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Adult Learners' Week is based on a simple idea--that extolling the achievements of adult learners and promoting the benefits of learning will encourage others to take the plunge. Each year, through thousands of events and award ceremonies, and in media coverage that would cost millions of pounds if purchased as advertising, Adult Learners' Week celebrates all kinds of learners and all kinds of learning, inspiring thousands of people to sign up and discover how learning can change their lives. At the heart of each Adult Learners' Week are its national and regional award ceremonies--inspiring "posh frock" events at which learners receive recognition for their achievements and for the struggles they have overcome. Every Adult Learners' Week Award represents a major achievement, not only for the learner, but for their families, friends and tutors.

The eviction of the Occupy London protesters from their tents outside St. Paul's Cathedral marks the end of one of the most interesting experiments in popular education in recent times. For the past few months a string of leading writers, activists, journalists and academics have held workshops, led discussions and given lectures beneath the draughty canvas of the Tent City University. The facilities may have been basic--not much more than a sound system with a few tatty sofa cushions dotted around--but there was no shortage of speakers keen to swap the relative comfort of the lecture theatre for this sparse and lively space in which teaching was thought of more as a collaboration than a process of transmission. They won a varied, informed and, often, challenging audience of activists, shoppers, students and tourists, as well as a cross-section of Londoners, many with no background of higher learning. It is one example--albeit the most striking and high-profile--of a wider movement keen both to capture what campaigners see as the spirit of the public university--as places, first and foremost, in which people are free to think, to debate and to shape the future--and to resist the marketisation of higher education, a critical issue for many Occupy protesters, brought to a head by cuts to the teaching grant and the trebling of tuition fees. The author believes that the Tent City University has been one of the most remarkable experiments of the Occupy London protest, but it is just one of a number of radical alternatives which are emerging to challenge current educational convention.

The author would like to think that, in twenty-first century Britain, the case for adult learning was firmly established and no-one was in any doubt of its value. Having spent nearly 20 years before he became an MP working as a part-time lecturer and tutor with the Open University, and seeing the transformation that it could bring to his students, the author is certainly not in any doubt. The power of adult learning is recognised by politicians of all parties. But, as the government's ill-conceived plans to introduce further education (FE) loans demonstrate, Britain is still some way from getting the balance right between individual, state and employer funding. In terms of promoting adult learning, FE colleges remain a crucial, central hub for vocational provision. But, at a time when colleges are already having to absorb a 25 per cent funding cut, what is the impact likely to be on their robustness and financial viability if adult learner numbers start to fall off a cliff in the wake of an FE loans system ending fee remission? At the very least, one might see the number and variety of courses sharply cut, with knock-on cuts in the number of college staff.

The rapidly changing picture on localism and the government's focus on local economic growth have significant implications for adult learning and skills providers in England. Government now sees a sense of place as key to economic growth and recognises the need for a renewed debate on how business and state interact with localities. There is a broad consensus that centralised systems are not the best way to promote economic growth: a more effective system would enable different approaches in different localities. The shifting policy scene on localism will have an impact on learning and skills providers across England. In this article the author outlines the key developments and explores what the changes will mean for the sector.

Adult learning is not a tidy business: adults fit learning into the spaces left by the other demands on complex lives, and into the spaces left in administrative structures overwhelmingly designed for other people. No simple metric can capture adults' diverse purposes and achievements, and no single programme can capture the full range of things adults want and need to learn. Adults learn to sustain their lives and to transform them; to develop a skill, scratch a curiosity, or change the world. The wider challenges facing Britain in the years ahead all point to a need for lifelong learning. But, as he prepares to leave NIACE after 23 years at the helm, the author finds there is much still to do to realise the potential of adult learning in helping people rise to these challenges.

