The EPALE UK annual conference on 15 November met at a critical time.  It is clear that for individuals and the economy alike, the challenges of industrial, demographic and climate change make the case for investing in adult learning more important than ever.  

Yet whilst it is clear that there are things to celebrate – not least EPALE’s development of a robust online network of more than 45,000 adult educators – it is also clear that times have never been tougher for adults wanting to take up learning. What green shoots of hope there are to be found lie mainly in local and regionally based innovation.  Adult education is an area where devolution works.

A landscape littered with cuts

The evidence is stark. Since 2004, we have seen 2,000,000 places in publicly supported adult learning disappear from further education, with college funding halved over the last decade, and institution after institution struggling to make ends meet.

In higher education 56% of part-time students (overwhelmingly mature students) have disappeared since the fees hike in 2012.  That came on top of the 2007-8 ending of funding support for mature students who wanted to study at the same or lower level as the qualification they already had.  Many higher education institutions have as a result turned away from part-time adult provision to focus on the more secure and lucrative.  So much for career change!

Employers, too, have been spending less on training and development in the UK.  Almost unique in the EU, employers here reduced investment in the years following the 2007-8 economic crash, whilst firms in partner countries ramped up the volume and reach of their offer.  True, adults have taken a majority of the expanded apprenticeship places, but for some of them that has been a matter of confirming already existing skills. What is more, the training employers do offer goes mainly to the already skilled. 

AI, robotics, demography and climate change

Meanwhile, the fourth industrial revolution is gathering momentum – with robotics and artificial intelligence threatening to wipe out many white collar jobs faster than globalisation eroded blue collar manufacturing jobs twenty or thirty years ago. 

Almost every international agency argues that the case for lifelong learning has been made, and that the time has come for a rapid expansion of investment by government, employers and individuals alike.  They note, too, that in an ageing society people need to keep learning to stave off morbidity.  As the UN Sustainable Development Goals demonstrate, dealing with climate change involves adults learning and adapting behaviour.

The OECD’s PIAAC report on adult participation also made clear that these changes impact hardest on people with low skills, people out of the labour market, migrants who have yet to develop fluent English, and many people with disabilities. Like the Learning and Work Institute’s UK annual national surveys, it shows that people who have benefited least from education are much less likely to look to learning than people who did well first time around.  Yet these are the people most challenged by the changes underway.

Policy review

It is a bleak story, and it has prompted a plethora of reviews which suggest something has to be done.  Perhaps the most important of these is the Review of Further and Higher Education Funding Philip Augur is leading.  But that review is now expected to report to the Prime Minister in the early Spring 2019, just as the BREXIT negotiations come to a head, so it may not get early attention.

Green shoots

Despite all this there are green shoots around, and several were highlighted at the EPALE UK event.  Initiatives developed from the ground up - working to secure resilient futures for people in and coming out of prison; effective partnerships for learning with the libraries, in the culture and heritage sector; creative uses of digital technology to advise on and to inform vocational training, demystifying terminology, engaging volunteers, and the peer driven engagement strategies used by unionlearn all offer new avenues for learners.

Conclusion

My recommendation for Augur and the government is straightforward.  We need more investment in adult learning of all sorts, and we need it urgently.  But we need to spend it best - to reach under-represented groups and to foster a culture of lifelong learning devolve decision making and trust providers

Sir Alan Tuckett OBE is Professor of Education at the University of Wolverhampton, an Honorary Fellow of the UNESCO Institute of Lifelong Learning, and Past President of the International Council for Lifelong learning.  After a career as an adult education practitioner he led the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education from 1988-2011.

You may also be interested in:

Wales Union Learning Fund (WULF) promotes workplace learning (blog)

Using sport to promote adult learning in our prisons, Part 1 (blog)

The Duke of York iDEA Programme: Digital literacy for free (blog)

Collecting impact evidence in Family Learning (blog)

Widening Horizons through EPALE (blog)