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Education promotes well-being - but too many over 25's excluded

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 – 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 says. 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 adds:

“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.”

The report calls for radical action and an end to the unofficial ageism in adult education. Professor Field says we need:

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.”

Read the Thematic Paper: "Well-being and Happiness" by Prof. John Field

Two-Tier adult training system needs urgent reform

Private and public training providers inhabit parallel worlds with little overlap between the two, and greater collaboration between them could greatly improve the delivery of training. This is the central message in a new report on training published today, Tuesday 26th May 2009.

At present, England has a two-tier training system where private training providers responding directly to employer demand offer few formal qualifications such as NVQs says the report – The Private Training Market in the UK – commissioned by the Independent Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning (IFLL), sponsored by NIACE. Where qualifications are offered, it tends to be because the employers ask for them.

Private trainers see their job as that of providing the skills training needed to make companies more competitive and productive, while leaving the qualifications market on which the government puts great emphasis to colleges and other public sector bodies, who tend to see the individual learner as their main customer.

Training has become a huge market, with an estimated £38bn spent by employers each year although only about £2.9bn of this is spent on external private sector training provision. The number of private trainers doubled between 2000 and 2008 and, while it has been static of late, IT and finance have bucked the trend. The IT sector alone is worth between £530m and £660m in 2006/7, and is still growing at around 10% annually.

Employers have wide-ranging training incentives through the corporation tax relief system which allows them to offset costs, including existing overhead costs such as the wages of those employees managing the training. Whilst this clearly encourages training, the report says, it favours in-house delivery and the use of private training providers, which does little to help meet government qualifications targets.

The report calls into question the use of qualifications as targets for publicly funded provision and says this needs to be reviewed if progress towards an employer demand led system is to be maintained.

Lindsey Simpson, author of the report, said:

“The public and private sector training markets operate in parallel with little overlap between the two. They are driven by different aims.” However, rather than take a negative view, she insists, this provides an opportunity for stimulating knowledge transfer between them.

“The public sector operators could benefit through understanding the more commercial approaches to marketing, delivery and the use of technology that market leaders in the private sector adopt. The private sector suppliers could benefit from partnerships which enable access to public subsidy and open up hitherto less viable markets such as small to medium enterprises (SMEs). Innovations in types and models of provision could result and employers and learners would benefit from greater choice and availability.”

Employers also increasingly require “unitised” training in modules that can be delivered flexibly with bite-size learning, particularly in sectors and occupations such as information technology, where the pace of change is very fast, she said.

“The risks are that, without this, there will continue to be a two-tier system where the public sector provision operates separately, driven by qualifications, and employers continue to invest substantial sums in training and learning for increased competitiveness which is largely unrecognised by Government.”

Tom Schuller, Director of the Inquiry, said:

“This is a rare analysis of a major sector. One of the Inquiry’s main recommendations is for better balance in our system, and this report shows that we need to be clearer about how to balance training for qualifications with other forms of lifelong learning.”

He added that although Government and the Learning and Skills Council has put some emphasis on the role of private providers, the inquiry found that of the 12,300 private training providers in the UK operating above the VAT threshold providers very few are comparable in size to an average FE College. A large proportion is very small firms, operating in niche markets on the margins of financial viability.

Read the Sector Paper: "The Private Training Market in the UK"

Adult education 'vital' for all migrants

Adult education has a vital role to play in helping people settle into a new community, whether they have come from another country or another part of the UK. This is the key message from a new report on migration and lifelong learning, published today, Wednesday 22nd April 2009.

The report - Migration, Communities and Lifelong Learning, commissioned by the Independent Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning sponsored by NIACE - argues that adult education can speed up the process of integration into a new community, helping people to quickly become a significant part of their neighbourhood.

The report goes on to argue that this is true for people moving within the UK, as well as from other countries, and should include rapid access to first level ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) teaching for those who need it.

Professor Stephen McNair, a member of the IfLL secretariat and the report's author, said,

"Long waiting lists and complicated regulations teach people that they are not welcome, and help them to learn to survive without becoming members of mainstream society."

"Joining classes can help people to develop new skills, and refresh old ones, so that they can rapidly become contributing members of society. It can also help community cohesion by building social networks in neighbourhoods."

The report proposes four main policy principles for lifelong learning and migration.

Tom Schuller, Director of the Inquiry, said,

"Well managed migration is good for the UK, and lifelong learning can make the experience of immigration better for both migrants and the host community."