Open Stages is Britain's biggest amateur theatre project, a hugely ambitious scheme to bring the professional and amateur theatre worlds together. It is a learning project but, as the Royal Shakespeare Company's Ian Wainwright tells this author, it is not only the amateurs who are learning. Wainwright states that the amateur and professional theatre worlds have grown apart over quite a long period of time. This project is about changing that course and bringing people back together. Open Stages represents an unprecedented collaboration, involving the RSC and Voluntary Arts, regional and national theatres, national amateur theatre umbrella bodies and amateur theatre groups from across the UK. As the Royal Shakespeare Company marks its fiftieth birthday, amateur companies from every corner of the country are preparing their own Shakespeare-themed productions, in community centres, village halls, disused swimming pools, and ruined castles, with almost 300 taking place in 2011 and 2012 under the Open Stages banner. One of the key ideas that Wainwright wants to impress through this project is that theatre belongs to everyone.

When 75-year-old Margaret Corston saw a poster in her local library advertising a course in basic radio broadcasting skills, she little thought that some 18 months later she would be hosting her own weekly show, with thousands of listeners, on community radio. From small beginnings--her first course was called "First Steps in Radio"--she began to learn more, taking an accredited course in Media Techniques in Radio. She was soon presenting Community Corners, on Bolton FM, the community radio station that has grown out of the work of DBBC--Diversity in Barrier-Breaking Communications--a ground-breaking, volunteer-run project which uses radio broadcasting techniques as a means of raising students' confidence and supporting them to progress on to further learning, voluntary work or paid employment. Like many other learners on the project, she has found the experience transformational. The author met Dorothy Martland, one of the founders of the project, and learner Margaret Corston, to find out what the recognition of an Adult Learners' Week Award meant to them.

The key message of NIACE's 2011 survey of adult participation in learning is that recession is bad for lifelong learning for anyone over the age of 25. The survey highlights the central importance of workplaces as sites of adult learning--and the challenges posed to a learning society when opportunities to learn reduce. It shows that the gap between the learning rich and the learning poor is widening, with professional and managerial groups more than twice as likely to take part in learning as the least skilled. Yet, a year ago, the lowest social class reported a sharp increase, suggesting that cutbacks in provision--whether public or private--have hurt most those who have had least benefit from their earlier experience of education and training. However, perhaps the most concerning aspect of the survey is the decline in reported future intentions to take up learning. Reductions in publicly funded provision, coupled with reduced workplace offers, have, it seems, a depressing effect on people's expectations for themselves. This article reports the key findings from the survey.

The "men's sheds" movement is a grassroots phenomenon that has engaged and inspired men from communities across Australia in hands-on, workshop-based social activity. This article seeks to "unwrap" one of several forms of learning that have been found to be enthusiastically embraced by older men previously thought of, almost patronisingly, as being "unreached learners". In the process, the author is seeking to "join some of the dots" between learning and several of the World Health Organisation social determinants of health: (1) social exclusion; (2) unemployment; (3) difficult past lives; and (4) a stressful current life. His broader intention is to demonstrate that it is possible for older men to create new grassroots organisations in which transformational learning takes place through the activity in a community or practice rather than as the object of the activity. In essence, the author's argument is that learning and wellbeing are not necessarily maximized as outcomes by educational intervention that presupposes higher formal literacies or pedagogies.

A new Labour government was elected in May 1997 and wasted no time in signalling its enthusiasm for the education of adults. Secretary of State for Education and Employment David Blunkett gave his first speech in office at the launch of Adult Learners' Week 1997 and announced the creation of a National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (NAGCELL) to advise him on a new strategy for adult learning. Its first report, "Learning for the Twenty-First Century," published in November 1997, proved significant. It called for the development of "a new learning culture, a culture of lifelong learning for all" to meet the challenges of economic, social and technological change, and argued for a simplified, coherent framework for the promotion of lifelong learning, giving increased emphasis to the home, the community and the workplace as key places of learning. In 1998 the government published a Green Paper called "The Learning Age: A renaissance for a new Britain." Blunkett's preface to the paper warmly endorsed the spirit of NAGCELL's report in terms which reflected much of the vision for adult learning NIACE had been developing over the previous decade. In the fourth article in a series marking 90 years of NIACE support for adult learning, the author reflects on the Labour years and looks forward to the challenges facing the Institute in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

