaser for the individual life stories that lie behind the statement. My reward for the judging was an invitation to the private view, where I got to meet the learners and hear some of the life stories behind the drawings. I’d like to share three with you.

Anne Gardner is a student at SCOLA and is thrilled that two of her drawings are included in the exhibition. She told me that for her, drawing was something she had finally been able to do once her family had grown up and she’d been able to go part time at work: “when my son moved out, my drawing took over his room”. Her story is typical of the many adults for whom learning is a key element of their strategy for negotiating transition from one part of the life-course to another.

Jill Hopper is a student at City Lit whose drawing ‘Trolley’ won first prize. Jill, a working Mum with an 8 year old son, told me that she’d studied art at school but life had taken her down other paths. The City Lit course has been a way of picking up with art. Jill volunteers with the Wandle Trust, an environmental charity dedicated to restoring and maintaining the health of the River Wandle. The ‘trolley’ of Jill’s drawing is a shopping trolley pulled from the river by the trust. The drawing is made on three pages of a bible that once belonged to a WW2 serviceman, also found dumped near the river. Jill chose to make the drawing on pages from Leviticus, a book of the bible concerned closely with themes of cleanliness. The drawing therefore conveys information about environmental themes in a very direct way.

Another winner, Ann Gordon, told me she took an art class at Morley college “as therapy” when her full time job as a programmer threatened to become a bit of a problem. “I was sinking in a world of code”, she recalls, “I was even dreaming in html. For me, the drawing is definitely about giving a balance to my life. Through the drawing, I refuel in order to do the day job”.

These three learners have very different motivations: to reinvent life post-family, to find a new way of communication environmental messages, or to stop dreaming in html. But for all three, drawing has been a means for them of bringing their intelligence to bear on experience or subject matter critical to them. As (fellow judge) Professor Stephen Farthing puts it:

“Drawing is one of the three mechanisms we have at our disposal for translating time, sounds, forms, light, movement, emotions narratives, memories and ideas into comprehensible two dimensional matter. Matter that we use to remember, share and develop information”.

Connolly’s book is about his own unrealised potential as writer. Too often in recent times, supporters of arts education (and in particular its disciplines such as drawing, lazily dismissed as not digital enough or not C21st enough) have been labelled as ‘enemies of promise’. Those of us arguing for an education system with a richer conception of information and intelligence need to redouble our efforts to make the case for creativity at the centre, not periphery, of a curriculum that enables individuals and communities to fulfil their potential.

YES Europe

Written by Ryan Mercer – a Policy Development Intern at NIACE with a particular interest in European Union Policy. Ryan graduated from the University of Leicester in 2012 with a BA (Hons) Ancient History and History.

The European Institutions are currently debating the multi-annual budget for the next 7 years leading up to 2020. NIACE’s highly successful Learning for a Better World conference recently addressed the UK’s contribution to the EU Agenda for Adult Learning, to help meet the Europe 2020 goals for participation in education. As well as the EU Agenda, spending by the EU directly on adult education is a crucial part of achieving these goals.

2013 marks the final year of the European Lifelong Learning Programme (LLP). The LLP cost €7 Billion and was made up of six programmes Erasmus (High Education), Leonardo (Vocational), Comenius (Schools), Grundtvig (Adult Education), Transversal (mobility) and Jean Monnet (Integration). The majority of the funding was spent on the Erasmus and Leonardo programmes, which offered exchanges for students and trainees across Europe.

The EU is currently in discussions over the LLP’s replacement for 2014 known as ‘YES Europe’ (formerly ‘Erasmus for All’). YES stands for Youth, Education and training, Sport; reflecting an increased focus on young people prompted by the high youth unemployment rate in many EU countries. The package of proposals will include the programmes of the LLP, along with others to create a single extensive programme for employability, skills and mobility. While the funding is likely to work out greater than the LLP, the exact figures are still to be determined.

If targets for Europe 2020 are to be met and the deepening social crisis across Europe is to be tackled, then, as the commission recognises in its proposals, greater investment in human capital is necessary.

However, concerns have been raised in the field over the initial proposals by the commission, particularly over the lack of a role for civil society organisations and the limited size of the budget initially earmarked for adult learning. MEPs on the Committee for Culture and Education made a number of amendments back in November 2012 addressing these concerns including assigning 6% of the programme’s budget to adult learning (which should amount to a significant increase over current EU spending). They also stress the important role that civil society organisations can play in shaping policy and delivering learning programmes.

The trilogue meetings that are currently taking place between the European Parliament, European Commission and Council of the European Union are negotiating the final shape of the package of proposals. The decision is set to have a significant impact on adult learning across Europe and is being watched with great interest.

Moulding the future of European Adult Learning

Informal adult learning should be like a box of Belgian chocolates. You should always know what you are going to get – excellent quality, a great selection and guaranteed satisfaction. But is the expertise to deliver this being lost?

