policy and structural changes since 1997 and assessed their impact on adult learners, and Veronica McGivney’s Keeping the options open (2005), which analysed the growing pressures to meet top-down national targets and argued for the importance of maintaining a broad and flexible curriculum offer for adults. NIACE’s surveys of adult participation in learning, published each year during Adult Learners’ Week, provided annual reminders of the impact of policy on adult learning. A sharp reverse, the 2003 survey, showed that adult participation in learning had fallen back to the levels of the mid-1990s. From 1996 to 2001 the surveys had shown steadily increasing numbers of people reporting current or recent participation in learning.
Realising our potential Another significant turning point came in 2003 with the publication of 21st Century Skills: Realising our potential, the government’s first skills strategy White Paper. It underlined what many now saw as a clear sea change in government policy on lifelong learning. From 2003 the policy was to pursue equality and fairness through economic modernisation, with far less emphasis on the importance of widening participation in pursuit of a fair and inclusive society. Work, the argument went, ‘is the most effective route out of poverty’. The White Paper gave adult learning a key role to play in strengthening the UK’s position as one of the world’s leading economies: ensuring individuals had the necessary skills to make themselves employable and employers had the right skills to support their businesses. NIACE’s Director Alan Tuckett, writing in Adults Learning, expressed the hope that the government would continue to ‘pursue education for economic prosperity and for social cohesion hand-in-hand’; however, the emphasis of the document was strongly on the skills needed for economic productivity. It announced the creation of 23 Sector Skills Councils, employer-led organisations set up to identify solutions to the skills needs of different economic sectors. For individual learners, the paper set out the government’s intention to create a new entitlement to achieve a Level 2 (GCSE or equivalent) qualification and recognised ICT proficiency as a third basic skill in the Skills for Life programme. It also proposed to reform the qualifications framework through strengthening modern apprenticeships and introducing credit frame- works for adults. The strategy did recognise that adult
learning serves purposes other than narrowly economic ones, noting that ‘[e]conomic and social objectives are necessarily intertwined. But skills serve wider purposes. For many people learning enriches their lives. They may enjoy learning for its own sake. Or it may make them better placed to give something back to their community, to help family or friends, to manage the family finances better, or help their children achieve more throughout their
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school careers’. However, while a modest budget was safeguarded for adult learning for personal and community development, large swathes of publicly funded work for adults in further education were cut as the government focused on employability skills and work- related learning. Writing in the February 2005 issue of Adults Learning, Alan Tuckett warned that despite the aspirations set out by Labour in its first term in office, and its significant investment in learning and skills, adult learners were facing a crisis:
Anyone looking closely at prospects for the field must expect fairly bumpy times ahead. It is not just the threat to adult and community learning budgets but, more particularly, the danger for what is now called ‘other further education’ – that rich mix of worthwhile learning that sits outside the narrowness of the national qualifications framework. It is work that includes ESOL provision at entry level; and the whole of the Workers’ Educational Association grant. It also includes the flagship provision of specialist colleges like the City Lit in London, and much of the Open College Network accredited provision. This is not work that we can afford to see at risk.
A second skills strategy White Paper, Skills: Getting on in business, getting on at work, was published in March 2005. It built on the 2003 White Paper and consolidated efforts to put employers’ needs centre stage in the design and delivery of training. It announced the implementation of a National Employer Training Programme to give employers rather than providers the power to determine how public funds were best to be spent to meet business priorities, and launched a new flagship training programme, Train to Gain. In return for free and flexibly funded training, employers were expected to allow employees enough time at work to undertake their studies. The Skills for Life programme was given a new target of 2.25 million adults achieving recognised literacy and numeracy skills by 2010. Later that year, Sir Andrew Foster published the results of his government-commissioned review of further education. Realising the potential: The future role of further education colleges called on colleges to focus more sharply on employability and the supply of economically valuable skills. A ‘less equivocal and clearly articulated vision, and a more identifiable “brand”’ would ‘galvanise strategic thinking, stimulate an unswerving passion about quality and transform the sector’s reputation,’ Sir Andrew said. Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Education and Skills, welcomed the report, agreeing that the ‘building of skills’ was the ‘primary purpose’ of further education colleges. The White Paper that followed accepted the main recommendation and established a new
mission for the sector: ‘to help people gain the skills and qualifications for employability’. The following year saw the publication
of Prosperity for all in the global economy: world class skills, the much-anticipated final report of the Treasury-commissioned Leitch Review of Skills. The report provided an overview of the UK’s skills landscape and an estimate of the optimal skills mix necessary to maximise economic growth and social justice. It recom- mended the following skills targets for 2020, to ensure that the UK was in the top quartile of OECD countries by each of the indicators used in international comparison:
q 95 per cent of adults to achieve the basic skills of functional literacy and numeracy, an increase from levels of 85 per cent literacy and 79 per cent numeracy in 2005;
q Exceeding 90 per cent of adults qualified to at least Level 2, an increase from 69 per cent in 2005;
q 1.9 million additional Level 3 attainments over the period and boosting the number of apprentices to 500,000 a year; and
q Exceeding 40 per cent of adults qualified to Level 4 and above, up from 29 per cent in 2005, with a commitment to continue progression.
The review foresaw that responsibility for achieving targets would be shared between government, employers and individuals. The three stakeholders would need to increase action and investment and focus their efforts on economically valuable skills. Leitch recommended that the way forward was to build on existing structures while at the same time modifying the system to make it more demand-led and responsible to future market needs. Leitch’s view that driving up qualifications was the critical factor in improving economic productivity was accepted and taken up enthusiastically by the government.
Big Conversation The Leitch Report, and the government’s uncritical response to it, made clear that there was to be no deviation in the direction of policy on adult learning. With public investment focusing narrowly on provision supporting the achievement of national targets, opportunities for adults to learn were narrowing rapidly. By 2005 it was obvious that the system was losing large numbers of adult learners. In 2006 NIACE launched a ‘Big Conversation’, involving key policy-makers and opinion-formers, about the public value of adult learning, and the relative responsibilities of the individual, employers and the state in paying for learning. It hosted a high-profile day of inquiry and held meetings at the conferences of the three main political parties. The Institute sought inventive, new ways in which to exert a progressive influence on public policy. It commissioned a
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