Adult education must be pushed up the political agenda so it cannot be ignored, the former House of Commons Speaker John Bercow said last night at the launch event of the Centenary Commission’s Build Back Bolder campaign.
Chairing a webinar with the Commission’s chair Dame Helen Ghosh, former Secretary of State for Education David Blunkett, Oxford historian Professor Selina Todd and Helen Chicot, who spearheaded innovative approaches to lifelong learning in Rochdale, Mr Bercow said the panel had displayed a shared sense of passion on the issue.
“Whatever your politics I get a sense that there is a
very proper impatience to better; a
mission to ensure a kind of crystallization of ideas about where we go
next,” he said.
“I
think we all feel very strongly about it.
I always think that you have to catapult a thing from the back of a
decision-makers mind to the front of her or his mind and keep it there, “ he
said.
Dame Helen Ghosh said there was great resonance between today’s issues and those facing the original Commission on Adult Education in 1919.
“ The
1919 report was a wonderful thing: It had in it the words we used for our
title: that adult education was a
‘permanent national necessity and an essential aspect of citizenship -universal
and lifelong. Both the Brexit debate and now the pandemic have shown we live in
a society sadly full of inequalities, and people who have been left behind. So
every citizen needs to be engaged,” she said.
Taking
control of lives
Lord Blunkett said that for many people lifelong learning was not a second chance, but a first chance: “Being able to take control of their own lives when technological change has overcome them, the ability to cope with rapid social and cultural change, makes adult learning absolutely crucial.
“ I’m
afraid adult learning has taken a hell of a hit – between 2001 and 2011, 14
million people took up life skills or basic skills, often just learning to read
and to write and to add up: the literacy part of that was the most successful.
It dropped by a half from 2016 to last year with the pandemic,” he said. “We’ve
never needed as we need it today the ability of people to be able to adapt to
new circumstances to find that they have talent; the ability of people to be
able to see that they have new opportunities as old ones disappear,” he said.
Professor Todd said that on International Women’s Day the need to make women’s education a priority should be a focus.
“In the
early 1960s the Robbins report pointed out that in an advanced society we
should want everyone to have an advanced education,” she said. “That’s never
been truer than today: to get through this crisis, to get through the climate
emergency, to work out how we negotiate with automation, we need new solutions
and new people at the top,” she said.
Learning
to trust
Helen Chicot said Rochdale’s experience in the last year had been instructive:
“We’ve
had more time in lockdown than anywhere else, and the relationship between
communities and institutions has changed for the better,” she said. “Complete clarity of purpose in our
communities has meant that we’ve learned to trust each other. Learning is such
an important part of cohesion and reducing inequality, and clearly that’s a complex
issue.
“Trust
– being able to go to a class, to a safe space where we can become confident in
what we know and share that with others – that’s why learning is important now
for adults. if we’re lucky we can be confident
that we can start to take those steps, and we know who we can ask for
help. if we’re really lucky someone helps us to take action to find out how to
do those things – because as things currently stand it’s only if we’re lucky
that we can learn,” she said.
You can watch the webinar here. The webinar was supported by the University of Nottingham Policy Engagement Fund. A second webinar will take place on Wednesday March 10 – for more details click here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/educationmediacentre/489908