Back in September 2011, tucked away in a three-storey town house on the Place de Luxembourg in Brussels, Europe led the agenda amongst a group of young, enthusiastic men and women, whose nationalities span Europe. Intense debates were held across meeting tables, animated discussions flowed during coffee breaks and lively exchanges took place over dinner. The topic of conversation was not the Euro but European adult education.

My colleague Al Lockhart Smith and I had been selected by NIACE to attend the first ever week-long, in-house training programme, aimed at younger staff working in the adult education sector and organised by the European Association for the Education of Adults (EAEA); a European non government organisation with 127 member organisations from 43 countries working in the fields of adult learning.

A key subject which emerged from the training programme was active ageing and the realised threat of a growing gap in skills and education between younger and older people, particularly as retirement age increases in line with the rapidly changing demographic landscape. It was acknowledged that it is seen as a serious issue in most countries across Europe and could be reflected by the situation within the current adult education sector, where anyone below the age of 40 is classed as ‘young staff’.

The aims and objectives of the training programme are to:

• Encourage delegates to exchange information and knowledge about each other’s organisations and adult education backgrounds.
• Learn about EAEA, the European Civil Society Platform on Lifelong Learning, and other key civil society organisations.
• Promote the development of adult learning and encourage co-operation in adult learning at a European level.
• Inform delegates about advocacy work at a European level including lobbying practices.

Since returning to Leicester, we have developed a Younger Staff Network through which ideas and information regarding different projects, campaigns and examples of good practice, are regularly exchanged.  It is hoped that the long term outcome of this training course – with the support of organisations such as NIACE, the EAEA, the Grundtvig programme, and of course our European partners – is the development of a network of young staff working in the adult education sector, to carry out research and projects across Europe whilst receiving mentoring from senior experts in the field of adult learning.

The aim of the network will be to ensure that good practices are shared widely, as well as to guarantee that knowledge is passed on from previous generations. This type of collaborative work will be more crucial than ever as we enter a future where active ageing, skills and employment, and workforce migration will all be major concerns and it is imperative that the UK does not get left behind. For us and our European colleagues this is just the beginning – the network is still in its infancy, but by infusing the knowledge of our peers with the thoughts and ideas of younger staff in adult education, informal adult learning has all the right ingredients to become the perfect box of Belgian chocolates. We’re here to ensure that it tastes just as good in many years to come!

Find out how to get involved in this year’s training programme.

Aspirations for NIACE’s European learning conference

Written by Tom Schuller, who directed the NIACE Inquiry into Lifelong Learning. Tom was formerly head of the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation, and Professor of Lifelong Learning at Birkbeck, University of London.  He is writing The Paula Principle on why women work below their level of competence.

I see NIACE’s conference in Cardiff at the end of this week as a real opportunity to take stock and set ourselves some challenges for the future. Arguably as a community of lifelong learning proselytisers we have relied a little too much on the positive rhetoric which surrounds lifelong learning. I’m not for one instant denigrating the work done and the reports of its success in improving learners’ confidence, sense of self and material prospects. But one important next step is to look more systematically and rigorously at what works well and what works less well;  to open ourselves up to a more varied range of evaluations; and to face up to the challenges which a changing demographic and technological context brings us.

So, at the conference I’ll be looking for conversations which reflect an awareness of the need for rigorous evaluation.

I’d link this to the growing attention being paid in the European context to the concept of learning cities/regions. There’s a week later this year, in October, where this will be the theme for Europe. The idea of learning cities has been something of a slow burner since it was first developed in the OECD back in the 1980s, but it is now spreading. China is certainly taking it seriously, with some 80 cities, many of them very large indeed, being designated as learning cities. This will be a great opportunity to compare how the different regions are monitoring the impact of the label.

Then I’d like to see us exchanging views on what is going on in the way of lifelong learning strategies. Recently I was in Hamburg at UNESCO’s Institute for Lifelong Learning, for a meeting of ASEM, the hub which brings together Asia and Europe. The hub has several networks and I belong to the one which focuses on strategies for lifelong learning. We’re still struggling to define what we mean by a strategic approach. I’d naturally like to see use made of the 2009 NIACE Inquiry’s work, which aimed explicitly at developing a strategic framework; there is ideal material for a comparative approach, looking at how far different countries can be said to have an actual strategy for lifelong learning.

Finally, one of the conference’s aims is to look at increasing participation by less well qualified adults. I have a particular take on this, since I’m just finishing a book on how and why women work below their level of competence – what I call the Paula Principle. This gender dimension has two aspects relevant here. First, this work has led me to believe that we have as a real priority the position of part-timers – men and women. We should no longer think of part-timers as marginal members of the labour force, without career aspirations. Many of them are well qualified, and their skill levels are going up. But the opportunities for putting these skills to use are limited.

The other aspect is to do with how we approach the increasing educational disparity between women and men. Women have always tended to take part more in general adult learning. Now they do so also in training and from a base of higher initial qualifications. It’s a Europe-wide trend, so there should be plenty of scope for exchanging views. This is one demographic which needs some attention – the implications are not straightforward!