In the second article in a series marking 90 years of NIACE support for adult learning, the author charts the changing shape of adult education in the decades following the Second World War, and the Institute's emergence as a "major non-governmental force" in the development of adult education. In 1983 the NIAE changed its name to the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, a decision at least in part motivated by changing preconditions for departmental investment. The name change did not involve a change in the organisation's structure or immediate practice, but it did reflect more accurately an emerging remit beyond the traditional mainstream territories of university extra-mural provision; the agendas of local education authority adult and community education services; and the concerns of major voluntary bodies like the Workers' Educational Association (WEA). As the 1980s progressed, NIACE started to contribute more confidently to discourses about the relationship between general education and vocational training and between economic prosperity and social inclusion; retaining its traditional membership base among local authorities and universities while building its membership among further education colleges and Training and Enterprise Councils.

The seventies and eighties saw the adult education movement renew and reexamine its commitment to opening up learning opportunities to "disadvantaged" groups. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) was now part of the mainstream of public policy making in lifelong learning and had a significant role in delivering the government's new agenda. This brought significant growth to the Institute--in terms of both size and income--but brought with it new challenges, not least in maintaining its key role as an independent advocate and critical friend to government. In the third article in a series marking 90 years of NIACE support for adult learning, the author looks at the Institute's role in taking these ideas into the mainstream and the challenges it faced in defending them.

An examination of the current government policy discourse on social value and the capturing of social impact leads immediately into the centre of the fast-moving and transforming public-sector reform agenda. The thinking around social value takes an individual to the heart of contracting, localism, the relationship between the public sector and businesses and communities, and outcomes-driven methodologies. In this article, the author examines the current debate on social value and asks what significance the social-value approach which runs through much of the government's public-service reform could have for adult learning.

In this article, the author talks about citizenship, which raises raises a question whether the good citizen is the one who fits in, the one who goes with the flow and is part of the whole, or whether the good citizen is the one who stands out from the crowd, the one who goes against the flow and bucks the trend, who is, in a sense, "out of order". The rise in political attention given to citizenship--something that has happened in many countries around the world over the past decades--can be seen as a response both to an alleged crisis in society and to an alleged crisis in democracy. In this essay the author explores the relationships between citizenship, democracy and learning in order to articulate a conception of civic learning that can respond to some of the challenges contemporary democratic societies are faced with. One of these challenges has to do with the decline of the public sphere, the decline of the very sphere where the experiment of democracy can be enacted. The author argues that one should not see this decline as the result of a lack in good citizenship. He believes that investment in the production of better citizens will not produce the kind of civic learning one needs. People do better to ask what opportunities exist for the enactment of the experiment of democracy. The author believes that democratic practices do indeed provide important learning opportunities, bearing in mind that one should not understand such learning opportunities in terms of socialisation but rather in terms of subjectification.

This author retired this summer after 23 years leading one of the country's most creative and enterprising adult learning services. She departs convinced that adult and community learning needs not only tenacity, passion, and imagination but also professional management and support if it is to thrive.

The spending review brought a promise to protect adult and community learning as well as swingeing cuts to further and higher education and local government. In this article, some of the key players--Lynne Sedgmore, Christopher Brooks, Graham Hoyle, Maggie Galliers, Louise Hazel, Richard Bolsin, Maggi Dawson, Ruth Bond, Stuart Etherington, Brendan Barber, Tim Ward, Chris Banks, Paul Mackney, John Field, and Peter Davies--respond.

Adult and community educators have always seen themselves as agents of change, building people's confidence, sense of community and ability to take part in society as well as their knowledge and skills. All the main political parties in the UK have put issues of social justice, social mobility and citizens' empowerment near the top of the policy agenda. The Conservative's notion of a "Big Society" proclaims a radical vision for "redistributing power from the state to society; from the centre to local communities, giving people the opportunity to take more control over their lives". In this article, the author argues that it is easy to be cynical about a vision shrouded in massive spending cuts and tax rises, but adult and community educators should seize the opportunity to help people develop the abilities, confidence, ideas and mutual support to take power. The challenge for adult and community educators is to help local people become politically smart enough to get the services they want.

