Inter-ed publishes article on Lifelong Learning Policy.

What is Lifelong Learning?

It appears in all sorts of glossy publications, from the EU, government and elsewhere, but it is used in many different ways. The Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee of the Scottish Parliament in setting out on its major inquiry into lifelong learning in Scotland soon found this out. It found out something else. The vast majority of submissions pointed out there is no clearly understood lifelong learning strategy for Scotland.

The interim report published in March, all 370 paragraphs of it, is set within a proposed strategic framework, with aims and objectives spanning economic, social justice, citizenship and quality areas. In essence, I think the strategic framework implies a number of purposes of lifelong learning for the individual citizen and society as a whole. These include:

§ Lifelong learning for access – as a key to realising opportunities both in terms of work and community engagement.
§ Lifelong learning as voice - to enable effective articulation of the ideas and opinions of Scotland’s citizens.
§ Lifelong learning as a vehicle for independent action to solve problems and make decisions, acting independently as a parent, citizen, and worker, for the good of their families, their communities, and their nation.
§ Lifelong learning as a bridge to the future, to be able to keep on learning in order to keep up with a rapidly changing world.
§ Lifelong learning as a cornerstone of economic development and progress, particularly in an increasingly knowledge driven economy.
§ Lifelong learning as a cornerstone of social progress.

These purposes are all inter-related in the committee’s vision. They carry profound consequences. All the evidence points to confusion, clutter and inefficiency in current arrangements. Scotland is a relatively small country, yet the budget for lifelong learning is carved up into separate pots, for example, for higher education, further education, community education, vocational training and so on, and managed in such a manner that individual rights are unclear, barriers are created between different sectors, and narrowness of vision is encouraged.

The committee has sought to spell out how simplification can be accomplished, and at the same time put the learner at the centre of the system (and in the vocational sphere have the learner joined by employers at the centre). This has, almost inexorably, led the committee towards a fundamental conclusion. To realise the ambitions of a lifelong learning strategy fit for the new century, each citizen must have an entitlement to lifelong learning.

As envisaged by the committee, putting in place an entitlement will, to quote Professor Lindsay Paterson “have profound effects of a democratising kind, and would represent the biggest extension of opportunity since the coming of secondary education for all in the 1930s”.

As one employer put it to me, “More opportunity, more learning and better education is good for business. We are talking here of investment, and just as educating people at school more than pays for itself in terms of our ability to work and trade, so this is essential if we are to compete in the modern world.”

Most important of all, it will be enabling for the type of learner I recently listened to in North Lanarkshire, who summed up very clearly what learner expectations actually are. “We want and need what everyone wants: respect. We want it from our family and friends. We want it from every clerk, attendant, or pen pusher that faces us across a desk or counter. We want it when we come here to learn, and most of all we want it when we look in the mirror. That’s why we want to learn, and when we don’t get it, that’s what keeps us away.”

The committee is having of course to address vested interests and a series of myths.
Take one simple example. Public policy on vocational training has created a problem for itself since around 1990. The development of competence based qualifications (SVQs), should have been a great blessing, extending the types of qualifications available. Instead we have had the development of public vocational training policies where they have become the Holy Grail, the only fundable qualification in many programmes. This fails to play to Scotland’s strengths. In many respects, we have gone backwards. In the 1960s for example, many technician level apprenticeships were built around Higher National Certificates: no more. Higher Still has been hailed as real progress for all young people, but if you are a young person on the Skillseekers programme you have no opportunity to go to college to continue study under this framework. If an employer and young person want to pursue a part-time degree: no support. Thus the committee has, in the interests of both individuals and employers, clearly spelled out a need to move to more flexibility and more choice in all publicly funded programmes.

There is also the issue of non-vocational education (sorry, I must stop using this term, I can’t think on any form of mainstream education that is devoid of vocational benefit). The voluntary and community education sectors provide much of this excellent non certificated learning. There is more work to be done to strengthen its place in the overall lifelong learning strategy. Key questions arise. How can the committee incorporate non certificated learning into an entitlement system? How should such learning be incorporated into public policy?

Thus what the committee now needs as it moves towards its final report in June is not less vision, but more vision.

There is plenty of opposition out there. Some of it is tediously predictable: it’s too difficult, since the devil is in the detail, let’s stay with the devil we know. The real challenge to the committee is to remain resolute and willing to speak out in the interests of the social and economic future of Scotland, and of every citizen in the land.

Posted from Barbara Mullin on 23/06/2002