New strategy needed for the over-50s Monday, January 19, 2009 - 18:14

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:

• most people can expect to spend one third of their lives in ‘retirement'
• there are now more people over 59 than under 16
• 11.3 million people are over state pension age; and
• life expectancy for a 65 year old today is now 85 for men and 88 for women.

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:

• labour market entry - happening less predictably. Young people are starting ‘careers' later, people are changing direction in mid life, and some are starting new careers in their 50s and beyond;
• mid life review - to help people adjust to the later stages of employed life, and plan for the transition to ‘retirement' which may now happen unpredictably at any point from 50-90+;
• the growing 'third age' - to support people in establishing a sense of identity and finding constructive roles for the 20 or more years they will spend in healthy retired life;
• the growing 'fourth age' - to maintain identity, health, social engagement and wellbeing during the final stages of life when people are dependent on others for some parts of daily life;
• citizenship, migration and mobility - in a more mobile society, where people are moving within the UK and internationally, to help people to establish themselves in new relationships and places.

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.