Lifelong access to education is at the core of the creation of a more equal, fair, and productive society
It is this principle upon which the @Right2_Learn campaign was founded. Our long-term vision is clear, but we wanted to provide practical assistance in the here and now to politicians and policy makers as they grapple with the biggest social and economic challenges in a generation.
So, at Christmas 2020, we began a consultation with our supporters on what principles they felt should underpin government policy with the aim of enabling us to constructively judge newly announced proposals.
The consultation produced five themes:
- break down barriers
- integrate and coordinate
- devolve and empower
- tackle inequality and meet community needs
- invest and promote.
WHAT SHOULD WE DO NOW? A MANIFESTO FROM THE RIGHT2LEARN CAMPAIGN
1. Break down barriers
Our supporters want an end to the silos that dominate education. The need to learn is lifelong and the demand from users is for seamless access to learning opportunities. Yet the contrasting approaches adopted by policymakers where delivering schooling, further and higher education are concerned create a chaotic and often incoherent offer which is not well understood by those who need it most.
We await with keen interest the much-vaunted Further Education (FE) White Paper from the Westminster government. However, what we really need is something far bigger and transformational. It is essential that additional resources are provided for FE.
These resources need to be genuinely additional – not funds already announced or allocated. But to realise the full potential of FE, a vision of a coherent lifelong education system is needed that connects it with schools, universities, adult learning institutes and continuing education units – a dynamic and responsive lifelong learning infrastructure for the post-Covid world.
A new national, lifelong learning strategy is required founded on parity of esteem, opportunities and approaches to funding.
2. Integrate and coordinate
A key theme of the responses was the role of government in encouraging the coordination of lifelong learning across the whole range of public services including the education sector.
Our supporters believe that as the primary funder of public services, the government is uniquely placed to take direct steps to build this integrated offer. In order to perform this role the barriers between the Department of Education and other ministries need to be broken down.
A straightforward way of integrating lifelong learning across education, health, welfare and other services would be to make funding and accreditation from the taxpayer conditional upon cooperative participation in a local lifelong learning offer. Such an offer would be strengthened if local authorities were given the primary role in coordinating and promoting it.
3. Devolve and empower
The stark lesson for policymakers of COVID-19 is that an overly centralised approach which overrides the views of local communities and ignores their expertise will stutter or fail. This has been seen in the responses to directly tackling the virus and also addressing effectively its myriad consequences.
Our supporters see a key role for government in clearly setting the terms of national policy, incentivising and encouraging publicly funded institutions to cooperate with each other and to engage effectively in facilitating lifelong learning. BUT we believe it is for local communities to deliver the strategy in a way which is democratically accountable and focused upon both immediate and long-term needs.
High quality learning opportunities should be present where they are most needed and where they will make most difference but also organised and shaped at this level. This approach will mean more localised investment, not less as some proponents of devolution suggest.
4. Tackle inequality and meet community needs
It is a given for our supporters that education policy should start from meeting the needs of the communities it serves. The pandemic has illustrated how these needs differ. From spiralling youth unemployment, to threats to major sectors such as aviation and small businesses across the country, a devolved and integrated approach is the only way that these differing needs can be met.
Serving the community means not privileging private schools or the educational needs of one class over another. Across communities we know access to learning is profoundly unequal. Those with the fewest initial qualifications are inevitably always those who face the toughest barriers to reconnecting with learning. The pandemic will only deepen these inequalities.
Providing localised, accessible opportunities that are supported by employers and the state is essential. Those who find it hardest to engage need the economic security to be able to make the steps back into learning. Providing learning that is free at the point of use or loans to enable participation is not enough here. Potential learners who have been disenfranchised by the system have to be certain that participating in learning will not jeopardise their job or source of income.
They also need to be listened to, in order to shape their learning, and given the means of accessing higher education or apprenticeship, through fair and transparent admission systems.
5. Invest and promote
Our supporters recognise the uniqueness of the situation now facing the UK. There is much rhetoric about the need to ensure the future is fairer and that there is ‘levelling up’ . However, it is impossible to see how this can be achieved without greater investment. Right2Learn emphatically rejects the idea that simply redistributing existing resources, from HE to FE for example, is the solution. We believe the central problem our society has is that millions of people are shut out from a right to learn and prevented from fulfilling their potential.
Focusing additional investment effectively, means supporting new mechanisms for learners to engage flexibly with education and training. Would be learners need to be able to have chances, in the globalised and digital 21st century, to reskill for new careers and their futures, not simply to satisfy the existing requirements of their current employers. There are models and frameworks in place that could provide the strategies to accommodate this, for example most notably in the credit transfer and accumulation formats of the Open University.
