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Commentary - February 2008

Now’s the time to make a noise

As the Government launches its consultation on the future of informal adult learning, now is the time to be noisy, passionate and assertive, says ALASTAIR THOMSON

Surely the best public policy decision to happen in our field in England since 1998 is John Denham’s launch of a consultation on the future of informal adult learning. Ten years ago, David Blunkett’s Green Paper The Learning Age unveiled the best of the ideas Labour had developed during its opposition years. The consultation for that document generated some 3,000 responses, 2,000 of which were from members of the public.

This time, consultation may be less wide-ranging but it is equally important. For the first time since Blunkett, we have a Secretary of State in England who is genuinely interested in the rich diversity of adult learning and wants to think about how public policy should engage with informal learning as well as formal provision in colleges and universities. Indeed, Mr Denham’s enthusiasm for the subject seems to be rather greater than that of some of his officials!

Cynics will argue that, having lost 1,400,000 adult learning places from publicly funded provision in England over two years (an average of about 80 places an hour) the Government needed to be seen to be doing something. Critics will also dissect the consultation document as if it were an academic text. I am less cynical about Mr Denham’s motives. I know that the consultation paper was not simply drafted by civil servants and external advisers. The words reflect, genuinely, some of the enthusiasms and prejudices of someone trying to understand the ways in which he might be able to make a difference.

That said, John Denham is a professional politician. When his department was created he had neither a book of blank cheques nor a clean slate. His predecessor, Alan Johnson, had managed to negotiate a relatively good outcome for education from a Comprehensive Spending Review which Nick Pearce, now Head of Strategic Policy at 10 Downing Street, had described as ‘eye-wateringly tight’. The price of a relatively generous settlement was that much of the money was nailed down – not least to the breathtakingly ambitious Train to Gain scheme. Mr Johnson’s calculated decision to maximise income for his department even if it came with strings attached, meant that John Denham came in with relatively little uncommitted funding to deploy – hence the business of ‘re-prioritisation’.

Sometimes re-prioritising gets messy, as with funding teaching for equivalent or lower qualifications in English higher education. Here, clumsy handling has resulted in a reasonable-enough principle (first degrees should come first), involving a relatively small amount of the HE teaching budget, boiling up into a wholly-avoidable row, antagonising many of the ministers’ natural supporters, worrying the Government’s backbenchers and providing something of an open goal for the increasingly confident Conservative front-bench of David Willetts and John Hayes.

In other areas, re-prioritisation is going rather better. As well as informal learning, Mr Denham has quietly started an open, inclusive debate about how government can better support science, and his junior minister Ian Pearson is leading an equally freewheeling consultation on ‘innovation’ – the second word of their department’s title. Meanwhile Train to Gain has started to become more flexible. Already, it has changed to include self-employed people and, thanks perhaps to former education minister Phil Hope, to volunteers. Further flexing can be expected as the initiative struggles to meet unrealistically high participation targets.

All of which brings me back to informal learning. It is important to generate a large number of responses to the consultation because if there are fewer than 3,000 the Government will conclude that the topic is not as important to voters as many readers of Adults Learning claim. For this reason NIACE urges all of its members and supporters to make a response.

The Government asks a range of specific questions in its paper ( www.adultlearningconsultation.org.uk ), and they’re well worth considering, but the Cabinet Office code of practice for public consultations is clear that responses should be accepted even if they do not refer to the specific questions posed.

More is needed though. If the only responses Mr Denham receives come from providers of formal courses arguing their corner, then an opportunity will be missed. We also need responses from adult learners describing what informal learning means to them and how it might be improved. This will mean less of a blueprint and more of a reflection of the informal learning field – in all its gloriously untidy diversity.

We’ve seldom had secretaries of state who recognise the educational potential to be found in the activities of Women’s Institutes, museums, theatres, community organisations, unions, ecology groups, libraries, National Trust associations, IT experts, broadcasters, artists, tenants’ associations, genealogists, sports clubs and more besides. It would be tragic were we not to give him assistance.

If every reader of Adults Learning were to ask five others – students, teachers, family members and friends to write a PERSONAL response to the consultation as well as contributing to formal organisational responses, then we’d better help Mr Denham prepare his case for increased investment in informal learning in time for the next Comprehensive Spending Review.

Alastair Thomson is NIACE’s Senior Policy Officer

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