Lifelong Learning

Lord Aberdare Excerpts

Thursday 6th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Aberdare (CB)]

My Lords, I am about to subject myself to a lifelong learning experience. These often end in disaster, so I apologise in advance if that is the case.

I have been hugely inspired by a lot of what we have heard, starting with the brilliant overview from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of everything that lifelong learning is about, and including the wonderful maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Curran. Compared to these, I felt my own planned remarks were so deeply pedestrian that I should try to do something different. I will therefore try to riff on one of the points that I was planning to make.

I hasten to add that I have mentioned before to your Lordships’ House that one aspect of lifelong learning that I have never experienced in a proper way is oracy. It did not exist when I was at school, so let us see how I get on.

One of the things that struck me most was the point that the people who pursue lifelong learning most are mainly those who need it least. I cannot resist mentioning my grandmother, in the context of the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Bates. She started upholstery classes when she was well into her 70s and used to produce all sorts of wonderfully upholstered chairs and things for us.

It is very clear that take-up of lifelong learning is skewed by class, race, age and place. It is skewed also by lack of suitable provision, lack of awareness, lack of confidence, disability, disadvantage, poverty or bad experiences of education.

Before I came here, I used to work in a small business that provided employability training. We mainly worked with young offenders and young people who were at risk of becoming NEET—not in employment, education or training. Working with the young offenders was fine, because they were all in prison so we could get at them, but as soon as they left prison it was impossible to get them back. They went with wonderful ideas about what they were going to do with all the things on which we had worked, but then they disappeared. Even Nacro, which we were working with, could not get them to come to all the wonderful follow-up sessions that we had arranged.

It was similar with many of the NEETs, who had huge problems with family issues, substance abuse and generally chaotic lifestyles. We would arrange appointments with employers, training sessions or whatever, but they would still be in bed. We got to the point of sending taxis out to their homes to bring them in—not quite forcibly, but helping them to get in to benefit from what we had to offer.

I am arguing that the one thing that has been a little missing from this debate is how we get to the people who we are not reaching. I gather that 27% or fewer adults in deprived areas are engaged in learning. We ought to have a strategy, maybe as part of the post-16 education and skills strategy. I hope that any strategy pays a lot of attention to that cohort of people who are missing out and difficult to get to.

I will just mention one other example. Griffith Jones of Llanddowror was a Welsh preacher who set up circulating schools throughout Wales. Some 200,000 people went through those schools because they wanted to be there. How do we recreate that sort of desire to learn among the people who are not learning? I apologise for inflicting my very inchoate thoughts on your Lordships.