Lifelong Learning

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress is being made in developing a sustainable lifelong learning culture in England.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I make no apology for reintroducing a debate on lifelong learning. It has not been long since the previous one, but the Minister and I agreed that we would not simply rehash our previous speeches, because life moves on and different factors have come into play.

It was heartening to hear the Prime Minister in February announcing a wide-ranging review into post-18 education, with a remit to include lifelong learning. I hope the Minister will be able to give us some encouragement now and not kick all our questions into touch pending the review. I thank all those who are speaking today. We have wide-ranging expertise in our speakers’ list. I am very sorry that we have lost the noble Baronesses, Lady Bottomley and Lady Warwick, who are unable to stay until the end of the debate and have had to scratch. I have apologies from my noble friend Lord Storey, who has a family commitment. I also had apologies from the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, who is celebrating her birthday today. It is in the papers that this is a most venerable birthday, but it is certainly a well-kept secret how she manages to appear very many years younger than her actual age. Perhaps it is down to lifelong learning. Whatever the cause, we are delighted that she will now be speaking in the gap and I am sure that we all wish her many happy returns.

I start with a word about Birkbeck, which was founded in 1823 when Dr George Birkbeck championed the importance of educating the working people of London. It continues its evening teaching to enable working people to study and progress in their life goals. It is a noble aim, good for social mobility and the economy, yet Birkbeck has seen a dramatic fall between 2010 and 2015. Degree take-up has fallen by 64%, sub-degree by 68%. This should set alarm bells ringing. How can such a worthwhile institution find its numbers so reduced?

A similar vision led to the foundation of the Open University in 1969 for part-time students. The OU has been transformational for many people enthusiastic about learning and self-improvement, yet over the same five-year period, there was a 63% fall in its number of entrants. With the resignation of its vice-chancellor, the OU is facing turbulent times as it conducts a radical overhaul to face the challenges of the next half century. We have to wish it success in that exercise and hope it can find ways of enhancing people’s lives in the future, as it has in the past. These two unique institutions report the difficulties for the very people for whom they were set up, who now find them inaccessible because of the financial barriers. What is the Government’s answer? I trust we will hear more about the WEA—another great institution and key to adult education—in the course of this debate.

In the March report from the Sutton Trust—The Lost Part-Timers: The Decline of Part-time Undergraduate Higher Education in England—the findings make grim reading. Current funding is undoubtedly one of the major factors that prevents adults from upskilling or reskilling. Part-time study in England has been decimated over the last decade, with numbers collapsing by over half. The tuition fee changes of 2012 have affected participation in the part-time sector. Those reforms abolished means-tested fee and course grants and introduced fee loans and reduced teaching grants, leading to big increases in tuition fees. For many, the alternative to loans is not paying up front, but deciding that study is not for them. Studying later in life is an important second-chance route to social mobility. Part-time learners are more likely to be from less well-off backgrounds. The tuition fee rise is a serious blow for those who missed out on university as teenagers. Can the Minister say what steps the Government are taking to review the fee changes in the light of the detrimental impact they are having on disadvantaged groups?

At school, children’s enthusiasm for learning—their natural curiosity—is systematically curtailed to meet the needs of a remorseless testing and assessment system. Learning should be fun and exciting. If children associate learning with failing exams and coming bottom of the class, this will do nothing to encourage social mobility. Our focus today is on adult education, which we know brings benefits such as better health and well-being, greater social engagement, increased confidence and better employability and benefits to family and community life.

We now have technology that will make huge changes to employment opportunities. For older people who were not brought up with smartphones, email or Twitter, technology does not come naturally. In contrast, we hear of young children starting school who try to swipe books because they have never come across paper pages. Could the Minister say what progress is being made with the Made Smarter review, with its proposal for 1 million workers in industry to be digitally upskilled over five years through an online learning platform? Industry supports this. Do the Government?

Let us not forget the important role of libraries in providing access not just to books, but to technology and other resources. Our libraries are also under threat, but are particularly important for disadvantaged learners.

Technology means that jobs will be lost in some traditional skill areas, but we shall need more media professionals, engineering roles, hospitality and leisure managers, and natural and social science professionals, all of which tend to be highly skilled. So we welcome the work of Universities UK and the Confederation of British Industry in examining the decline in part-time student numbers and future skills needs to discover which employers and sectors have been affected most by the fall in part-time and mature students and how employers have responded.

Some skills that people can come to later in life, requiring patience and attention to detail, are the wonderful crafts, where this country has long excelled—crafts such as jewellery and clock-making, basket-weaving, fashion, stone carving and bookbinding, where people seek to create something beautiful and lasting. These can be engaging hobbies, but they can also lead to profitable work. They are encouraged by the Sainsbury trusts, the royal warrant holders and the livery companies, which do so much for education and creativity. City & Guilds, in which I declare an interest as a vice-president, has long awarded well-respected qualifications in crafts, which should be a pride and credit to the country, with further education colleges, against many a challenge, providing the opportunities for such important practical and work-based learning. Could the Minister say what encouragement the Government are giving, or can give, to craft and creativity, which has largely been squeezed out of the school curriculum in favour of undiluted academic content?

In the balmy days when colleges could offer a wide range of learning opportunities, I taught French and Spanish classes. Some learners aimed to pass exams; some simply looked for the satisfaction and pleasure of speaking another tongue. We have seen an alarming decline in language learning. If and when we leave the EU, it will be ever more important that we speak the languages of those countries with whom we have broken off relations. What plans are there to reverse this monolingual trend? How can we encourage adults to learn a language they might have neglected at school?

Long before I thought I would be involved with politics, both as a teacher and working for City & Guilds, I had occasion to curse politicians for making decisions that involved a great deal of stress and pointless work, without regard to education professionals. In recent days, we had diplomas, changes to GCSE gradings and now we have T-levels—how long will they last with a change of Minister? Swathes of teacher time are taken up not in teaching but in developing and implementing ill-thought-through government policies that may well be reversed. Education Ministers rarely stay more than a year or two, to be replaced by someone else with cunning plans and bright ideas. The Liberal Democrats would like to see these policy decisions removed from politicians and put into the hands of education experts with long-term recommendations. Could the Minister encourage his new Secretary of State to earn the admiration of educators and to give real benefit to learners by taking party politics out of education policy? What a ground-breaking improvement that would be. What about reconsideration of personal loan accounts, individual learning accounts with contributions from individuals, employers and government, or increased teaching grants to universities through a part-time premium?

Lifelong learning is such a wide-ranging topic. I have not touched on the arguments for funding equivalent or lower-level qualifications, which was removed some years ago, the damaging impact of Ofsted on FE, the pointless resits in English and Maths, or the vexatious apprenticeship levy. Perhaps others will. People are living and working longer, but training across working lives is going down. We urge the Government to lead a radical focus on lifelong learning and create an infrastructure that enables individuals of all ages to make transitions and compete in this ever-changing job market. I look forward to hearing the debate and to the Minister’s reply. I know his heart is in the right place. I hope his words can provide some hope and encouragement.