Local authorities have a strong tradition of supporting communities to help themselves, and this is nowhere better illustrated than in the learning they commission and deliver through the Adult Safeguarded Learning budget. The budget was set up to protect at least a minimum of provision for adult liberal education, family learning and learning for neighbourhood renewal from the pressure of national targets and qualification frameworks. However, the budget has been reported as under threat in the spending review. Yet much of the learning it funds is facilitating the kind of self-organising, grassroots activism the government says it wants to support. The author visited two local authorities to see the often profound difference this sort of learning is making to communities. Kirklees Council and Somerset County Council are two examples that, in their different ways, offer models for the effective use of Adult Safeguarded Learning funding in supporting grassroots, community activism.

The government is consulting the sector on a new skills strategy and a simplified funding system for further education (FE). Some of the leading players were asked what they made of the government's vision and what they would like to see in the strategy. Brendan Barber warns that spending cuts will undermine many of the positive proposals in the government's skills strategy. Lynne Sedgmore says colleges have a key role to play in creating a genuinely demand-driven system that is responsive to local needs and circumstances. Graham Hoyle argues that the government must be bold and move towards a demand-led open skills market with a single FE budget open to all providers. Ian Searle advises to recognise that all kinds of learning can be worthwhile and give learners greater control over their destinies. Susan Anderson argues that the focus must be on a "bottom-up" approach with employers building partnerships with local providers. Peter Templeton says the proposals don't go far enough in creating a funding and policy framework that sustains adult learning, especially in the most disadvantaged communities. Tricia Hartley suggests that people must support the minister in ensuring that personal development and the joy of learning stand alongside employability in everything they do. Finally, Alastair Thomson says ministers have set out the government's priorities for adult education with energy and passion, but little of that vision appears to have made it into the consultation papers.

Everyone is talking about civil society. Perhaps it's the election, and the shock of seeing more voters at the polling booths than anyone had expected. Now David Cameron's idea of a "big society" is being translated into some early policy measures. Does today's debate have anything to do with adult learning? The author believes that the debate over civil society represents the greatest opportunity for adult educators to stand tall in the public sphere. He suggests that if the government is serious about the big society, and charities and voluntary groups are able and willing to move onto new ground, then adult learning will be needed to build capabilities, helping ensure that the big society is open to all. He also argues that if the big society is to embrace all the citizens, and not only the most articulate and confident and best-networked, then there is a challenging and exciting agenda for adult learning.

With 6 billion British pounds of public spending reductions already on the table, and far deeper cuts inevitable, what are the prospects for adult learning in the new Parliament? Some of the regular contributors of this journal were asked what they expected and what they would like to see. Ewart Keep warns that the coalition parties' commitments to schools and apprenticeships will mean bigger cuts elsewhere. David Rogers argues that local authorities need the flexibility to invest locally in adult learning, especially when it saves funding down the line on other budgets. Sally Hunt says ministers should speak to learners and frontline staff to find out what's at stake. Christopher Walden thinks that a small "win" in the initial announcements in the spring will mean nothing if adult funding is slashed in the autumn. Bob Fryer argues that creating the "big society" will demand a renewed commitment to education for independent and critical citizenship. Stephen Gorard says investing in proper research would save money on ineffective solutions and improve provision by backing schemes with the most chance of success. Ceri Williams suggests that there is a need to keep speaking up for adult learning and highlight those parts of the work that resonate with the "big society". Wendy Jones thinks that the new Parliament will see a bigger contribution to learning from outside the formal education sector. Ralph Hartley says there is waste but cuts must be accompanied by a restructuring of the funding system.

A new project called Bookbite, which was launched in February 2010 by the national reading charity Booktrust, aims to encourage people over 60 to engage more with reading and writing for pleasure, and provides a range of web and paper-based resources to get them started. In this article, the author accounts his visit to the project and how he met two writers in their 80s who have just published their first books. He discusses how these writers' journeys, as learners and writers, testify to the often-latent skill, talent and energy of older people--all things the Bookbite project means to tap into and encourage.

