Lifelong Learning — David Hagendyk
It’s an unlikely list, but Rick Astley, Jumanji, and the X-Files all have something in common: they were all big in the 1990s and made successful comebacks years later. And while Rick Astley’s rebirth may be the most remarkable, there is reason for optimism that after a period in the political wilderness, lifelong learning could soon join that list.
In the 1990s, the standard-bearers for progressive politics grappled with a rapidly changing world economy and the end of long held assumptions about the world of work. On both sides of the Atlantic Tony Blair and Bill Clinton offered a coherent, progressive response to a globalised economy and the slow disappearance of a ‘job for life’. The opportunity to learn throughout life, to retrain and the chance to adapt to change in the new economy was at the centre of these shared visions.
However, the UK Labour Governments of the time never managed to fully match their own aspirations. As former Education Secretary David Blunkett has admitted, they were insufficiently bold in matching the power of the narrative with policy and delivery. In Wales too the urgency and importance of lifelong learning challenge has been lost. Policy choices such as cutting funding for part-time learning in further education and a loss of provision in adult and community education have all had an impact on opportunities for lifelong learning. With people facing multiple careers over a fifty-year working life and businesses grappling with the imminent challenge of a third of their workforce soon being over fifty years old, there is an urgent need for a new momentum to rekindle the flame of lifelong learning.
However, there are signs that progressive politics is falling back in love with lifelong learning. Reports from the Wales Centre for Public Policy and from the IPPR both recognised the role of lifelong learning in the debate about the changing nature of work. The Fabian Society, through the new Changing Work Centre, also set out lessons policy makers across the UK could learn from approaches to lifelong learning in Germany, Singapore, Australia, Austria and France. The report offers a reasonable prescription of what needs to change. Encouragingly they found it was possible to make rapid improvements to rates of participation.
As politics searches for answers to the challenges of an ageing society, the future of work, the productivity challenge, ill-health, loneliness and inequality, lifelong learning could hold the key to success. The scale of the challenge merits a radical, bold approach. Wales and the Welsh Labour Government should be leading the way.
Firstly, we need to give adults the tools they need to make informed, personalised decisions about their learning. This should mean the introduction, potentially as an initial pilot, of personal learning accounts to give individuals the financial means to fund learning that is most appropriate for them and that offers opportunities for individuals and employers to top up accounts. Internationally the Singapore SkillsCredit model offers a useful example from which to build a Welsh model. At the Learning and Work Institute we have been leading advocates for this model, as have the IPPR.
Alongside this there is an urgent need to offer far better access to quality advice and information at key transition points in people’s lives. The model of focusing career advice at just school age children or just when the need is most urgent for adults is not sustainable in the long-term. Access to advice is needed at the key transitions in people’s lives: for example, returning to work after caring for family, advice on changing careers, and how to manage the lead in to retirement. One radical option should be to look at a mid-life career MOT to give people the tools and guidance to make decisions about their futures.
Broader changes are needed to the system too. The education and skills sector is largely designed around equipping people with the skills they need to enter work. It is less effective at supporting people in work with accessing learning or at supporting the growing numbers of the self-employed. Evidence shows three quarters of people in low paid work are still there a decade on, so offering people a ladder into better paid, more fulfilling work is essential. There is evidence of what works that policy makers can learn from. For example, Learning and Work’s recent evaluation of the Skills Escalator in West London showed the positive benefits of flexible funding, access to an advisor, and an individualised action plan help to support people out of low pay.
Austerity means funding change will be difficult, especially when the savings generated from helping people back into work are returned to the Treasury and not the Welsh Government. A real conversation is needed between governments to develop a mechanism to ensure some of this investment is returned and can be ploughed back into lifelong learning opportunities. One focus for investment should be adult and community education, which is the departure point for thousands of people in Wales taking their first step back into education. It is often the most accessible for adult learners and prepares people for progress into further learning, to get back into work, and improving their health and well-being.
Recognising the wider benefits of lifelong learning is essential too. Eluned Morgan, the still relatively new minister for lifelong learning, should be given the brief to work across government to improve opportunities for adult learners. Given the well evidenced health and well-being benefits of learning it shouldn’t be heretical to argue that lifelong learning would be a sound, long-term use of health improvement funding by the NHS. Or that we should be doing better in engaging providing pathways for the many thousands of sport volunteers to access opportunities to learn new skills and gain qualifications.
This system change will only happen long-term if we are able to put adults at the heart of the Welsh Government vision for the proposed Tertiary Education and Research Commission. The recent White Paper outlining the proposals placed too little emphasis on adult learners and reinforced the view that the system will be designed around the traditional view of a learner as a young adult progressing relatively seamlessly through further and higher education. We cannot afford double-down on the mistakes of the past. Opportunities for lifelong learning should be a core mission of the new commission.
Lifelong learning can be the success story of 2018. Just as today’s baby boomers were never gonna give up on Rick Astley, if government and the sector are prepared to support change and drive the debate, there is reason for optimism that lifelong learning can join the list of rejuvenated 90s icons.