Any new investment will not bring dividends though unless there is also major investment in a comprehensive, national Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) service which is closely integrated with local advice services based in the communities they serve. Here, as in the other themes and priorities already laid out, the principles of subsidiarity and progression should be respected. Micro-management from Whitehall or government will not bring the transformation needed to create a nation of lifelong learners.
We need a different vision of how learning benefits – Dr Graeme Atherton speaks to FE News about the Lifelong Learning Commission
Talking to FE News at the 2019 Labour Party Conference, Dr Graeme Atherton, Director, National Education Opportunities Network, shared his thoughts on the Lifelong Learning Commission and where its priorities should lie:
Why do we need a Lifelong Learning Commission?
Well, I think what we’ve seen, not just in the past 10 years, but the past 30 years really is that Lifelong Learning has not advanced in this country as it needs to.
The ideas that we have around “what learning is” need to change.
We need really a step change in how we will prepare ourselves for a different society in the 21st century, not just economically, but socially as well.
A commission that brings together those who have ideas in this area, who can change and have influence, will I think hopefully try and reset what we understand learning to be. I think that’s the function role of a commission like this.
Next, Labour’s Lifelong Learning Commission by @ucu & @NEONHE. @mattwucu cites impact of Graeme Atherton’s admissions work (PQA) in achieving “a new consensus”(!). Atherton highlights tech opps. @GordonMarsden, @ZamzamMCR, and Douglas Chalmers @presidentucu chairing #Lab19 pic.twitter.com/UwUCR5a6kg
— Louis M M Coiffait (@LouisMMCoiffait) September 23, 2019
Transforming our adult education system
I think what the commission needs to do is put in place the necessary arguments, and necessary positions in their report that can reframe learning from being something that is primarily economic in terms of benefits to social, which includes economic as well.
We need to reframe learning so that what we see as the benefits of learning are promoting wellbeing and advancement in society for all people, and not just the economic progression of some people.
I think it’s that overall reframing that’s really important. Once we get that different vision of learning right, behind that the policies will follow. Most important thing the commission can do, in my view, is really to push those ideas forward.
What we see in the past is commissions that have really remained in that position, where they see the value of learning as being primarily economic, but also on the side social benefits and social values as well.
To live in the 21st century, there’s some really big challenges you have to confront about not just what the purpose of learning is, but what the purpose of our society is. You see challenges in climate change, challenges in automation.
Learning has to be part of the solution to those challenges, but it won’t be if we keep adult learning particularly, in that narrow frame of just economic benefit.
The commission needs really to push forward those different sorts of ideas, if it doesn’t start with those ideas it won’t get the sort of policies behind them we all need.
We talk a lot about the need for greater funding for further education and greater funding for adult learning, but fundamentally, the problems in that funding are if the purposes of that kind of learning are not those recognised by policy makers.
Therefore, when it comes to debates about funding, what we see is that those forms of learning are not going to get prioritised over forms of learning which appear to have greater economic value which are prioritised.
We have to think broadly about what we think learning is. We know that adult learning is fundamentally also about economic progression, it’s also about social progression. It’s about the benefits to communities, individuals, those who possibly want to see greater benefits and progression in their lives. I think that fundamentally is what the commission needs to do, it needs to reframe, that vision and purpose of learning.
Responsibility for funding lifelong learning
I think primarily the government is lead on these issues. As to which learning or what forms of learning are funded by an individual, or by employers, there’ll be a balance of different forms of learning. It’s very important that the government takes that lead as the primary funder of learning, that’s not the sole funder of learning.
As the government takes that lead remembering when the government is doing that, the government is investing funds that are brought in from the whole of society, investing taxpayer’s income. The government and the state do not exist outside of society, it’s not an action outside of that, it’s investing all our own resources anyway. So, I think individuals are investing, but investing through their taxes through government etc.
I think that the final responsibility for funding must come from the state.
Then we have to look at different forms of learning, a balance between funding from the state, funding from the individual, funding from the employer. As we see different forms of learning we’ll see those balances change.
It’s important the state sees itself as the primary funder of learning. I think that’s been eroded, that view in the past 10 years. That’s important, I think the commission also has put that view back at centre stage for policy makers.
Dr. Graeme Atherton, Director, NEON (the National Education and Opportunities Network), a professional organisation for widening access to higher education in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Responses