Transcript What can colleges do for adult learners?

Lifelong Learning
ideal 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
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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)
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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
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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
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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 enrolled
2001/02
2002/03
2003/04
2004/05
2005/06
2006/07
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302,254
409,749
455,080
538,681
549,558
335,232
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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 for
1 access to employability
2 workforce development
+ 3 creating and sustaining cultural value
The 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,
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greater happiness
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.
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LINKS
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www.niace.org.uk/lifelonglearninginquiry
www.niace.org.uk.alw
www.adultlearningconsultation.org.uk
http://www.niace.org.uk/Conferences/rightto-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’)
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NEVER GIVE UP
st
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In the
Century
LIFELONG LEARNING
WILL BECOME
A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT
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