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Editor's Letter - April 2006

Welcome to the April 2006 issue of Adults Learning, which goes to press a week after the publication of the Government’s White Paper, Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances. We carry eight pages of reaction to the paper from some of the leading and most challenging voices in the learning and skills sector.

The White Paper sets out how the Government plans to reform further education to serve what Bill Rammell, Minister of State for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, recently described as ‘the two most fundamental aims of education: building a strong, highly skilled workforce to fuel the economy; and increasing social mobility’.

The foreword to the White Paper pledges to ‘renew the mission of the Further Education system, and its central role in equipping young people and adults with the skills for productive, sustainable employment in a modern economy’. This, argues Maggie Galliers, is to be welcomed, as are some of its headline proposals, such as the new entitlement for 19-25 year olds, but there is a real danger that further education could lose the thing that makes it ‘unique and special’ – its ‘dual role in contributing to social justice and public value, as well as to economic prosperity’.

Bill Rammell’s remark suggests that the Government recognises this, but is this a commitment that is being honoured in practice, and across the board? Galliers warns that some of the policy implications may restrict colleges’ opportunities to improve people’s life chances. The proposal that learning for personal and community development be gradually shifted away from colleges, she writes, ignores the fact that some of these courses contribute crucially ‘in encouraging individuals to become more ambitious about what they can achieve’.

For many, the key issues raised by the White Paper are less to do with what it says than with what it omits to say. Nadine Cartner, of the Association for College Management, says that more work will be needed if the aspirations of the paper are to be realised. In particular, the paper has little to say about incentivising employers to make a greater contribution; how the funding and planning process is to be simplified; or the absence of a ‘holistic lifelong learning policy’. Alastair Thomson, NIACE’s Senior Policy Officer, warns that, without attention, the lifelong learning infrastructure, developed by the Government since 1997, may be in danger of withering away.

The Government invites formal responses to the White Paper by 19 June. In order to secure an informed public debate about the proposals, NIACE is to run a ‘Big Conversation’ to celebrate adults who succeed in learning and to debate how policies can be improved, particularly for the funding of courses for adults. This will include a rolling lobby of Parliament during Adult Learners’ Week (20-27 May). Members, supporters, providers and learners should seize the opportunity to participate.

Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning