Education promotes well-being – but over 25s excluded Monday, June 1, 2009 - 23:55

Despite the fact that improved well-being is increasingly recognised as a significant result of taking part in adult learning, for too many adults seeking help to get back on the learning ladder after the age of 25, the choice is largely restricted to narrow skills-for-work programmes. Whilst skills-for-work programmes meet the aspirations and increase the well-being of some people, a range of learning opportunities should be available to meet the needs of different people.

This is a key message from a new study - Well-being, happiness and Lifelong Learning - [PDF] - commissioned by the Independent Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning (IfLL), sponsored by NIACE. The Government may have put issues of well-being high on the policy agenda but too little has been done to make it happen, the report suggests.

Professor John Field, a commissioner for the Inquiry and the report's author, said:

"Learning is important to a range of well-being indicators. Yet as a nation we tend to think of learning as something best done by the young, with a few crumbs left for people in their early years of work. Educationally, ageism begins at 25."

The study reveals considerable evidence for the positive impacts of learning on health and well-being of people of all ages, and suggests it may have greater effect than health promotion campaigns.

In Gloucestershire the adult education service also works in care homes for the elderly and in Nottingham learning advisers are working in three GPs' surgeries prescribing learning programmes in place of pills. Research, carried out for the Government Office for Science by the New Economic Foundation, recommended learning as one of five daily activities of proven worth in promoting health and well-being.

Failure to take sufficient action to improve the well-being of adults arises in part from the Government's obsession with economic indicators when measuring success, even though rising incomes seem to have little influence on happiness, Professor Field said. This may explain why Britain rarely comes top in international happiness studies.

"By European standards, Britain is a land of sharp inequalities - of wealth, health and learning. Last year, Britain came bang in the middle in a European Social Survey study of life satisfaction, sandwiched between the Slovenians and Belgians, but well below the Danes and Finns."

Professor Field, said:

"There is a strong case for providing learning opportunities in subjects directly related to well-being, including depression and learning disabilities. This does not mean offering ‘happiness training' - yes, it really exists - nor dosing yourself with fish oil during tea breaks. It means getting the most from a broad range of learning opportunities."

Tom Schuller, director of the Inquiry, said:

"Wellbeing is no longer regarded as a slightly whacky issue for policy-makers to think about. It is increasingly an item of central concern, especially in a recession; and we have here some original thinking about how learning can contribute to improving it."