her learning journey attending a City Lit outreach Talk and Play programme at her local children’s centre. She moved onto three accredited courses and is now a volunteer in one of City Lit’s family learning courses, supporting other parents. More volunteering – what is the main hurdle

here? Possibly not the lack of know-how, but more the legal or bureaucratic obstacles. It would be easy to say, ‘provide some learning/ preparing-to-be-a-volunteer opportunities’, but there needs to be some underpinning work to define how learning can specifically encourage volunteering and whether demand is really there. Equally, we have many examples of learners attending courses, then going on to help others, initially in a voluntary position, but also then sometimes moving into paid employment. Frank Harris says: ‘This course changed my life in ways I could never have imagined. Everywhere is now hope and options. I now work at St Mungo’s … I am proud to now be the one offering my helping hand to others’. More charitable giving – this is not really a

learning aim, but, equally, with our policy of cross-subsidising loss-making provision for disadvantaged learners and our own bursary

scheme for the less well-off, at least we are practising what we preach. Of course, none of us can afford to rest on

our laurels and, despite our confidence in the value of what we do, we are conscious of the need to try even harder to demonstrate the value of all learning, including non-accredited learning. Accordingly, we are trying to identify measures, over and above the obvious ones of success rates etc, which we can use to support our case even further. Almost certainly, there is nothing new or radical here, but perhaps we need a more formalised approach to some areas, which have, in the past, been rather random. Measures at City Lit could include some of these outcomes:

q Progression within City Lit, especially onto accredited courses, to other training/ education outside or into volunteering and/or work;

q General work-related outcomes; q Helping people move off benefits; q Improved health ; q Supporting disadvantaged groups – for example, homeless people;

q Personal ‘independent living’ benefits; q Helping the local community;

q Family benefits; and q Supporting wider learning – for example, spin-offs into self-help groups.

To get hard evidence on some of these measures we will need to implement more regular and rigorous processes to follow up past students over time to see if they are able to tell us more about the benefits they have gained from their time with us. I am hopeful that part of the process of looking at these measures may also help us to identify areas where we could do even better, both generally and perhaps as part of the Big Society solution. So, my bottom line is that adult education

in general, whilst not perfect and perhaps in need of some changes in emphasis and direction, is not part of the Broken Society problem, but most definitely an essential element of the Big Society solution and strategy. We must continue to make that message loud and clear, whilst ensuring we can provide even more evidence, but also being adaptive to change where needed.

Peter Davies is Principal and Chief Executive of City Lit

APRIL 2011 ADULTS LEARNING 17

c Richard Olivier