Adult and Further Education

Debate between Margaret Greenwood and Flick Drummond

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood]

My hon. Friend makes an important point and I thank him for his intervention. Absolutely, I do agree with him.

It is vital that Government funding of adult education and skills matches the need for it. I am concerned, too, that the Government’s proposals for implementing a new further education funding and accountability system could significantly reduce opportunities for adults to learn subjects such as art, history, sociology, drama, music, and literature.

The Government have consulted on the proposal that, in future, all non-qualification provision in adult education in areas funded by the Education and Skills Funding Agency, which accounts for about 40% of adult education provision, should meet at least one of the following objectives: achieving employment outcomes for all learners; achieving progression to further learning that moves individuals closer to the labour market for all learners; helping those with learning difficulties and/or disabilities to support their personal development and access independent living.

Although all of those objectives are hugely important, stakeholders are understandably concerned about what this might mean for people who need longer to gain the confidence or basic skills to progress into work, and for those adults who want to learn for reasons that are not necessarily employment related. The FE Week article that I referenced earlier also revealed a mass move among adult education providers towards fee-paying courses, as free languages and creative arts provision is squeezed out. It is incredibly important that we have a broad curriculum offer for adults. Failure to provide that is to ignore the great potential for personal development that is out there. Education is of immense value of itself and it is a poor Government who fail to see that.

[Mrs Flick Drummond (Meon Valley) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making some very interesting points, and I agree with some of them on adult education. Does she then welcome the Government’s lifelong learning entitlement, which is another effective way of getting adults back into sustainable work? It will reduce the benefit strain and the pressure on the public purse.

[Margaret Greenwood]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I will come on to that point later in my speech.

At a time when we have an ageing society and increasing problems of loneliness, it cannot be right to bring in policy measures that have the potential to remove or significantly reduce community-based learning opportunities. The latest impact report by the Workers Educational Association, which does a tremendous job providing the secretariat for the all-party group for adult education, which I chair, highlights how last year 84% of its learners reported improvements in their overall wellbeing, while 95% claimed that their WEA course made them more aware of what they can do next to improve their skills. That demonstrates just how effective community learning opportunities for adults can be.

We need to create an environment in which learning breeds learning—one where learners can learn things in which they are interested and then, through that, find out about other learning opportunities that might be of interest to them. If the Government’s sole focus, when it comes to adult education, is on vocational skills, there are real concerns that that aspect may be lost.

There is a clear need for investment in the provision of information and guidance for adults when it comes to learning, too, and the WEA has highlighted the importance of that. It is highly likely that adults are missing out on learning because they do not know what is available to them or what they are entitled to. There is also wide variation across England when it comes to participation in adult education. The Learning & Work Institute’s most recent participation survey, for instance, highlights that London has by far the highest participation rate when it comes to adult learning, at 56%. That compares with just 35% in the south-west. That is a gap of 21 percentage points—a gap that has risen from 17 percentage points in 2019.

Something else that could see more adults become involved in learning would be if the Government were to come forward with a lifelong learning strategy that articulates the value of education to the individual and to society as a whole. It is remarkable that England does not have such a strategy and it is something that the sector has long been calling for. The Centre for Social Justice has talked of the need for an all-age, all-stage lifelong learning strategy, which builds from the foundations of adult community education, and has said that any such strategy should aim to provide every adult who needs to retrain with a pathway to develop the skills they need regardless of their starting point. This is something to which the Government should pay heed.

An area that needs particular attention and investment from the Government is adult literacy. According to the National Literacy Trust, 7.1 million adults in England—16.4% of the adult population—are functionally illiterate. These are people who may be able to understand short, straightforward texts on familiar topics accurately and independently and obtain information from everyday sources, but for whom reading information from unfamiliar sources or on unfamiliar topics could cause some problems. I have spoken about that on numerous occasions in this place. I tabled related amendments to both the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill and the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, the latter of which was selected for a vote. That amendment would have required the Government to include reducing geographical disparities in adult literacy as one of its levelling-up missions. It would also have required them, during each mission period, to review levels of adult literacy in the UK, publish the findings of that review and set out a strategy to improve levels of adult literacy and to eradicate illiteracy in the UK. Unfortunately, the amendment was defeated by the Government, despite receiving cross-party support.