NIACE's 2010 representative sample survey of adult participation in learning in the UK shows something of a sea change in adults' engagement in learning. After years in which the numbers reporting participation in learning fell overall, and the gulf between the learning rich and the learning poor widened dramatically, there has been a major change--not only in the proportion of adults who are engaged in learning, but also in adults' expectations of taking part in the near future. Since 2009, current or recent participation in learning has risen by four percentage points to the highest level for a decade at 43%. The largest increases come, surprisingly, from groups that are under-represented in more formal education. In addition, adults' attitudes to the value of learning are positive, with 80% reporting that they are confident about their ability to learn new skills. In this article, the author explores whether this change in adult engagement in learning is the beginning of the "Learning Revolution" heralded in the UK government White Paper of 2009. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)

In the wake of the general election, the new government--and the United Kingdom--face a range of pressing challenges. In this article, the author sets out what he believes to be the principal challenges and calls for action to create a learning society. The agenda set out would, if followed by the new government, pave the way to a genuine learning society. The main challenges the government will face going into a new Parliament are: (1) Financial; (2) Demographic; (3) Technological; (4) Environmental; (5) Social; and (6) Democratic. To meet these challenges, the author believes the United Kingdom needs an adult population that is: confident and capable; engaged and empowered; enterprising and curious; cultured and reflective; and tolerant and inclusive.

In a country in which, even after the economic crash, there are plenty of resources to go around, people need to think hard about why inequality persists so much more strongly in Britain than anywhere else in Europe. The cause, the author wants to suggest, is a set of deep-rooted, hidden and unacknowledged beliefs, each unjustified yet passed off as an unfortunate fact of life; natural, innocent and long-standing. The author suggests that the five tenets of injustice today are: (1) elitism is efficient; (2) exclusion is necessary; (3) prejudice is natural; (4) greed is good; and (5) despair is inevitable. In Britain, educational apartheid is sustained by the belief that prejudice is natural; that some people are inherently less deserving and less able to do well in education or at work than others. The author points out that it is not just the acceptance of these beliefs by a few that perpetuates inequality and injustice in lands of plenty, but the reluctance of many others to confront them. It's important that educators challenge these beliefs and encourage others to do so, and that parents give their children the tools they need to build something better.

As the new Minister for Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills and Wales, Leighton Andrews takes his first major decision, that is, commissioning a review of the cost of administering education in Wales with the aim of establishing "quick wins" from the costs of administering education. The author argues that plans to review the cost of administering education are welcome, but the promised "quick wins" mustn't involve a narrowing of the purpose of education or a further move away from the Welsh Assembly Government's principled commitment to social justice. Since the inception of the National Assembly for Wales, the Welsh Assembly Government has proudly asserted its concern for social justice, describing it as at the heart of policymaking. However, it is less clear how the drive for social justice manifests itself in the policies relating to education, particularly adult learning.

A 21-hour working week is a long way from today's standard of 40 hours or more, but not so far-fetched when people consider the infinitely varied ways in which they actually spend their time. On average, people of working age spend 19.6 hours a week in paid employment and 20.4 hours in unpaid housework and childcare. These averages mask huge inequalities, both between women and men and between income groups--not only in how they use their time, but also in how far they can control it. Bringing the standard nearer to the average could help to iron out these differences. Moving towards a standard of 21 hours could help to redistribute unpaid as well as paid time--for example, by making more jobs available for the unemployed and giving men more time to look after their children. A "normal" working week of 21 hours could help address a range of problems, from overwork and unemployment to low wellbeing and over-consumption. The challenge is to make sure that everyone benefits, not just those who are already relatively privileged. This proposal for a 21-hour working week is intended as a provocation, to stimulate debate and ideas. It also reflects an urgent need to build a sustainable future.

The fortunes of publicly funded adult learning have fluctuated widely over the years, and the current downturn in organised learning provision is well known to readers of "Adults Learning". Lifelong learning in higher education has borne its share of policy and funding crises, but from the beginning of the 1980s it has been subject to a continuing and damaging turbulence, ranging from the unintended consequences of changes in the policy and funding climate to direct interventions by Whitehall and by universities themselves. Over a quarter-century of turbulence and erosion, university lifelong learning has had no choice but to adapt to survive. While some departments have been forced to close, others have found ways to thrive, and the founding principles of the old extra-mural system remain as relevant as ever. Founded on the values of liberal education (in its broadest sense), of learner-centred curricula, of flexibility and accessibility, of social equity and public engagement, its values remain relevant to any humane concept of widened participation in a local and regional context, even if its original structure is now changed almost beyond recognition.

