widen participation in learning: the Adult and Community Learning Fund, managed jointly by NIACE and the Basic Skills Agency, which was to support local initiatives designed to engage and empower marginalised groups; and the Union Learning Fund, which was to promote innovative activity by trade unions to support the creation of a learning society. Both proved successful, the Union Learning Fund, in particular, tapping into an enormous unmet interest in learning in the workplace and highlighting the critical role of learning champions in motivating people to get involved in learning. Since the scheme was introduced, some 22,000 union learning representatives have been trained, helping hundreds of thousands of adults to learn.

Individual learning accounts Not all of the Green Paper’s initiatives fared as well. Individual learning accounts, among the paper’s flagship proposals, generated a large amount of demand but had been introduced in a hurry and were not well enough safe- guarded against fraud. A small number of fraudulent agencies established operations to gain individuals’ money without offering services. Once this became clear, the initiative was halted, to the regret of many in the sector who had begun to see its value. By the time the scheme was abandoned in October 2001, there were 8,500 accredited providers nationwide. The Department for Education and Skills was investigating 279 providers on the basis of substantial evidence of misselling, and police had arrested 30 people. Nevertheless, the scheme had demonstrated that individual demand could be stimulated, and that it was possible to engage communities previously sceptical about the value of learning in their lives. The second of the Green Paper’s flagship initiatives, the University for Industry (UfI), which was given a remit to use online technology to transform the delivery of learning and skills across England, Wales and Northern Ireland, survived, though its remit has undergone numerous changes. In 2000, UfI launched learndirect, which became its public-facing brand. Though not all the inspiration of The

Learning Age was carried through into practice, these were, nonetheless, exciting times for NIACE, and for the adult learning world. Adult education was at (or close to) the heart of the government’s thinking about social policy, and new ideas were matched with unprecedented levels of public funding. David Blunkett’s four years as Secretary of State for Education and Employment saw the beginning of a massive restructuring of the education and skills system and a major rise in investment in adult learning. They were also marked by a welter of new initiatives, reforms, reviews and strategy documents. These included the creation, in 2001, of a new government agency responsible for planning, funding and providing quality assurance for further education in England, replacing the

72 Training and Enterprise Councils and the Further Education Funding Council for England: the Learning and Skills Council (an equivalent body for Wales – ELWa, Education and Learning Wales – was also set up under the 2000 Learning and Skills Act. It was merged with the Welsh Assembly Government in 2006). The remit given to the Council broadly endorsed NIACE’s holistic vision for adult learning and re-asserted the view of adult learning set out in The Learning Age – its 2001-02 grant letter stressed the importance of increasing and widening participation in learning, particularly among ‘disadvantaged’ groups, and urged the provision of ‘more learning opportunities based in the community and voluntary sectors for adults in disadvantaged communities in particular through neighbourhood learning centres’ – but NIACE was disappointed that the Council decided not to implement an adult participation target. It quickly became clear that its first priority was to meet the skills needs of the British economy. Departmental priorities were becoming increasingly centralised. In 2001, the Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit was established to monitor key priorities around education, health, crime and transport. The Unit focused departments’ attention on headline Public Service Agreements (PSA) targets, agreed between the Treasury and departments.

Skills for Life For adult learning these PSA targets were: a Skills for Life target; new goals for Level 3 (university entrance and skilled technician level) qualifications; and, for higher education, a determination to secure progress towards a 50 per cent participation rate by the age of 30. Over time, the effect of the targets was to shift focus away from adult learning in all its notorious complexity and untidiness, towards a narrow set of pre-established outcomes, leading to an unintended constriction in the breadth of adult learning opportunities. Skills for Life was a case in point. In 2001 the government launched Skills for Life: The national strategy for improving adult literacy and numeracy skills, with the aim of improving the literacy and numeracy skills of 750,000 adults by 2004. While NIACE supported the expansion of adult literacy and numeracy learner numbers (the International Adult Literacy Survey highlighted that seven million adults in England lacked functional skills in reading and writing and that one in five adults had very low numeracy abilities), it was quick to argue that the overwhelming funding emphasis on qualifications targets was undermining providers’ ability to work in flexible, responsive and innovative ways to reach the most disadvantaged and disengaged adults. It was a trend that was to gather pace as the decade wore on, delivering increasingly depressing news for adult learners. NIACE continued to lobby on behalf of adult learning and increasingly found itself

in the mainstream of national public policy- making, recognised by government as a ‘critical friend’ with a significant role to play in delivering the new agenda. Institute staff were seconded into government departments to help implement the new arrangements, while others were active on the numerous committees and working groups entrusted with taking forward the new initiatives. NIACE was also tasked (with the Basic Skills Agency) with administering the Adult and Community Learning Fund on behalf of government. The organisation grew to meet these new demands, as did its annual turnover. Income grew from £5.7 million in 1998 to £22.4 million in 2005, with staff numbers growing from 60 to 240 in the same period. Much of NIACE’s income now came from consultancy and contract work, rather than through grant aid from the department and from local authorities. Growth on this scale brought with it new challenges, not least in maintaining the Institute’s key role as an independent advocate and critical friend to government, as Leisha Fullick writes in Remaking Adult Learning:

All this changed the nature of the organisation. Governance and com- mittee structures were revised and improved, and were successful in engaging more practitioners and others in coping with the burgeoning workload. The growth in teams of specialist staff extended NIACE’s profile and expertise in new areas. But the relationship with the government and the growth in contracting gave rise to concern that the organisation’s role as an independent advocate was being undermined. NIACE was in a complex situation. It had to be seen to engage with the new world, and to maintain its expertise and credibility in the new ‘lifelong learning system’. It had to grapple with a fast-changing policy environment, not only in education but across the whole of government. At the same time, it had to maintain its critical edge and distance – not easy in a context where more policy attention (and funding) was going to adult learning than at any other time in history.

NIACE agreed a memorandum of under- standing with the government which recognised the Institute’s right to campaign and comment on government policy, irrespec- tive of any existing funding relationship. At the same time, it continued to develop its work with parliamentary select committees and was increasingly effective in briefing and supporting MPs of all parties in reviewing and responding to the emerging, and fast- changing, policy agenda. NIACE published some significant critiques of policy, including Leisha Fullick’s Adult learners in a brave new world (2004), which examined lifelong learning

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