The 1919 Report and after

The Adult Education Committee (AEC), established as a sub-committee of the Reconstruction Committee in 1917, was charged with considering ‘the provision for, and possibilities of Adult Education (other than technical or vocational)’. The Committee’s report, produced in 1919, has arguably been the most frequently quoted publication in English about adult learning in the UK. Inspirational language, optimistic tone and comprehensive attention to its brief made the report a milestone in the literature and an example for subsequent committees dealing with adult learning. Given the fact that it was produced within the framework of the Ministry of Reconstruction’s work and submitted directly to the Prime Minister, it was inevitable that, after the degradation and slaughter of the First World War, it should point a way to an expected enlightened and positive future. The report called for:

• an expanded and publicly recognised and funded role for universities, including the establishment of extra-mural departments;

• more and better-paid staff; and • an increased role for the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) and other voluntary organisations.

One of the most significant features of the AEC report, which influenced the attitudes and values of a number of subsequent committees and adult learning practitioners, was the attention it gave to issues relating to the personal and social consequences of exclusion and deprivation. In this way, adult learning was given an important position within the broad spectrum of social and community services. After considering the recommendations of the AEC report, the President of the Board of Education created an Adult Education

Film Institute. Its main tasks were to be to provide information on all aspects of film, to encourage public appreciation of film, to advise teachers, to act as mediator between teachers and the industry, to carry out research, to maintain a national repository of films, and to undertake the certification of films as cultural or educational on behalf of government. The BFI’s early emphasis was on providing information to teachers, members and other enthusiasts and in 1935 it set up the National Film Library, since renamed the National Film Archive.

Art for the people The Institute’s experimental work in the arts during these years had enormous and lasting influence. In 1935, under the inspired and energetic direction of Secretary W.E. Williams, it set up a scheme called Art for the People, which was to provide ordinary people with the opportunity to see great works of art. Many private collectors agreed to loan their paintings to the Institute for the purpose. This work led to the establishment of a Council for Encouragement of Music and the Arts (CEMA) which, throughout the Second World War, provided high-quality musical, theatre and opera performances, as well as art exhibitions, helping resist what Kenneth Clark, one of the founders of CEMA, termed

24 ADULTS LEARNING JANUARY 2011

Committee of appointed individuals charged with the responsibility of advising the Board. The Committee, in common with the Board itself, moved away from the emphasis in the 1919 report on university involvement in adult learning and argued for a stronger coordinating and leadership role for Local Education Authorities. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the Committee sought to

broaden the range and nature of organisations, statutory and voluntary, involved in adult learning, which received recognition by governments, national and local. Thus, the Board of Education (Adult Education) Regulations (1924) permitted universities, the districts of the WEA and other approved bodies to apply for recognition as ‘Responsible Bodies’ entitled to receive grants for tutorial and other courses. Later, the 1926 Hadow Report on The Education of the Adolescent commented that:

It is desirable that teachers in Modern Schools and Senior Classes should endeavour to secure continued education of their pupils after school age by drawing attention to such facilities for further instruction, whether cultural or vocational, as are available in the area.

This encouragement of extended education for all, as adopted by the Hadow Committee and advocated by the Board’s Adult Education Committee, ensured that there would be national recognition and approval of the ‘village college’ initiatives launched by Henry Morris, Chief Education Officer in Cambridgeshire. His concept of all-age institutions, staffed, programmed and managed in a manner to provide vocational and non-vocational learning opportunities for all in any given area, was greatly influenced and encouraged by the Sports Council’s view that sports and leisure facilities could and should be developed for

the ‘cultural black-out’ which commenced with the announcement of hostilities. Its initial remit was to give financial assistance to cultural societies which were struggling to continue their activities during the war, providing culture in the regions by promoting theatre and concert tours by national companies. It provided artists with employment and emphasised local participation and the cont- ributions made by amateur groups. In 1946, CEMA, which had been chaired by John Maynard Keynes since 1941, became the Arts Council of Great Britain, with a charter committing it to securing greater knowledge, understanding and practice of the arts, and to increasing the accessibility of the arts to the general public; another of the Institute’s highly precocious offspring. In 1937, the Institute started a hospital

education programme, and, in that same year, created a Trust for Educational Work among the Unemployed. It was active and influential during the war years, supporting an Air Raid Shelter Libraries and Reading Rooms scheme in 1940 (for which Penguin donated some 50,000 books) and initiating an Army Study Centres Scheme in 1941. Funds for the scheme came from the Pilgrim Trust, which also funded Art for the People. The Institute also produced a report on The Housing and Equipment of Adult Education for the Ministry

of Education in 1945. In 1949 the BIAE merged with the

National Foundation for Adult Education – a forum set up in 1946 in response to the 1944 Education Act to promote understanding and co-operation between the various bodies involved in the provision of adult education (Local Education Authorities, Responsible Bodies, voluntary organisations, and so on) – to form the National Institute of Adult Education (NIAE), under the leadership of Edward Hutchinson. In next month’s Adults Learning we continue the Institute’s story, from the creation of the NIAE through the difficult, transitional post-war years to the major inquiries of the 1960s and 1970s and to the 1980s when the Institute underwent its next significant change of name, becoming the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education in 1983.

Sources A History of Modern British Adult Education, Roger Fieldhouse and associates, NIACE 1996

A Passion for Learning: Celebrating 80 years of NIACE support for adult learning, presented by Howard Gilbert and Helen Prew, NIACE 2001