The progress we have made since the 1960s, in opening up aspirations to lifelong learning, must be maintained. Not least because it is a vital cultural good, a mechanism for bringing twenty-first century people of differing backgrounds together

 provision to apprenticeships, which has helped fuel the growth in post-25 provision. Apprenticeships are a great option for people, both below and above the age of 25. But the government simply shouldn’t treat them as a ‘silver bullet’ to solve all their skills and training problems. What will happen to those enlarged adult apprenticeship numbers and to other take-up of skills training when FE loans are introduced? As the UK Commission for Employment and Skills told the government in its submission on FE loans, it seems perverse to put new loan burdens on individual apprentices at the very time when the government is trying to encourage greater employer ownership of training and skills provision. I fear that the problems and concerns about the ubiquity of the government’s reforms and the haste with which it is introducing a loans system for adults in further education will only multiply in the next few months. Following on from last year’s furore over ESOL funding, and continuing uncertainty about restrictions on fee support to those only on job-seeking benefits, it merely illustrates the importance of starting to address the elephant in the room which risks bedevilling the whole future of adult learning. And that is the issue of individual and, possibly, collective lifelong learning accounts. No-one should think that to do this properly will be easy – which is why, since the withdrawal of the ambitious Individual Learning Account

(ILA) initiative following some fraud issues in 2001, there has been a reluctance to return to it. This government’s latest attempt – the so- called Lifelong Learning Accounts launched last autumn – amounts to little more than a website with informational hints – which is perhaps why, as a recent piece in FE News revealed, there has been so little take-up of it so far. If we mean to make progress, the balance of funding between individual, state and employer must be squarely addressed. And this will need to be matched by a much clearer sense of the importance – both for individuals and the collective – of structures for progression into which individuals can accommodate the recognition (qualifications, skills and things in between) of their efforts. We have always instinctively known that it’s unwise to ghettoise formal and informal learning. But life and work in the twenty-first century – with people living and working longer, perhaps switching jobs and careers four or five times in their working life, and juggling more complex work-life balances than ever before – will make that all the more essential.

New settlement To balance the immediate bespoke needs of employers and employees for on-the-job skills and training with all of that means that a new settlement on the contributions balance has to be explored. In terms of what government does, it is time for ministers to recognise that departments other than Business, Innovation and Skills have a responsibility here. The benefits of adult learning cannot just be siloed into one department – is there not, for example, a case for securing a Department of Health contribution to lifelong learning as part of a coherent government strategy to strengthen all aspects of health and wellbeing past 60? John Hayes has suggested that ‘community cohesion’ funding might help to fill some of the gaps in ESOL provision which last year’s government announcement created. We wait to see what impact the additional funds Mr Hayes finally managed to wrest from Eric Pickles’ department for ESOL provision will have, but it already seems clear they will be insufficient to address the disproportionate impact the government’s changes are having on women. In terms of finding the structures and mechanisms to get us there, we are not just looking at a blank piece of paper. We should

16 ADULTS LEARNING SPRING 2012