themselves forced to reduce programmes and increase fees. Government funding focused increasingly on vocational education and training and, while some of this reflected the priorities of the Russell Report, particularly the emphasis on the unemployed, many felt that the impetus given to socially progressive adult education in the wake of Russell was being stifled and subverted. Learning for its own sake was coming under attack. The incoming Conservative government in 1979 made clear its intention to reduce national funding for adult education not directly related to employment or skills. The profile of adult learning began to change, with spending on training activities increasing threefold between 1979 and 1991. Various initiatives were introduced during

that time, including REPLAN and PICKUP – a pump-priming scheme intended to encourage further and higher education institutions to undertake ‘professional, industrial and commercial up-dating’ – but they had limited success in reversing what has been termed Britain’s ‘historic backwardness’ when it comes to vocational training. The government aimed to increase employers’ involvement in training and development, and there was much rhetoric about employers leading the sector. There was some good and innovative workplace training practice in the period, but much of the best of it was not government- inspired. The Ford Motor Company, for example, through its Employee Development and Assistance Programme (EDAP), offered all employees £200 per annum to spend on a range of personal and career development education in their own time, and had real success in engaging non-traditional learners. But such initiatives remained the brilliant exception rather than the rule. Naomi Sargant’s 1991 NIACE survey,

Learning and Leisure, found that while, unsurprisingly, vocational subjects had increased in popularity since the 1980s, and dominated the list of subjects studied, the arts and social sciences, academic subjects generally, and some vocational subjects traditionally favoured by women, had all declined. The survey was timed to mark the dismantling of the Inner London Education Authority in 1990, a result of the Education Reform Act 1988. ILEA’s adult education service had been responsible for much of the most creative and innovative practice in adult learning during the seventies and eighties. The survey underlined how much was being lost. In 1986-87 ILEA was responsible for 14 per cent of all non-vocational adult education in England and Wales, including large programmes in arts and crafts, ESOL, adult literacy and numeracy, foreign languages, music and drama. It was the first of a series of surveys published by NIACE which demonstrated the continuing ‘learning divide’ between those groups of adults who participated in education and those groups for whom education was, in Veronica McGivney’s

memorable phrase, ‘for other people’. For the Institute too, which had a new

Director in Alan Tuckett, these were turbulent and challenging times. The units it had supported for much of the eighties became independent, were disbanded or merged with other agencies. The ALBSU had become independent of NIACE in 1989, REPLAN’s work ended in October 1991 and in 1992 ministers decided to merge UDACE with the FEU, in preparation for the implementation of the Further and Higher Education Act. The loss of each, recalls Judith Summers, NIACE chair from 1992 to 1999, was experienced as a ‘heavy blow’ to the Institute, for ‘the agencies’ agendas became NIACE’s own’. But, for the same reason, the loss was liberating, as NIACE developed its own distinct and clearly independent voice and began to extend its sphere of interest and influence. At the same time, NIACE recognised the diverging cultural and public policy scenes in England and Wales by making its Welsh Committee a fully-fledged unit, NIACE Cymru, in 1988 (what would become NIACE Dysgu Cymru in 2000). It marked the beginnings of the Institute’s growing influence on the making of policy on both sides of Offa’s Dyke.

Emerging voice There were signs of NIACE’s emerging voice in its response to the 1988 Education Reform Act. NIACE produced its own strategy for adult education, Learning Throughout Adult Life, which argued, in the tradition of Russell and From Policies to Practice, for a coordinated approach to continuing education, making opportunities to learn available to adults throughout their lives. It contended that a fundamental problem with British education was that large sections of the adult population had benefited less from education than others. Engaging those who had benefited the least demanded a wide and properly funded adult learning offer. In times of rapid technological, economic and social change, it said, the expansion of continuing education ‘is not merely desirable but essential’. NIACE’s key recommendation that ‘all adults should have a minimum, regular and quantified entitlement to learning opportunities throughout their lives’ was adopted by Labour in opposition and formed part of its 1992 general election manifesto. As political interest in adult learning as a

means of achieving key social and economic policy objectives continued to grow, and take different, not always welcome, forms, NIACE grew into a body that could respond to such developments and influence and inform thinking and practice across a wide range of policy areas. A critical moment came in 1991, with the publication of Education and Training for the 21st Century, a White Paper heralding the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act. The White Paper proposed the formation of a new quango, the Further Education Funding Council (FEFC), with a

role to plan and fund national priorities for the improvement of skills and qualifications. The personal, community and social value of learning was dismissed. The FEFC would have a statutory responsibility to fund only further education courses which led to a vocational or academic qualification – what the White Paper characterised, provocatively, as ‘useful’ learning – effectively writing publicly- supported adult learning out of the post- compulsory education script. NIACE argued vigorously against the proposal, explaining that it would almost certainly prove fatal to all sorts of socially valuable adult education provision. It briefed partners, formed new alliances and joined a coalition, including NATFHE (the further and adult education lecturers’ union) and, critically, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, to campaign against the moves. They were characterised by DES minister Tim Eggar as ‘the forces of darkness’, but after six weeks of furious letter- writing from WI branches across the country, as well as from providers, learners and other supporters (including Conservative MP and, later, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Education Tim Boswell), education secretary Kenneth Clarke clarified his position. The outcome was a recognition that elements of adult learning other than the vocational mattered, and the retention of the statutory duty on local authorities to ensure ‘adequate’ provision of adult education outside the FEFC remit.

Abrupt decline Nevertheless, the 1992 Act further cemented the gap between vocational and qualification- bearing courses and adult education for personal and community interest, satisfaction and growth, and precipitated an abrupt decline in local authority adult education. It removed further education colleges from local authority control (colleges became free- standing corporations in receipt of central government funding through the FEFC) and created a newly defined further education sector responsible for securing adequate provision of certain categories of education, listed in Schedule 2 of the Act, including vocational and qualification courses, higher education access courses, adult literacy and numeracy, ESOL and skills acquisition for people with learning difficulties. Local education authorities were left with a statutory duty to secure ‘adequate’ non-Schedule 2 adult education, that is, recreational, social and leisure provision. They could provide Schedule 2 learning if they so decided but their main task would be as providers or commissioners of non-Schedule 2 activity. Critically, though, the notion of adequacy was never defined and LEAs, understandably, felt supporting local schools was a greater priority. As a result, many authorities significantly

reduced funding for non-vocational adult education in their areas and there was a

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