Lifelong Learning

Baroness Janke Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, I am very pleased to contribute to this debate today and I thank my noble friend Lady Garden for initiating it. As someone who has been a lifelong learning tutor, I have seen the transformational effect on the lives of individuals and their families that the lifelong learning habit can have. Also, as a former city leader, I am aware of the immense opportunities lifelong learning can offer. However, ever fewer of these are available, as cuts to local government funding have affected the provision of lifelong learning and ensured that most of the budget is focused on learning for employment. Many in the sector had hoped that the industrial strategy would contain more commitments to lifelong learning, particularly as so many people will need to retrain and keep learning for longer now that the statutory pension age has been extended.

Access to lifelong learning is also crucial for communities—I am thinking here of the poorest and most deprived. Many in these communities have had a poor experience of formal education. They have little knowledge of educational achievement and are very often locked in a cycle of deprivation that is very difficult to break out of. People need local agencies that offer them advice and opportunities to get back into learning, with routes of progression to enable them to acquire the skills they need to break out of poverty. There needs to be local provision so that people who have to work can access a local centre. Libraries and the opportunities they offer are also very much needed, with technology and opportunities to use equipment for people who do not have their own. Cuts to local government funding have meant that most of these are now closed or under threat, and there is a fragmentation in provision that makes it more difficult to know where to start.

As well as local provision, there needs to be flexibility for people to access lifelong learning in a range of ways and at different times, to enable people to earn and learn at the same time. Evening courses, online courses, distance learning—many of these were pioneered by the OU and I share the hope expressed by other speakers that the OU will find a way out of its difficulties. As a former OU student, I can say that it was certainly indispensable to me, but also, having met lots of other students, I can testify to the range and diversity of students and just how they have blossomed and prospered from having a second chance to study for a degree. As we have seen from many briefings, particularly that from the Open University, there has been a dramatic fall in the number of part-time learners. As the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said, the very people for whom the OU was set up are now finding it inaccessible because of the financial barriers. I very much hope that the Minister will assure us that the review will take seriously the deterrence to part-time learning and will come forward with proposals to incentivise part-time learning.

There are so many benefits from adult education, whether through getting back to study, specialised courses or language courses. In my city, adult education courses such as these are fully funded by the individuals who follow them, but of course that means that life-enhancing courses are now the privilege of those who can afford to pay for them, while there are large numbers of pensioners, particularly, who are not entitled to any support or benefits and would really welcome such opportunities. The advantages include such things as public health—champions for public health help people to take up healthier lifestyles, including diet, cycle promotion and walking clubs—and helping communities to benefit from the opportunities of technology. In my city of Bristol, we had a system of recycling computers and giving out a learning package with each recycled computer for £30. This enabled many people and was most popular with the retired community, particularly in care homes. We had competitions, including Wii Sports competitions, between local care homes. Councils have led in many innovative approaches to providing lifelong learning in this way. If councils had the resources and were given the responsibility by government, they could co-ordinate, energise and lead local lifelong learning.

Bristol is a learning city. I am sure the Minister knows that it was the first English city to be awarded UNESCO learning city status. A framework is in place there focusing on three core areas: learning in education, learning for work and learning in communities. In Bristol we are also starting to look at the excellent lifelong learning ventures that other learning cities, such as Cork, are taking forward. I hope the Government will take account of what is happening in those learning cities.

The LGA has proposed that we have work communities—working neighbourhoods. The idea of neighbourhood learning has been pioneered by the learning cities. One suggestion from those cities is that to pull out of sluggish growth and ensure that every person is able to fulfil their potential, local authorities should be encouraged and supported to place lifelong learning at the heart of our civic identity, pulling together employers, community organisations, public agencies and learning providers to promote and celebrate learning, providing overt communication about the value of lifelong learning and showcasing positive role models everywhere. I hope the Minister will take this on board. I hope he will also assure us that what is left of publicly supported adult and community learning via the Education and Skills Funding Agency grants to local authorities will be protected. On behalf of the providers in Bristol, I extend an invitation to him to an event in June, celebrating the transformational change that has been achieved as a result of lifelong learning.