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Lifelong Learningideal and reality

Paul Mackney

NIACE Associate Director (FE)

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The historic context

• C19th – saw the development of mass elementary education

• C20th – saw the growth of mass secondary education

• C21st – is about mass further and higher education and lifelong learning for adults

LIFELONG LEARNING

• Lifelong Learning involves the continuous development of human becomings, building confidence and dignity for living and work

• Lifelong Learning includes people of all ages learning in a variety of contexts – in educational institutions, at work, at home (on the streets) and through leisure activities. If focuses on adults returning to learning rather than on the initial period of education. (IFLL )

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An inauspicious start to C21st

• 2004/5: 8 out of 10 FE College students are adults• Foster Report (Nov 2005), despite reference to

‘achieving academic progress’ and ‘social inclusion’, effectively tilted colleges to a narrow focus on the ‘vocational skills’ of youth.

• Leitch Report (2007) comes close to reducing adult education to developing skills which are ‘economically valuable’ to employers.

• 2008/9: 4 out of 10 FE College students are adults with a new obsession with NEETS (pre-adults)

LEITCH

• Diagnosis: employers have failed to meet county’s training requirements

• Prognosis: without improvement there will be serious problems (especially from the Indians and Chinese)

• Prescription: the solution, therefore is to put the employers in charge

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A ‘simplified employer demand led system’

• 25 Sector Skills Councils and UK/CES –very useful in assessing needs and encouraging … but not ‘the demand’

• Brokers – hardly simplification – only 5% new business through brokers

• the demand of employees not harnessed; no statutory right to bargain over training or workplace learning committees

• Right to request time 2 train is progress but not PEL

• ‘rebalancing’ = AE funds diverted to Train to Gain

• Constant change, destabilisation + privatisation when colleges at peak performance

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Problems with Leitch

• employers principal needs are profit or survival

• employERS’ immediate needs may not correspond with the country’s employMENT needs

• training usually focused on management

• employers admit 35% don’t train (probably 50%) - some coach the rest poach

• Excludes many workers and unemployed / Eq Impact Ass

• Not fit for maintaining skills in a recession

• Widening provider base with dubious quality

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Problems with Train to Gain

• Underspend £208m (much used to plug overspend hole in HE)

• Waste: deadweight ; brokers; drop-outs =40% (PQ Sept 08)

• Lots of T2G assessment rather than learning ‘All very well …”

• “Little evidence that the programme was driving up the demand for training among employers” (Ofsted - Nov 2008)

• ‘The provision of Skills 4 Life Training a particular weakness’ Ofsted

• AE fees up LSC funds as instructed (to certain qualifications)

• course fees contribution up 27.5% -50%; 2006-10

• 1.4m adult course places lost over 2 years

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Who has been affected?

• Govt says flower arrangers, line-dancers and language learners ~ ‘train for Spain’ ~ wants ‘plumbing not pilates’

• 447k down Health, Public Services, Care

• 394k down ICT

• 248k down Preparation for life and work

• 7% drop in 1 year for C2s lower m/c + skilled workers

• Losers - return to learn, Black communities, pensioners, asylum seekers (no ESOL for 6 months)

• LSC survey showed any learning enhances employability

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Case Study – ICT exclusion

• 37% of workers do not have IT user skills required • 60% employers reporting IT user skills gaps• 7 m not using ICT at work• 82% skilled trades; 88 pers servs; and elem occups• Barriers: working hrs, shifts, pt-time, caring;

ESOL/basic skills needs; no IT equipment at home• 0.4 million adult ICT course places lost• Training infrastructure dismantled – tutors & kit

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Grand Old Duke of ESOL

Learning aims enrolled2001/02 - 302,254

2002/03 - 409,749

2003/04 - 455,080

2004/05 - 538,681

2005/06 - 549,558

2006/07 - 335,23211

Case study - pensioners

• Age Concern estimates 25% drop in course places• “ I worked hard and paid taxes all my life and

thought I’d have a chance to learn something new in retirement.”

• “It keeps me active, gets me out of the house and gives me a chance to mix.”

• Free classes for pensioners in some areas still available but usually with conditions …

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European Commission Approach

• Lisbon 2000 promoted ‘employability’ and ‘social inclusion’ in ‘knowledge-based societies’ through ‘investment in citizens’ at ‘all stages of their lives’

• In 2005 UK had been 2nd in EC league for 2010 Lifelong Learning participation target.

• ‘It is never too late to learn’ 2006 communication promotes action for: removing barriers, improving the quality of adult learning; adults going ‘one step up’ (to at least one higher level qualification); and recognising non-formal and informal learning.

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NIACE (‘Eight out of Ten’)

Colleges should meet adult learners’ demand for1 access to employability2 workforce development+ 3 creating and sustaining cultural valueThe motivation of adult learners is complex• often value qualification-free and informal learning• their study path and attendance can be ‘untidy’There are no ‘bog-standard’ adult learners ~ they need• good Information Advice and Guidance• personalisation and a facility for the learner voice

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Not by skills alone

Colleges transform lives of those written off by:• providing another chance or new beginning• access to increasingly professionalised teaching• erasing feelings of academic or vocational failure • developing adults’ skills including ICT, and • preparing them for frequent life and career

changes (2/3rds vacancies over next decade) But there is: more to learning than earning and

more to college than knowledge

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Learn to Gain as well as Train to Gain

Personal Outcomes

growth, respect, health, friendship, love, relate to children, self-fulfilment

Cultural Outcomes

enriched culture, art, music, languages, history, leisure and sport

Community Outcomes

sense of belonging to a community through access to major local resource, peer support, improved social life

Societal Outcomes

Creative engaged citizens for democracy, ‘rising’ with others, social cohesion, less prejudice, greater happiness

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Let’s recapture the spirit of Kennedy and the ‘Learning Age’

We need a well-educated workforce as well as a skilled one. Indeed the a good education develops the very skills employers say they need.

Learning Age (1988) said: “As well as securing our economic future, LL has a wider contribution. It helps make ours a civilised society, promotes active citizenship, helps us fulfil our potential and opens doors to a love of music, art and literature. That is why we value learning for its own sake.”

Gordon Brown calls for “education to liberate the imagination”.

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The future

We need to:• remember the long tradition of adults coming together to

share skills and to learn. • expand the government’s vision from a narrow focus on

‘economically valuable skills’ or widen their definition.• use the creation of DIUS to argue for a holistic F/HE AL• campaign to raise the status of lifelong learning • support NIACE’s Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong

Learning - how to provide more, different, better opportunities for adults.

LINKS

• www.niace.org.uk/lifelonglearninginquiry

• www.niace.org.uk.alw

• www.adultlearningconsultation.org.uk

• http://www.niace.org.uk/Conferences/right-to-voice.htm

• www.callcampaign.org.uk

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NIACE NUS UCU UNISON WEA

CALL has over 100 supporting organisations

lobbying Parliament on Wed 25 Feb 2009

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William Morris

People “fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out to be not what they meant and other people have to fight for what they meant under another name.” (‘Dream of John Ball’)

NEVER GIVE UPIn the 21st Century

LIFELONG LEARNING

WILL BECOME

A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT

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