"Education is unique amongst public services in that it brings people together to pursue shared interests, unlike other services which deal with clients in isolation as individuals."

"In combination with other services, such as health, it can help to build confident and resilient communities with strong social networks."

Migration, Communities and Lifelong Learning, by Stephen McNair, is available for download at the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning website.

Read Stephen McNair's paper "Migration, Communities and Lifelong Learning" here

Technological change

Computers are everywhere and we cannot avoid them. Digital technologies have become central to our lives in the 21st century and even if we are not directly engaged with them, they profoundly affect how we now live and how our society functions. The implications for lifelong learning are far reaching and the subject of the latest paper from the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning.

The paper argues that those working in lifelong learning have a central role to play in fostering wider public discussion and involvement so that technology is employed to help shape the future societies we seek rather than the ones we would otherwise uncritically end up with.

It is wrong to treat technology as either a panacea or a perpetual threat says Simon Mauger, Programme Director at NIACE and author of the paper. As technology continues to spread into the home, the community and the workplace, we need to understand how to use it creatively and actively to support people throughout their lives rather than passively accept what it offers.

The paper precedes a futures study commissioned by the Inquiry to design scenarios for 21st century learning infrastructures. The study has looked at places, technology and people and the interactions between them. It is due to report in the next 2-3 months.

Read Simon Mauger's paper "Technological Change" here

New strategy needed for the over-50s

Older people need more opportunities to learn if they are to actively contribute - rather than be a cost to society - during the twenty or more years they spend in ‘retirement', a new study of learning and population changes reveals.

The report - commissioned by the Independent Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning, sponsored by NIACE - argues that the current narrow focus on skills for work and on younger people is inadequate to meet the challenges of demographic change.

These challenges include:

The report is written by Professor Stephen McNair, a member of the IfLL secretariat, he said,

Adults need more opportunities to learn what they need when they need it if they are to make their own way through an increasingly complex and uncertain economy and society.
Learning needs to continue throughout life. Our historic concentration of policy attention and resources on young people cannot meet the new needs. Alongside learning for young people, and learning for jobs, we need courses which help people to remain engaged and active in the world outside work, and to make sense of their lives.
The vast majority of our education budget is spent on people below the age of 25. When people are changing their jobs, homes, partners and lifestyles more often than ever, they need opportunities to learn at every age.

Professor McNair points to five areas where more and better learning opportunities are needed for everyone:

Professor McNair warns that long-term prospects of a down-turn in the economy - with the real value of all types of pension falling in the recession - means people need to continue learning to make the best of this situation.

Some people will need to maintain their skills to earn and support dependents, while others can perform valuable voluntary work, in charities or governing bodies, but will be much more effective if they can retain and update their skills and knowledge.

"Although everyone's quality of life depends on the economic productivity of ‘working age' adults, it does not follow that the maximum good of the population as a whole is served by focusing everything on paid employment and young people.

"Even if it is right for the bulk of public funding to be spent in this way, Government needs to consider how the other kinds of learning need are to be met, and to ask whether 1% of the public education budget is a proper share to tackle the learning needs of a third of the population."

Addressing these issues will be crucial to upcoming legislation and imminent changes in hand in public policy, including the recent White Paper on Social Mobility, and papers on Ageing Policy and Informal Adult Learning, both due for publication early this year.

Tom Schuller, Director of the Inquiry, said:

"One thing that this report shows is how we require a new structure for thinking about our lifelong learning needs.

"In practical terms, this means stopping using 65 as a defining age, and starting to think about 50-75 as a meaningful age group."

Purchase a hard copy of the paper here for £9.95

The impact of Lifelong Learning on Poverty Reduction

Adult education is vital in the fight against poverty but it has to work alongside other measures aimed at improving people’s lives, a detailed study of the impact of lifelong learning on poverty reduction shows.

Research commissioned by the independent Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning explores the public value of such learning, not only for the individual but for the family and wider community. The evidence suggests that lifelong learning works best when it is part of a broad set of initiatives and responses to the complex challenges people face at various stages in their lives.

The detailed study, including a reanalysis of more than 15 years of research into poverty reduction, was carried out by Ricardo Sabates, Senior Research Office at the University of London’s Institute of Education. He raises key issues around the potential of lifelong in helping cut the dependency of individuals on other often costly state-funded support services.

