Challenges: Corona takes a toll
The response to the corona pandemic was the most immediate challenge in England and Wales over the last year. Adult education providers will need to continue to develop blended options for online learning, as the restrictions will continue in 2021. For the future, not enough is known about the impact on participation in learning, and the impact in terms of quality of provision and learning outcomes.
The example of Wales is only one of the many changes that have occurred as a result of the corona pandemic. Providers had to experiment moving their provision partly or entirely online.
This has highlighted inequalities in access to learning, especially for those who face exclusion through poor digital, literacy or language skills, and/or face digital poverty, lacking a suitable device or data connection.
The impact of the pandemic on the labor market is likely to mean that more adults will need or wish to retrain for new careers. Learning provision will need to be tailored to respond to emerging opportunities and address skills gaps. More widely, adult education needs to consider how it can help address challenges such as increased prevalence of mental ill health and digitalisation of the society.
Flexible learning is needed to tackle the challenges
Learning and Work (L&W) argues that to support adults in the increasingly challenging labour market, all adults should be entitled to free learning for their first full qualification, or modules of a qualification, up to and including Level 3. This would be a much wider entitlement than most adults have today. The increased flexibility of funding modules of learning would enable people to gain specific skills for moving into a new role, rather than forcing them to undertake a lengthy qualification.
Declining trend in participation
In January 2020, L&W published the 2019 Adult Participation in Learning Survey, which records the lowest participation rate in the 23-year history of the survey. It is the third year in a row in which the participation rate has fallen to a record low. Just one third (33 per cent) of adults say that they have participated in learning during the previous three years, while 38 per cent say that they have not done any learning since leaving full time education.
Since 2010, the participation rate has dropped by 10 percentage points. That is equivalent to 3.8 million fewer adults taking part in learning since the start of the decade. The fall follows a significant decline in investment over the last decade. Between 2009-10 and 2018-19, government spending on adult education excluding apprenticeships fell by 47%. Employer investment in training remains low, as inequalities among the UK population persist, especially among the under-represented parts of the population and those furthest away from the labour market.
Participation declines with age and the discrepancies between the best and worst performing English regions has widened. Participation in Scotland (38 per cent) is much higher than in England (33 per cent), Wales (30 per cent) or Northern Ireland (22 per cent). In autumn 2020, the Government will conduct a Comprehensive Spending Review and publish a White Paper on Further Education. L&W considers that these will be key opportunities to influence the Government’s response to the challenges we face.
Call to boost participation and quality of adult education
In 2020/2021 the focus of L&W will be to continue their work across their strategic plan. This includes research, development and policy work on
- lifelong learning
- essential and life skills
- employment and social security
- good work and progression
- apprenticeships and technical education and
- social justice and inclusion.
According to L&W the government should invest to boost participation and quality of adult education, ensure a joined-up approach with other policy agendas (employment, health and communities), and make effective use of evaluation to understand what works.