Education: Lifelong Learning

Baroness Sharp of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 19th October 2010 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the wider benefits of adult education; and what steps they are taking to support and encourage institutions which seek to promote lifelong learning.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I am stimulated to initiate this debate by the publication this time last year of Learning Through Life, a report commissioned by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, with the aim of taking a forward look at the future requirements of and for adult education. I see this debate as a chance for this House to take a look at the same topic.

I start by quoting one of the stories contained in that report. It is called “Irene’s Story”. It states:

“Irene plucked up the courage to come into a family literacy group because she wanted to know how best to support her daughter who was just beginning to show signs of falling behind. A single parent with three children, Irene was living on a poor estate, with a lot to think about as well as the education of her children. Although she felt safer at school than other places, she was still terrified about going ‘back to school’. The course was publicised as ‘help your child, help yourself’, so she ignored the ‘herself’ bit, and went to help her daughter. She talks of the courage that it took just to walk through the door.

“Irene finished the course and found that she had learnt things too—she improved her spelling, found out a bit about how her daughter learns, visited the library, got into the habit of doing things at home with her daughter and was feeling OK with things”.

She then went on to an IT course and an English course, but dropped out when her husband left her and her daughter started having epileptic fits. The story continues:

“Eventually, she re-appeared and went on to an access course at the local college and she set up a group for other parents with children with disabilities—this gave her the courage and the skills to decide she wanted to do something for her community—she joined the school governors, became chair of the tenants’ group, and got a job on the estate”.

This quotation illustrates well a number of points about adult education. First of all, what is adult education? It is, strictly speaking, any education for a person over 19. In this debate, I do not want to discuss university-based higher education for 18 to 21 year-olds, although last week’s publication of the Browne report makes it very tempting to do so. Strictly speaking, this does not fall within my definition of adult education. I prefer the Wikipedia definition quoted in Learning Through Life:

“It’s never too soon or too late for learning”.

The emphasis is on adults returning to organised learning after doing other things. Given that definition, adult education is about a lot of different kinds of learning. It may be about basic literacy or numeracy; it may be about supplementing the basics, such as Irene’s IT and English courses; it may be about upskilling by training for a job that requires particular competences; or it may be about reskilling by training for a new job that opens up new opportunities. Think of the number of people who go on from one Open University course, which they may take to upgrade their skills or qualifications, to another. It may be taken just for the joy of learning and because they are interested in the subject. It may be taken at a local school, college or community hall. It may be pursued in the workplace, or it may be distance learning—with or without the benefit of a tutor or mentor.

Besides the actual learning involved, a whole lot of different benefits flow from it. In Irene’s case, it was the confidence to go on learning and enjoy it, the companionship of other learners, the ability to help her daughter, and the real benefits for her child’s performance, now well documented, that flow from a parent’s involvement with their child’s education. There was the confidence for her to move into a wider community, her involvement as a school governor and becoming chair of the tenants’ group.

It is well known that wider benefits flow from involvement in adult education, and it is now also well researched. Work by Professor Feinstein at the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning in the Institute of Education here in London has documented the advantages that go with higher levels of education—higher earnings, less unemployment, better health, longer lives, better access to technology, lower crime rates and higher civic participation. Above all, there is greater self-learning and self-confidence, which in turn make people feel that learning is worth while in itself and for itself. In other words, it is positively associated with economic and social well-being, with enabling people more easily to accept and manage change, and with promoting social justice and community cohesion.

It is worth looking at one or two of these areas in greater detail. Take health, for example. We know from research that those who participate in educational activities tend to enjoy better health and live longer. Generally speaking, they smoke less, exercise more, take less medicine and manage their own healthcare better than those who do not participate. This in turn reduces both the medical costs of the elderly and the costs of caring for them. At Tansley House care home in Derbyshire, the use of medication fell by more than 50 per cent when learning activities were introduced.

This is even more true of mental health, where many of those who have problems benefit from a regular commitment that gets them out of the house, provides them with friends to talk to and gives them a sense of self-worth and achievement. In a speech on 3 July, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, Vince Cable, spoke movingly of his mother, who had left school at 15. He said:

“My mother was a housewife and when I was ten she had a major nervous breakdown and spent time in a mental hospital. When she recovered she saved her mind through adult education—learning for the first time about history, literature, philosophy and art”.

Mental health is estimated to cost the nation more than £25 billion. The potential saving is huge.

Finally, I will mention crime. Every prisoner costs us more than £40,000 a year to keep locked up. Some 75 per cent of prisoners are functionally illiterate and innumerate. Giving them the mastery of reading and writing—and, even better, a skill that enhances their chances of employment on leaving prison—in turn reduces the chances of their reoffending. It is reckoned that for every 1 per cent drop in the reoffending rate, the Exchequer could save £130 million.

The Prime Minister summed this up in May in a speech about adult learning. He said:

“Adult learning has a really important role to play in encouraging active citizenship. I’m not just talking about what people learn about specifically, but how that learning makes them feel. Going along to college means meeting people, discussing what’s going on in the world, boosting your belief in what you can do. It’s that self-belief that leads people to get involved with their communities and become more active citizens. Given that my vision for this country is for us all to get involved and play our part in national renewal, I believe adult learning, and the way it inspires people, is crucially important”.

The general thesis of Learning Through Life is that we need to rebalance expenditures on adult education—taking its broad definition—away from the 18 to 24 year -olds and spread it more proportionately. In particular, the twin challenges of demography and technology will require radical changes in our thinking.

I will pose a number of questions—about adult learning and about the changes that are likely over the next few days—to my noble friend, whom I welcome to the Dispatch Box for the first time. How far do the coalition Government look to a more flexible programme that will allow room for greater emphasis on older workers and for reskilling and upskilling through life? In particular, what is happening to the basic skills programme? The basic skills commission has been wound up. Is there still an emphasis on promoting basic literacy and numeracy in the adult population?

Secondly, given the abandonment of Train to Gain, will the Government continue the policy of providing adult education and skills training for a first level 2 for free? Given their emphasis on level 3 and technician training, will the free first level 3 up to the age of 25 continue? What about ESOL? It hardly seems right to put such emphasis on citizenship and contributing to society for those who choose to live in this country if we are not prepared to help them to learn English. I welcome the coalition Government's new emphasis on level 3 apprenticeships and technician training, but how far are they proposing to implement the Banks report and shift funding on to a shared basis between the state, the individual and the employer? Will we see, as with Browne and the universities, a substantial shift of funding on to the individual student? If so, will the new funding arrangements for part-timers announced in the Browne report be applicable to further education as well as higher education? Are the Government prepared to see these programmes applied to those over 50 for reskilling and updating their knowledge? Will the coalition continue the policy, adopted with the apprenticeships Act of 2009, of giving employees the right to ask employers for time off for study? What plans, if any, has the coalition for something akin to the individual learning account or a learning bank, where money which the individual sets aside for training is matched by a government contribution? Finally, what is the position of the safeguarded adult education budget of £210 million? Will adult leisure learning receive any of this?

These are important issues and I hope that the Minister can give us some good news about them all.