educated, well-equipped and adaptable labour force. To cope with rapid change we must ensure that people can return to learning throughout their lives. We cannot rely on a small elite: we will need the creativity, enterprise and scholarship of all our people. Learning enables people to play a full part in their community and strengthens the family, the neighbourhood and con- sequently the nation. It helps us fulfil our potential and opens doors to a love of music, art and literature. That is why we value learning for its own sake and are encouraging adults to enter and re- enter learning at every point of their lives as parents, at work and as citizens. The Learning Age will be built on a renewed commitment to self-improvement and on a recognition of the enormous contribution learning makes to our society.
The Green Paper launched a number of significant innovations welcomed by NIACE, including the University for Industry, indi- vidual learning accounts, the Adult and Community Learning Fund (which NIACE managed) and the Trade Union Learning Fund. By 1999, the Secretary of State was engaged upon a large-scale restructuring of the education and skills system. Adult learning was firmly on the government’s radar – it’s difficult to think of a time when it received anything like as much political attention – and NIACE found much of its vision for adult education warmly accepted by ministers. Writing in Adults Learning in January 1999, Stephen McNair observed that, in the space of a decade, NIACE had moved ‘from worthy margin to lively mainstream’:
Like adult learning itself, NIACE has moved from the margins to the mainstream in the last decade. Its strengths lie in its many networks, working in partnership across sectoral boundaries, and its willingness to take risks with new ideas, of which Adult Learners’ Week (one of the great international innovations in adult learning of recent years) is only the most visible. It has consistently sought to support the interests of adult learners, in all their diversity, and to be a critical friend to all those who support adult learning.
NIACE was now part of the mainstream of public policy making in lifelong learning and had a significant role in delivering the government’s new agenda. This brought significant growth to the Institute – in terms of both size and income – but brought with it new challenges, not least in maintaining its key role as independent advocate and critical friend to government. In the final article in the series, in next month’s Adults Learning, we look at the impact of The Learning Age, the narrow, utilitarian philosophy that succeeded it, shaped successive skills strategies and became characteristic of learning and skills policy in the last years of New Labour, and the re-emergence and reform of informal adult and community learning under the coalition government.
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
Russell and After: The politics of adult learning (1969-97), Peter Clyne with additional material by John Payne, NIACE 2006
Remaking Adult Learning: Essays on adult education in honour of Alan Tuckett, Edited by Jay Derrick, Ursula Howard et al, Institute of Education/NIACE 2011
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32