Two professors from the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences – Pepka Boyadjieva and Petya Ilieva-Trichkova – conducted a study on equity and inclusion in adult education in 25 European countries, and shared their findings with the EPALE community.

Our work was part of the ENLIVEN project whose aim is to enable policymakers at the European, national and organisational level to enhance the provision and take-up of learning opportunities for adults, leading to a more productive and innovative workforce and reduced social exclusion. In our recently published article, we looked at the participation in adult education from a social justice perspective. The studied countries were: Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, Latvia, Lithuania, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Finland, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Norway. Here are some of the key insights that we found.

Social justice in adult education is a complex phenomenon

Social justice in adult education has two aspects. Inclusion refers to the growth in the absolute number of people from under-represented socio-economic groups in higher education. The fairness aspect focuses on the proportional distribution of student places (or graduations) between different social groups.

Formal and non-formal education have become more inclusive

Between 2007 and 2011, formal education was more inclusive for people with low education (with regard to higher education) in nine of the countries studied, with Hungary, Austria, and the Netherlands at the top.

In ten of the counties studied, non-formal education has become more inclusive for the low-educated to a greater extent than for people with high education. This is especially pronounced in Italy, Portugal, Denmark, Germany and Austria.

Formal and non-formal adult education reproduces already existing educational hierarchies in all countries

People with a low level of education are underrepresented, whereas the high-educated are overrepresented among the participants in formal and non-formal education in all countries studied.

The countries with the fairest proportion of people with high education in formal education are Finland, Slovenia, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. On the other end of the spectrum are Malta, Romania and Slovakia, where the representation of the group with high education is more than three times higher than its proportion in the general population.

The countries with persistently fairest representation of people with high education in non-formal education are Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark. At the bottom of this list are Romania, Greece, Poland and Slovakia. However, in Romania, Poland, Italy, Portugal and Hungary we observe the most evident increase in fairness.

Inclusion and fairness may not always go hand-in-hand

In the Netherlands and Hungary, more inclusion with regard to high-educated adults in formal education is associated with higher fairness in their participation. However, in Slovakia and Austria, the inclusion aspect goes hand-in-hand with less fairness over time for people with high education.

In Sweden, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Finland, more inclusion of people with low education is associated with more fairness in their representation in formal education; but in the Netherlands we observed both more inclusion and less fairness in participation of people with low education in formal education.

In Italy and Portugal, more inclusion of adults with low education goes hand-in-hand with more fairness in the participation in non-formal education; but in Germany and France, we observed inclusion of adults with low education in non-formal education and a slight deterioration of fairness.

Adult education can reduce educational inequalities but adequate policy actions are needed

Although adult education reproduces existing educational hierarchies in almost all countries studied, it has some power to influence educational inequalities. As Professor of Sociology, Martin Hällsten said, adult education “may provide a possibility to ‘catch up’ for the unemployed, for individuals in marginalized positions in the labour market and for individuals with initial educational failures” and thus help build a fairer society. Social justice in adult education may become a reality only through systemic policy actions targeted mainly at low-educated people.

Read Prof Boyadjieva and Prof Ilieva-Trichkova’s full article Between Inclusion and Fairness: Social Justice Perspective to Participation in Adult Education.

Pepka Boyadjieva is a professor at the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and honorary professor of sociology of education at the University of Nottingham. Contact: pepka7@gmail.com

Petya Ilieva-Trichkova is an assistant professor at the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. Contact: petya.ilievat@gmail.com