Lifelong Learning

Baroness Greengross Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Greengross (CB)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords for allowing me to speak in the gap. I shall be brief. This is a very important debate, and I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, for highlighting some issues which matter so much to all of us.

I have been very inspired by the work of one or two organisations in developing these programmes and ideas which improve the opportunities for adults to take up learning, particularly in later life. One of them is United for All Ages, which aims to build stronger communities by bringing people of all ages together and promoting a Britain for all ages. This is what I want to focus on, and a key part of it is obviously lifelong education and learning. We know that employers could make much more use of older people’s experience, knowledge and skills, but often not only do they encounter ageism but there is a shortage among these people of the skills required in modern society. They need to be trained, but face many obstacles in achieving those ends. It is very important for responsible businesses, and employers generally, to create opportunities for their employees to learn throughout their careers and to take up opportunities for learning, nationally and locally.

There are of course opportunities in our society, and some are inspiring. One that inspires me is the University of the Third Age, which has been mentioned and in which I have been involved since its inception. One of the good things about it is that, locally, it is managed by older people themselves. As a result, it varies tremendously around the country, but it is a brilliant initiative.

Another initiative is Ransackers, of which I am patron. This gives opportunities to older people who missed out completely on higher education when they were young and enables them to do pieces of research. It was started at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, but now there are other centres as well, where people who had no opportunities in education can learn how to do a piece of research. That is an absolutely wonderful initiative.

The other one I will mention is the Second Half Centre at the St Charles Centre in London. That centre is managed by an organisation called Open Age, which is a brilliant charity offering opportunities for older people, and the range of activities provided there is phenomenal. They are not just educational; they are physical and artistic. They are everything that you could want to think about in later life, and it all happens in one magnificent centre, of which we need many more.

I would also like to pose a question to the Minister. The Government, and indeed many of us, are now looking at secondary schools with great interest. Many of them are in rural or semi-rural areas and are quite difficult for people to get to, except for local people who live around them and have very few opportunities to get the sort of educational opportunities that we are talking about. Would it not be possible for some secondary schools to be opened up to adults, particularly when learning something like modern languages? After all, you learn languages now in a language lab; you do not have to be the same age as the person next to you because you are wearing headphones and a mike and you learn your language on your own, although you can still discuss it with other people. We do not need to have age restrictions in many areas of learning nowadays, and this would be a way of opening up opportunities for adults in many schools. I think at least some schools would welcome such opportunities. I would like to know if the Minister would consider this approach, helping people of all ages to play a part in fulfilling their own destiny through education.