At present time, an average adult learner is considered to be a middle-aged woman who has obtained a higher education. We try to engage other groups of learners as well albeit unsuccessful. Why is that?

Let me tell you about my mother.

She grew up in a household where her only career options were to either go to a three-year vocation school and become a salesperson or to go and work in a spinning mill factory. She had difficulties in school and barely finished, as she struggled not to follow in her mothers’ steps and work in the spinning mill factory her whole life. She worked in different shops and markets, until meeting my father, relocating to his farm and getting the only job possible in a small town nearby: a factory worker. She started to share a fate with everyone living around us, as the factory was the biggest employer in the area.

Let’s fast forward to the present day.

She has been employed by that same factory now for about 27 years. 27 years of making the same movements over and over again. Of driving 1,5 hours in one direction to start her shift.

Why am I telling you all this? To present to you a profile of an adult that wants to gain new knowledge, new competence, however, is presented with a difficulty that is impossible to breach.

My mother’s wish is to learn English. She has a smartphone and we were able to show her how to download applications and use them to learn it. However, she soon had other things to do and forgot about the apps and the lessons. From time to time she still visits them, but at the moment seldomly. She is able to Google, therefore she searched if there are English classes being held somewhere in her vicinity. She found a few and was confident that even if a new lockdown happens, she would know how to use Zoom (I taught her how to use it through an Instagram video chat) and has her own laptop with a reliable internet connection.

So far so good.

She finds a telephone number on a leaflet and excitedly calls the person responsible for the lesson. On the leaflet, it says that when a group of 15 people gather, they will offer a course which would be held twice per week in a flexible timeframe. And even better, as she is over 45 years of age, the municipality would pay for her class in order to promote adult education. A nice woman answers and explains how the classes would work and that she would fit in perfectly with the group that has been gathered.

By now, have you already guessed the hiccup? She goes on to explain that the rooms where the classes would be held are available only in the afternoon, as in the morning they are occupied by high schoolers, therefore the classes automatically start then. My mother’s work is made out of a morning and afternoon shift, as is for many other factory workers, medical workers, supermarket and shop staff … When my mother explained it, the woman said that attending the class every other week would not work out, as she would miss too many lessons.

And this is the story of how my mother would almost become an adult learner.

When she told me this, it got me thinking: most men and women in my social circle are physical workers that work similarly to her. Once they mastered their work position, there is no room for improvement, learning new skills or gaining additional knowledge. Their employer does not provide courses that could enrich their professional or personal lives. They are at the bottom of the chain, underpaid and underprivileged. It is up to us to adapt to them, to conduct research on their news outlets, their interest, hobbies and schedules, if we want to attract a new generation of adult learners.

“Barriers to adult participation in learning are often linked to time constraints whether due to family responsibilities or to the work schedule” (EURYDICE).

If as providers we are aware of that, why are we not able to adapt, to become more flexible? The pandemic has shown us that we can shift our lives and be a part of the digital revolution, however, we are still not able to listen to what our (potential) learners’ needs are. “For some people the decision to re-engage in education and training is a difficult one: it is therefore likely that a range of different approaches are required to offer participants flexible pathways. These may comprise formal, non-formal and informal learning so that individuals engage in up-skilling or re-skilling to improve their employment opportunities and lives in general” (EUROSTAT). The next steps in the ALE providers agenda should be to ask ourselves again and again if we are accessible enough. A simple timetable shift would be able to attract many adult learners, would increase the numbers of learners and improve the lives of many.

About the author

Tina Mavrič has been involved with Erasmus+ projects in all its forms for 10 years and is now working as a project assistant at the European Association for Adult Education. Her interests are sustainability, storytelling and the power of social media.