The subject of adult literacy was also raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) at Prime Minister’s questions earlier this year. The Prime Minister’s response was:

“The best way to solve this problem is to ensure that our young children get the reading skills, training and education that they need.”—[Official Report, 15 March 2023; Vol. 729, c. 830.]

That completely misses the point about adults who, for whatever reason, may have missed out during childhood and does nothing to help those 7.1 million people I spoke of earlier.

In ignoring the scale of the crisis in adult literacy, I fear the Government are potentially wasting the talents of more than 16% of the adult population. That makes absolutely no sense either for the individuals concerned or for the economy. There is an urgent need for the Government to bring forward a programme to help adults to boost their literacy skills.

Looking at adult education more broadly, Government policy initiatives such as the lifelong learning entitlement, which is due to come into effect in 2025, and the current free courses for jobs offer, have limitations. The latter is limited in scope and covers only vocational level 3 courses, while the lifelong learning entitlement is aimed at level 4 and above and people over 60 will not be able to access it. In addition, many people will not be able to take out a loan or may feel anxious about doing so, for any number of reasons, including concerns about repayment and the cost of living crisis. Those on low incomes or in insecure employment in particular are unlikely to want to take on debt.

The Learning and Work Institute’s most recent adult participation in learning survey highlighted that, of adults who have not participated in learning within the last three years, 29% of respondents cited cost and not being able to afford it as a barrier. That is something the Government really do need to address.

I now want to talk about colleges and further education. Colleges in England educate more than 1.6 million students every year and employ approximately 103,000 full-time equivalent staff. They have a crucial role to play when it comes to growing the economy and extending educational opportunity. Support and investment from the Government are needed so that they can continue to effectively fulfil that role.

The IFS report from December 2022, which I referred to earlier in my speech, looked at education spending. It found that further education colleges and sixth forms are in a particularly difficult position when it comes to funding and that they saw larger cuts than other areas of education after 2010. There was no extra funding announced in the 2022 autumn statement to help colleges and sixth forms to cope with larger-than-expected cost increases. That is a matter of extreme concern and represents a serious threat to the sector.

I have heard directly from people who work in further education about the workforce crisis that they are facing. They have made it clear to me that, without further investment, there will be no staff to deliver the skills that our economy desperately needs. The Association of Colleges has pointed out that the average college lecturer is paid £8,000 a year less than average school pay and the sector faces particular challenges in competing with both schools and the industries it serves. The association is calling on the Department for Education to publish an evidence paper on college pay, using information collected by the FE workforce data collection, to provide the same sort of information that it provides to the teacher review body.

The Association of Colleges is also calling for the Government to raise 2023-24 funding rates in line with inflation, recognising that prices are higher than they were when the three-year budgets were set in October 2021. That would cost about £400 million. Without that cash increase, the Association of Colleges has expressed concern that colleges will need to make decisions this year that will damage their capacity to deliver the skills needed for economic growth and will leave the skills reform agenda unfulfilled. It is also calling for more investment to support skills in high-priority areas such as construction and engineering as we transition to a low-carbon economy. I call on the Government to engage with colleges and other bodies working within further education, hear their concerns and make sure that they are given the support they need.

To conclude, adult education, further education and colleges are crucial to the education and development of adults of all ages in every community. They play a vital role in addressing the skills and employment challenges that we face and they offer opportunities for people to mix with like-minded people and acquire knowledge and new skills, either online or in community settings. They are important for community cohesion and to address the devastating levels of loneliness that are apparent for so many. They enable parents to develop their own commitment to learning in a way that is beneficial to their children and to wider society. In short, adult education is a public good and the Government must make funding it a priority.