Learning resources should not be concentrated solely on the young
The government has scrapped the default retirement age of 65, but it has yet to say what will be done to ensure that people have the learning and skills necessary to survive in the workplace that much longer.
What a difference there would be if it had backed this change with a strong commitment to learning opportunities at work for older people – and perhaps a guarantee of a learning entitlement once they finish their extended working lives. Instead, changes are coming in a piecemeal, not a strategic way. The decision to change the pension age contains nothing that might convert this from something that looks almost penal into a positive extension of people's working lives.
Eighteen months ago we set out the key conclusions from an inquiry into the future for lifelong learning, sponsored by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education. The report, Learning through life, made proposals in 10 areas. It took, ambitiously, a 10- to 15-year horizon. Some proposals were ripe for more or less immediate action, others would take longer.
Has there been progress? Mostly it is still too early to tell. The Lords devoted a debate specifically to the report: welcome recognition, though without practical outcomes. On some issues there has been definite movement, if not always in the form we advocated. For example, we argued for equitable treatment for part‑time students, and the coalition has certainly got closer to this – but in a context of drastic reductions in support for post-compulsory learners in general.
In other parts of the system apparent, often rhetorical, victories are very likely to be wiped out by public expenditure cuts (examples are pre-school provision, libraries and the arts).
The most original, and challenging, component of the report was its new four‑stage model of the adult lifecourse. We put forward a range of arguments – social, economic and even neuroscientific – for working with a fresh set of lenses when it comes to looking at how opportunities and resources for learning are distributed over our ever-extending lives. We drew lines at 25, 50 and 75 – arbitrary, to be sure, but less so than the current set of outdated and contradictory ways of thinking about youth, adulthood and old age.
The model enabled us to convert our analysis of the estimated £55bn invested annually in adult learning of all kinds into a simple chart, which showed how heavily public and private resources are concentrated on the first stage of adult life (18-25). Our calculations showed that 86% of all investments (public, corporate and personal) go here, with under 2% going to the third and fourth stages. This, we argued, does not make sense in an ageing society, where people live longer – and are increasingly expected to work longer.
We thought the model would be both more controversial and less popular than it has turned out to be. In fact it seems to have made immediate intuitive sense to almost everyone who has heard it. At least within the adult education community, the model is being drawn on to structure discussions about more equitable approaches to the distribution of opportunity.
In practice, existing age categories are indeed being challenged. The prime example is the accelerated raising of the state pension age. This follows the logic of our argument, at least in acknowledging demographic pressures, but goes no further.
We argued also for local strategies for lifelong learning, which would bring together different sectors and partners and look for a common interest in the public value of learning. The Total Place initiative was a promising start towards this, showing strong synergies between education, health and social care. It's not just the swingeing cuts on local authorities that make a coherent and innovative approach at local level less likely. The current turmoil in the health service, and the likely fragmentation into market‑oriented consortiums, will make it very difficult to get the kind of cross-service integration that we argued for.
Tom Schuller is director at Longview, the lifelong learning research group. David Watson is principal of Green Templeton College, Oxford