Build Back Bolder campaign launch: senior figures call for a new approach

In News Posted March 9, 2021

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

Sound Vindications of Adult Education

In News Posted February 21, 2021

Four recent sound broadcasts discuss the importance of adult education.

Centenary Commissioners Sir Alan Tuckett and Melissa Benn talk about what it does for people today, and what is needed to make it better, in a lively discussion with Union Learning Rep Sue Mann on Ed Miliband and Geoff Lloyd’s Reasons to be Cheerful podcast (15 Feb). You can listen to this on Acast or Spotify or Apple.

Our Sir Alan is doing it again on Ayesha Hazarika’s Times Radio programme (20 Feb). You can listen to it here – you have to scroll through to the last twenty minutes (2:41:40) to catch the discussion between Ayesha, Alan, the TUC’s Kevin Rowan, and University of East London mature student Danielle Hambrook.

In two other recent programmes, Oxford Professor Selina Todd discusses with others adult education’s part in shaping modern Britain, and its relationship with class, social mobility and empire.

Radio 4’s Start the Week (8 Feb.) is a wide-ranging exploration of Empire and class, shaping Britain with Sathnam Sanghera and Anthony Anaxagorou.

In a Free Thinking discussion on Radio 3 (4 Feb), she explores Class and social mobility with David Goodhart, author of Head, Hand, Heart, socio-linguist Sadie Ryan, and data scientist Timandra Harkness.

What Selina Todd says is explored richly in her new book, Snakes and Ladders: The great British social mobility myth.

Levelling Up Adult Community Education

In News Posted February 11, 2021

The House of Commons Education Select Committee recently called for better data on adult community learning. Dr Sue Pember, Centenary Commissioner and Policy Director for HOLEX (the professional body for adult education services, centres and institutions), has responded with an important report, Levelling Up Adult Community Education: What does the data tell us?

The report pinpoints the 10,000 places in England from which adult education is delivered, shows where little adult education is offered, reports on where there is a ‘delivery imbalance’, demonstrates that public money goes to learners from the most deprived areas, details the initial impact of Covid-19 on adult education learners, and shows that we need a new annual injection of £5.2 billion to fund a basic and intermediate skills levelling-up plan.

UK ministers accused of ‘settling scores’ by axing union adult learning fund

In News Posted February 8, 2021

In an important article in The Guardian, Centenary Commissioner Melissa Benn (in conversation above with vice chair, Sir Alan Tuckett) shows how valuable the Union Learning Fund has been for mature students – especially from disadvantaged backgrounds. Despite this, and despite opposition from across the political spectrum, government ministers seem determined to end it. Read Melissa’s powerful article here.

‘Skills for Jobs’: What about skills for life?

In News Posted January 21, 2021

Centenary Commission on Adult Education responds to government’s Skills for Jobs white paper

The Government’s Skills White Paper focuses too narrowly on the needs of employers and fails to address even more pressing needs across the whole of society, the Centenary Commission on Adult Education says today.

Dame Helen Ghosh, Chair of the commission and Master of Balliol College, Oxford, says:

“Build back better” is the government’s mantra – and who disagrees? But to build back better we need education throughout life which enriches people not only by getting them a job, but by helping them build and shape better communities.

Professor John Holford, Joint Secretary to the commission, says the White Paper is a missed opportunity to focus on deeper needs exacerbated by Covid-19:

As we grapple with the COVID crisis, we have learned how important emotional and psychological resilience are. Research shows adult education is great for mental health and community cohesion. What has the white paper to say on this? Nothing.

In his foreword to the White Paper the Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson, says his proposals are “about fulfilment and enrichment on a personal level.”

Yet the White Paper contains no mention of the deeper psychological and social learning needs which have been thrown into relief by Covid-19, and the creative ways in which adult learning can respond to them.

The pandemic has left the economy reeling, with unemployment and poverty ramping up,” Professor Holford says. “Even before Covid, the future of many people’s working lives looked bleak, with skilled jobs threatened by the rise of robots and artificial intelligence. More and more people are stuck in “gig economy” jobs, which give little opportunity for learning new skills. The White Paper says nothing – and does nothing – about the changing nature of the labour market or the rise of the gig economy.

The document contains no mention of the potential mental health and psychological benefits of lifelong learning and no mention of creativity. It does not cover the wider needs of communities struggling to counteract loneliness and isolation. And while it mentions employers and their needs 243 times it mentions employees just twice – both times in relation to providing a ‘pipeline’ of ‘job-ready’ employees.

Sir Alan Tuckett, the commission’s Vice-Chair, says:

There is no place in the current vision for the wider educational role of the further education sector.  Schools and universities celebrate learning with vocational applications, but they also teach philosophy, ethics, art and music – the tools needed for active citizens.  Only FE is denied this breadth.  And so yet again, and despite the welter of advice government has received, adult community education is left to wither.

Read more of John Holford’s thoughts on the white paper here, and more of Alan Tuckett’s here.

Centenary Commission welcomes hard-hitting House of Commons Education Committee report

In News Posted December 19, 2020

Centenary Commission leaders have welcomed an important and hard-hitting new report from the all-party House of Commons Education Committee.

Dame Helen Ghosh, Chair of the 2019 Centenary Commission on Adult Education, said:

‘I’m delighted that the House of Commons Education Select Committee’s important report echoes so many of our Centenary Commission recommendations.  Like us, they see an ambitious national strategy for adult education as the essential foundation for action, and the reintroduction of Individual Learning Accounts as the way to empower people to meet their individual needs at home and at work, throughout life.  Like us too they believe that communities must be at the heart of decision making,  recommending a community learning centre in every town. That needs in our view to be backed up with Community Learning Accounts so that local groups can identify and build their own provision.   And if we are to “build back” a better society post-COVID through lifelong-learning,  then significantly increased funding across the board is essential, to match the opportunity and the ambition”.

Professor John Holford, joint secretary to the Centenary Commission, who gave evidence to the Select Committee said:

‘The Select Committee’s call for a national strategy is spot on. Adult education brings massive benefits to individuals and communities, and the fall in provision and participation over the last decade has been a self-imposed catastrophe and a national disgrace.

‘We need to make sure our adult education provision enables us to meet the great challenges of our times. Our failures in the Covid19 pandemic show how we need a collective understanding of the crises and challenges that will confront us over the next few decades – economic recovery, climate change, migration, homelessness and poverty. Learning together throughout our lives, and as communities which think through problems carefully and collectively, is essential.

‘The Select Committee is right to point to many current failings. It is right to question whether the DfE “fully grasps the value and purpose of community learning”, to say that a “vision or strategic approach for boosting this vital area of lifelong learning” is lacking on the DfE’s part, and to call on the government to reverse its disastrous decision to end the Union Learning Fund. As it rightly says,  “Unless this decision is reversed, we will see the brakes put on workplace learning which will harm workers, employers and productivity.”

The Select Committee’s summary, with links to the report itself, is here. The committee refers to the 1919 Ministry of Reconstruction’s vision of adult education as ‘a permanent national necessity, an inseparable aspect of citizenship’ which should be ‘both universal and lifelong’. It adds: ‘Today, we believe an ambition on a similar scale is needed.’