Lifelong Learning

Lord Sawyer Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sawyer (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, for initiating this debate, which is very important. I have always had a keen interest in lifelong learning. This stems from my days as a trade union official in NUPE/UNISON. NUPE was a union whose members were mainly part-time women workers.

One of my colleagues there, a pioneer of lifelong learning called Jim Sutherland, a gifted and dedicated innovator, told me that it was reading Einstein, who said that learning is not the product of schooling but a lifetime’s attempt to acquire it, that set him on his path to be a champion of lifelong learning. Jim produced and directed some very innovative courses. I remember in the 1980s going to a group of Filipino workers in a hospital who were doing basic literacy and numeracy work and being very proud that my union was doing such work for people working in the National Health Service for whom English was not their main language.

I met many part-time women workers when I was a trade union official who realised that they were capable of much more than catering and cleaning for others and, in middle age, enrolled for lifelong learning to become the kind of people that they had the capacity and ability to be. They became lawyers or teachers. I even knew one part-time woman worker from the north of England who became a Member of Parliament through the lifelong learning opportunities provided by her union. She is now a Metropolitan Police commissioner, and those of you who come from the north may guess her name.

Those were the days when a spirit of pioneering in lifelong learning, a spirit of adventure, exploration and fulfilment, was in the air—something that I feel has been lost as the concept has been taken over or absorbed by the debate about skills, university funding or the needs of the digital age. Of course we need to set lifelong learning in a modern context, but we need to do so in a way that captures and retains the true spirit of lifelong learning, which is not about structures, colleges, universities or productivity but fulfilling the human needs of people—particularly in my case, in my union, those who have missed out on full-time education and development and did not get the chance to grow to be the person they had the capacity to be. That is why I have been so disappointed over recent years to see the number of people in part-time education plummeting. Between 2010-11 and 2015, the number of part-time undergraduate entries at UK universities and colleges decreased by 58%—a big number. We have heard enough about the Open University and other colleges today, but that should be taken very seriously by the Government and the Minister.

The problem in the main is due to a big increase in tuition fees; the fees are too high, and the loans eligibility criteria are too restrictive. Fewer than half the part-time entrants qualify and, without loans, potential students have to pay for courses up front and out of their own pockets. So, as often happens with studying part-time, it is often older people who do not have the finances or have family commitments that do not allow them to take on these responsibilities and financial commitments. Loans are not the right policy for part-time learners, and I hope that this major review that we look forward to will rethink the funding arrangements for those who want to study part-time. There is a strong case for those older workers, who have already made contributions to the economy and paid national insurance and tax, being offered much more generous terms either to begin a journey into higher education for the first time or continue their education onward journey. It is acknowledged by some in the Government that the fall in part-time numbers is not good and needs to be addressed, and I hope some attempt will be made to tackle the problem.

Really, it is a time to go back to basics and create a funding regime that allows returns to learning and for many people who have missed out to be excited and optimistic about what may be possible for them—as opposed to the negative impact that costs are having on them. There is a general belief in working-class communities in the north of England that older people cannot go back to learn any more.

I have one very simple question to ask the Minister. What are the future prospects for people who choose to study later in life and return to learn when they have work, family and other commitments, and when they do not have much money but want to study and develop as their predecessors were able to do in the years when I first became a trade union official?