In the report, Dr Sabates says:

“Individuals engaged in lifelong learning are more likely to improve their livelihoods through better employment opportunities, higher income, broader understanding of financial markets, better health and healthier behaviours, access to health services, knowledge of health conditions, among others. However, the effectiveness of lifelong learning in reducing poverty is very much dependent on its integration with other policy measures.”

In addition to the crucial role lifelong learning plays in improving the skills of the current workforce and those seeking employment, Dr Sabates says, these other concerns should not be ignored. The need to provide financial literacy and support for all takes on a new urgency in the current climate of the credit crunch and people’s concerns about their mortgages, savings and pensions.

But the question of the need for a thorough grounding in financial literacy runs deeper through their everyday lives, he says. For example, it is the financially literate who know how best to access the welfare state and plan most securely for their futures. Similarly, health-literate people act fastest to spot problems, act on them and take control – living healthier lives.

The studies show the extent to which the health, welfare, financial and other benefits accruing from lifelong learning are passed on down the generations.

However, Dr Sabates' report goes further, offering new interpretations of research and exposing gaps in evidence that must be filled if politicians and policy makers are to make effective decisions on spending. For example, there is a lack of understanding of the role lifelong learning can play in providing people with autonomy and a sense of control – a crucial consideration as the government tries to promote citizenship.

Tom Schuller, Director of the Inquiry said:

“This is an invaluable study, not only for what it says about the positive things lifelong learning can and does bring to us all but also in identifying areas that still urgently need to be researched. Indeed, much of the paper touches on wider issues around which this Inquiry is calling for evidence, such as the impact of learning on well-being and the higher benefits different forms of learning can bring. It is the first of a series of analyses of the public value of lifelong learning.

“Clearly, lifelong learning can help substantially to reduce poverty through the impact it can have on so many aspects of people’s lives. We need to ensure that learning opportunities are offered in such a way as to reach all these aspects.”

Read Dr Sabates' paper here

Buy a hard of the paper here for £9.95

Crime and Social exclusion

Evidence on crime and social exclusion commissioned by the independent Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning suggests offenders should be offered a balanced curriculum with a strong focus on creativity.

While it is generally agreed that priority must be given to tackling the poor basic skills lacking in at least two-thirds of offenders, there is concern that the wider range of opportunities to help prepare people for work and social inclusion on leaving prison is being neglected.

There was a considerable shift of resources in favour of basic skills education and training following the Government’s 2005 Green Paper, Reducing Re-Offending through Skills and Employment.

But recent research, including studies carried out by the Ministry of Justice, suggests the complex problems of re-offending need to be tackled using a broader educational approach. Also, where basic skills learning is identified as a priority, prison education staff say they lack the time needed to help people reach the standards they require for work (level 2) while they are in prison.
Lack of basic skills does present a key problem. Another study for the ministry showed that half of all prisoners lacked basic literacy and two-thirds lacked basic numeracy. Also, two-thirds of offenders fail to move directly into work on leaving prison.

But studies by the ministry revealed little evidence to suggest poor basic skills could, on their own, be used to predict re-offending rates. In fact, in one study, 80 per cent of individuals considered to be at risk did not go on to re-offend. The evidence instead suggests a range of “indirect” connections, linked to school truancy, unemployment, social exclusion, low esteem and other cognitive and psychological problems.

Much of the evidence to the Inquiry also shows that community activities people choose for themselves are most likely to lead them to stop re-offending. Activities such as art and drama lead to greater confidence and self-esteem, particularly for those with mental health problems.
A wide range of evidence was submitted to the Inquiry by individuals and organisations including professionals, employers, government departments and agencies dealing with prisoners and re-offenders. There was broad agreement on the need to get the education and training balance right, in order not to squander scarce resources. For this to be most effective, there had to be one assessment to identify multiple needs and a sustained focus on lifelong learning with continued support and provision on release from prison and into work.

Other points from the evidence:

Guardian to take detailed look into the Inquiry

A special supplement in the Education Guardian (23rd September 2008) looked at the key themes for the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning.

With contributions from Stephen McNair on demography, Leisha Fullick on poverty, an interview with Bob Fryer, ground-breaking research on Alzheimer's and the views of Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats on some of the Inquiry's key questions. This supplement will be invaluable as an update on the progress of the Inquiry as it moves into the next stage.

