Report helps adults to learn about legal matters Friday, November 13, 2009 - 18:15

The NIACE report Potential for Public Legal Education in Adult Learning - commissioned by Plenet - looks at introducing adults to learning about legal matters affecting them, like debt advice, making a will, family law and citizenship.

The report draws on the expert views of experienced adult learning professionals - mainly from the financial learning field - who were overwhelmingly supportive of developing the presence of Public Legal Education in the various elements of adult learning in which they work.

Lisa Wintersteiger from the Plenet Steering Group, said:

"Plenet is very pleased to have been able to work with NIACE on this research. Tapping into such a rich vein of expert knowledge and experience about the adult learning world has offered insights and exciting opportunities in developing Public Legal Education for adult learners. We are impressed both by the understanding and the enthusiasm of the experts for Public Legal Education and we see this as an important step forward in embedding this new subject into the adult learning landscape. We look forward to further collaboration with NIACE and thank them for their support so far."

Howard Gannaway, NIACE Research Fellow for Financial Literacy and co-author of the report, said:

"This has been a really interesting piece of research for NIACE, building on two earlier pieces of writing we undertook for Plenet. It has been rewarding to be able to build on the knowledge and experience we have in Financial Learning and extend this into an exciting new field such as Public Legal Education."

The research follows earlier work carried out for Plenet by NIACE - Dimensions of Public Legal Education: What would a legally capable person look like? - which looked at the links between the development of Public Legal Education and financial capability learning.