adultslearning

hile still in opposition, skills minister John Hayes wrote a fascinating article for the New Statesman extolling the ideals and opinions of William Morris, a man, he wrote, who had ‘dedicated his life to the revival of traditional crafts’. Labour, he said, had forgotten two of Morris’s crucial lessons: first, that the past ‘is living with us, and will be alive in the future which we are now helping to make’; second, that ‘education is much bigger than book-learning’. Both charges hit their mark. The frenetic pace of policymaking under Labour suggested,

W

at times, a government in too much of a hurry, too preoccupied with the new and too little prepared to learn from the past. And while Labour invested heavily in work-related learning, much of that money merely displaced existing training, while a critical opportunity to tackle the divide between academic and vocational education was missed in the failure to implement the 2004 Tomlinson report (interestingly, Andy Burnham has said Labour will look again at the report in opposition). In government, Hayes has continued to stress the importance of practical learning, telling

the Financial Times that the guild system is at the heart of his thinking and undertaking to ‘build a system of fellows and masters’ in vocational training. Many will sympathise with Hayes’s vision, and recognise, as Alison Wolf has, the need

to raise the prestige of vocational skills. But, equally, many will question whether the Conservatives deserve to be called ‘the true guardians of Morris’s legacy’. If what Hayes terms the ‘instinctive value we feel for craft’ is to be ‘reflected by our education system’, we need to begin with teaching, and, as Jay Derrick argues, this should mean a move away from ‘quantitative performance targets’ and ‘the promotion of competition over collaboration’ towards an appreciation of teaching as ‘the collective work of being and continually becoming human’. There is much of value in this vision, but it would require not only a much bigger, and

wider, expansion of vocational education than the current skills strategy – limited as it is by cuts to public spending – envisages, but a change in the way we think about work and what we think is valuable about it. Respect and a sense of professional worth matter, but in a society as unequal as ours,

where, as Nick Clegg pointed out this month, who you know can count for much more than what you can do, it can be hard to come by.

Paul Stanistreet Editor – Adults Learning

4 News 7 Commentary

8 ‘The craft so long to lerne’ Ministers have taken to speaking of teaching as a craft. But is the description valid and, if it is, what are the implications for the way in which we think about teaching and organise teacher training and development, asks Jay Derrick

12 Rethinking the

boundaries The splintering of the public domain makes the development of a coherent lifelong learning system less likely. But while we might want to resist plans to dissolve the boundaries between the public, private and voluntary sectors, debate about the relationship between professionals and volunteers in adult education suggests those boundaries might usefully be rethought, writes Tom Schuller

“The key to craft, and to teaching, I suggest, is not so much what the craftworker or teacher specifically does, but the kind of person they are”

2 ADULTS LEARNING APRIL 2011

14 How tax relief for training can make a

real difference Little of the £5 billion companies received last year for training reached those who most need it. The tax relief system should be reformed to focus on the most effective training courses and target the low-paid and low- skilled, says Tom Wilson

16 What does the Big

Society mean for us? Adult education should be an essential element of David Cameron’s Big Society project. But providers will need to work hard to demonstrate the wider benefits of all adult learning, writes Peter Davies