Inquiry holds first meeting in Northern Ireland

The Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning, sponsored by NIACE, is developing an authoritative and coherent strategic framework for lifelong learning for the UK. As part of its work the Inquiry is running a series of expert seminars to explore the major themes of the Inquiry and to gain insights into perspectives from different parts of the UK. The next seminar will be held in Northern Ireland on Tuesday 9th September 2008.

Speakers at the seminar – to be held in Belfast at Malone House in Barnett Demesne – include Catherine Bell Deputy Secretary at the Department for Employment and Learning (DELNI), Paul Nolan, Director of Education at Queen’s University and Bernadette McAliskey from the South Tyrone Empowerment Network.

Also speaking at the seminar is Tom Schuller, Director of the Inquiry. He said:

“Economic regeneration in Northern Ireland is well underway. Investment and Skills Strategies have set targets aimed at improving competitiveness and enhancing the economy. Few people could deny that the Northern Ireland economy has much to gain from a highly skilled and a better-qualified workforce. Learning and skills are one important component of economic success.”

He continued, “However despite the dramatic improvement in levels of employment and corresponding reductions in levels of unemployment, economic inactivity remains stubbornly high at 27 – 30 per cent of the working age population - higher than all other UK regions. This must be linked to the fact that 24 per cent of the working age population lack qualifications compared to 14 per cent of the UK average.”

He ended, “Also, despite the significant and welcome progress on the political front, many citizens remain excluded and community divisions are, in some areas, deepening. Effective economic development is desirable but must be achieved

within a socially inclusive and cohesive society. This is a major challenge for Northern Ireland. Lifelong Learning has a critical role to play in helping the country to meet these challenges. . It's crucial for the Inquiry to understand the challenges and opportunities for lifelong learning in Northern Ireland.”

Press Release: "Inquiry holds first meeting in Northern Ireland" - [PDF] Released On 09/09/2008

Lifelong Learning, Citizenship and Belonging

A central purpose of lifelong learning is to challenge prejudice and irrationality and to enable citizens to take more control of their lives - in other words, to gain greater freedom through learning.

This is one of the main tenets of 12 core principles linking lifelong learning to Citizenship and Belonging, in a paper by Professor Bob Fryer to the independent Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning.

As an advisor to successive Government ministers since 1997, Professor Fryer was chief architect behind some of the most significant lifelong learning and health service training reforms. Now, as a Commissioner on the Inquiry, he draws on his experience and knowledge to show how lifelong learning can be an instrument both of self-fulfilment and active citizenship.

Effective lifelong learning must start, he says, with individual interests, needs and priorities and expand to be “all-embracing” - focusing on family, community, work, leisure and politics, and the more intimate and personal aspects of people’s lives.

Evidence suggests values for citizenship are often best imbued in “incidental learning”. Therefore, lifelong learning must embrace all modes and forms of learning - formal, non-formal, informal and incidental.

In his paper, he challenges traditional education for “reinforcing, perpetuating and legitimising social injustice”. He sees the best lifelong learning as a democratic process rooted in the principles and practices of social justice and “open and subject to scrutiny and challenge in so far as its compliance with the declared canons of social justice are concerned”.

The need for an inclusive, democratic approach is particularly when exploring issues of race, diversity and difference, he argues, calling for “minimum common elements of citizenship” to apply to all learners.

“Bob Fryer’s analysis truly extends the debate”, says Tom Schuller, Director of the Inquiry. “It reminds us of the roots of democratic citizenship. We cannot train people to be citizens; they need to gain a real sense of power over their lives, as individuals and as members of wider communities, and that’s where lifelong learning is an essential enabling force.”

The 12 principles:

1. Focus on the learners’ own interests needs and priorities
2. Begin with people’s own experiences
3. Be genuinely lifelong and life-wide
4. Embrace all types of learning from formal education through to incidental learning
5. Help develop learners’ independent and critical thinking skills
6. Connect learning with action
7. Link learning to real prospects of greater autonomy for citizens
8. Base learning on principles and practices of social justice
9. Engage people in inclusive and democratic methods of learning for citizenship
10. Promote wide-ranging discussion around the importance of diversity and difference
11. Give all adults an annual “entitlement” to post-school learning
12. Provide public investment through a “community chest” to sustain lifelong learning for citizenship

Read Bob Fryer's paper "Lifelong Learning, Citizenship and ‘Belonging': a briefing paper" here - [PDF]