Demonstrating the positive impact of adult learning Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - 10:54

Throughout October, NIACE has been demonstrating the positive impact of adult learning and advancing the debate around ‘what counts as evidence'. Building on the findings of its 2012 Annual Adult Participation in Learning Survey and Valuing the Impact of Adult Learning report by Daniel Fujiwara, NIACE has organised and participated in several events, including:

• A policy roundtable on 11 October, which featured a presentation from Daniel Fujiwara on the subjective wellbeing research featured in Valuing the Impact of Adult Learning. Attendees included representatives from government departments, think tanks and local authorities.
• An input on Social Return on Investment (SROI) and impact in the UK from Penny Lamb at the Fall Institute conference on ‘Social Finance and Innovation for Adult Basic Learning: Opportunities and Challenges' in Canada. Read Penny's blog post on the conference.
• A 2-day SROI training session in Manchester, which was well attended.
• Two Making Sense seminars, in York and London, helping practitioners and heads of service to think about how they can collect effective evidence of impact.

In addition, NIACE has been working with Community Learning Trust pilots and other local authorities to enhance and demonstrate the impact of their adult learning. It has also been working with a group of Adult and Community Learning Fund projects towards accreditation for their SROI analyses; the final reports are due later this year. We will share the lessons from the projects once final.

In order to take the conversation forward, NIACE needs more examples of good practice in terms of evidence-gathering and demonstrating impact. Examples can be shared, by emailing them to jenny.sherrard@niace.org.uk.