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Editor's Letter - December 2007

“The loss of one million adults to publicly funded provision suggests a total misunderstanding of the function of education”

A lifelong socialist, Tony Benn is very probably the most prominent standard bearer of the left of his generation. Yet the political idea he considers most revolutionary is not socialism, but democracy. Socialism, in his view, arises naturally from democracy, through a full understanding of what is happening in the world and the capacity to change it. That, he argues in this issue of Adults Learning, is why lifelong education – the ‘life-force of a working democracy’ – is so important, and so little favoured by those in power.

Adult education, Benn says, is fundamental to helping people change their ideas and passion into change. Progress, he thinks, comes from underneath, from grassroots protest largely without political representation at the top. Adult education’s role is to allow people to find out what is the case and to think about it, to develop the innate ability people have to reach their own opinions on the issues that matter to them. The loss of one million adults to publicly funded provision over the past two years is not only bad news for democracy but suggests a ‘total misunderstanding of the function of education’.

Democracy demands, among other things, freedom of information and an understanding of how to access it. Yet for most of us, as Alastair Thomson argues, the ‘very big numbers driving the system’ remain something of a mystery. Here, we are often more than happy to rely on the ‘experts’, whether they are politicians, journalists, managers or union officers. Such dependency, Thomson writes, ‘keeps consultants in work and sells newspapers but is no substitute for informed public debate’.

The Government’s most recent announcements on the public funding of adult learning have been widely welcomed. Newspaper headlines highlighted the creation of new apprenticeship places for adults and an increase in Government funding for learning and skills. But when the figures for both budgets and planned volumes of learners are analysed a different picture emerges. The new investment is, overwhelmingly, in ‘Employer Responsive’ provision and many of the new initiatives are to be paid for not with new money but from ‘a re-prioritisation of funds already in the system’.

NIACE Director Alan Tuckett has put the implications in stark terms: ‘The expenditure budgets risk decimating classes that adults choose for themselves. It is a distortion of a demand-led system when a whole area of successful provision that responds to real demand will be all but wiped out by 2011.’ What, asks Sally Hunt in her response to funding proposals likely to see students embarking on a second degree facing prohibitive fees, has become of the Government’s commitment to lifelong learning?

The withdrawal of £100 million of funding for students studying for a higher education qualification equivalent to or lower than a qualification they have already been awarded signals a move away from the lifelong learning agenda, Hunt says. The cuts, she writes, ‘will hit universities offering courses for adults and part-time students the hardest’, imposing ‘severe financial penalties’ on the very institutions doing the most to deliver the widening participation and lifelong learning agendas. Despite using language that suggests a learning and skills policy more sensitive to social inclusion, the numbers suggest more employer-led provision and fewer courses chosen by individuals, altogether a far from balanced pursuit of the Government’s stated objectives of economic prosperity, social justice and stronger communities. As Tony Benn argues, we are a community, and just as the whole community benefits from people’s health being kept at a high level, so we all benefit from a high level of education throughout and across people’s lives, and this, of course, means doing more than training people for work.

Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning