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Editor's Letter - January 2007

“Leitch is right to say that we must increase the appetite and opportunity for learning, but currently much opportunity is being lost”

Welcome to the January 2007 issue of Adults Learning, the first of a year in which the implementation of Lord Leitch’s Review of Skills, published last month, seems sure to feature prominently. Once again, the landscape of adult learning in this country is shifting. As the dust began to settle and perspective moved towards this year’s Comprehensive Spending Review, we invited some of the leading players and commentators to share their reactions.

For some of our contributors, there is little doubt that Leitch has delivered – the main questions concern implementation: how much of what he proposes and at what cost? For others, there is an inescapable feeling of déjà vu – and a sense that, once again, adult learning for purposes other than economic competitiveness has been sorely neglected.

Bill Rammell, Minister for Further and Higher Education, agrees with Leitch that we need to develop a ‘world-class’ skills base by 2020. But the ‘adult skills revolution’ this demands cannot be delivered by government alone – employers and individuals must work in partnership with government to fund, shape and deliver change.

John Hayes, the Conservative’s Shadow Minister for Vocational Education, also endorses Leitch’s call for a system driven by the choices of employers and learners, but questions his near-exclusive focus on economic objectives. Adult education also provides skills which help ‘build social mobility, social justice and social cohesion’. Leitch, unhappily, has little to say about ‘how we can engage more people in adult education’, particularly the hardest-to-reach groups.

The promise of Leitch is recognised by the Liberal Democrat’s Shadow Education Secretary, Sarah Teather, but her concern is with the report’s prospects. Mike Tomlinson’s report on reform of 14-19 curriculum and qualifications, she writes, provided answers to many of the questions Leitch poses, ‘yet, tragically for the teens entering Key Stage 4 this autumn, it sits gathering dust on a shelf in the DfES’.

Ewart Keep is one of a number of contributors who feel we have been here before, and often. As many have before him, Keep writes, ‘Leitch overloads expectations onto skills, and ignores the need for skills policies to be delivered within wider economic development and employee relations strategies’.

Colin Flint and Lorna Unwin share Keep’s impression that, once again, deeper, underlying problems are being ignored. In treating skills as something produced solely through qualifications, Unwin writes, Leitch ignores a wealth of research ‘that shows how skills are created, shared and applied in a complex daily cycle in the workplace’. The problem is that, often, this cycle is restricted by employers content to produce low-quality goods and services.

For Flint, the problems Leitch writes about have been staring us in the face for decades. Leitch is obviously right to say that we must increase the appetite and opportunity for learning, ‘but currently much opportunity is being lost’. With a 13.6 per cent decrease in learner numbers in further education between 2004/5 and 2005/6, and a 786,000 drop in numbers in adult and community learning over the same period, we are clearly ‘at some risk of dysfunction’.

As Alan Tuckett wrote in a recent Guardian column, such figures are ‘testament to Labour’s abandonment of its vision of lifelong and life-wide learning for all’ in favour of ‘a narrow utilitarianism’ focused on economic considerations. LSC Chairman Chris Banks is, of course, right to say that resources aren’t available to fund everything policymakers would like to do, but, surely, as Deian Hopkin suggests, it is time for government to consider a major review of support for all adult education, including education which, while not directly contributing to the economy, is nevertheless essential to the development of a civilised, inclusive society.

Paul Stanistreet, Editor, Adults Learning