The world's political leaders failed to agree a fair, ambitious and legally binding accord that would protect the planet from catastrophic global warming at the United Nations' Copenhagen conference on climate change. This makes grassroots action all the more essential to save the world from devastating climate change. The UK Government championed a strong agreement and that is a positive foundation to build on. All citizens as well as politicians have a part to play in this and adult learning, the author argues, can make a major contribution to the process. Adult learning has a role to play in the UK in raising awareness of climate change, supporting participation in environmental decision-making and supporting behaviour change by questioning or posing alternatives to current levels and patterns of consumption. It can also introduce global perspectives, and encourage understanding of what is happening across the globe and of the economic, social and environmental connections between the UK and other global communities.

National policy stresses the key role of adult learning and skills in securing economic recovery. This close linking of adult learning policy to the recession agenda raises important questions. How has the recession impacted on the implementation of adult learning policy? What has it meant for service delivery? And what have been the consequences for different groups of learners and types of learning? In the search for answers, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) embarked on a project to research the impact of the recession on adult learning across the English regions. The research consisted of in-depth interviews with colleagues in senior roles in organisations responsible for policy implementation, together with a literature review. The findings provide insights into both the way that the recession is progressing across the country and the complex and changing challenges that it poses. In the process, they highlight some of the implications for the future direction of adult learning policy.

The Swarthmore Educational Settlement was founded in Leeds in 1909. Since then thousands of adult learners have benefited from its combinations of liberal, vocational and creative arts programmes, homely atmosphere and commitment to fellowship in learning. It has remained an independent centre, running its own affairs through its own council and eventually playing an exemplary role in Leeds City Council's overall adult education provision, while attracting a considerable reputation, nationally. As with all adult education, funding changes over the years have required Swarthmore frequently to tailor its programme but it has demonstrably retained its identity as a weathervane for innovatory reform with a focus on the social purpose of adult education and as a centre for the creative arts. In this article, the author reflects on an experiment that has endured against the odds.

A month ago, a French court ruled that internet access is a basic human right. Gordon Brown has said it is as crucial for people as electricity and water. Yet, 17 million Britons are still excluded from digital technology and an estimated 13 per cent of the population--some six million people--are both socially and digitally excluded. There are varying degrees of engagement across different media, with over one-third (36 per cent) of adults not having access to a computer and over two-fifths (42 per cent) lacking access to the internet, according to NIACE's most recent Annual Media Literacy Survey, published in November 2008. Lord Stephen Carter's Digital Britain report, published in June, aims to set that straight. Lord Carter sets out a raft of measures to address these problems--and to sustain Britain's position as a leading digital economy and society--including: (1) a three-year national plan to improve digital participation; (2) universal access to today's broadband services by 2012; (3) a "next-generation" fund for investment in tomorrow's broadband services; (4) digital radio upgrade by the end of 2015; (5) support for public service content partnerships; (6) a revised digital remit for Channel 4; and (7) consultation on funding options for national, regional and local news. In this article, the author discusses why the much-vaunted Digital Britain matters to adult learning policy.

Gaythorne Row, a terrace of Victorian back-to-back houses in Great Horton, was earmarked for demolition when, in 1986, Bradford Industrial Museum took possession of the three cottages and transported them, brick by brick, to the museum site four miles away. The houses were built in 1876, a year later than the old worsted spinning mill in which the museum is based. The museum wanted one of the houses to capture, as exactly as possible, life as it was lived by working-class people in Bradford in the 1870s, complete with period furniture and the plumbing and fittings of the time, and had plans for the other two houses to reflect life in the 1940s and 1960s respectively. The end result would be, in effect, a study of a form of housing which, in the words of local historian Kenneth Kenzie, symbolised the working class in Bradford for over a century. The museum, however, realised that such an intensive project would be impossible for existing staff to undertake alongside their other duties. The 1875 Group was formed by volunteers in 2007 to restore and reinterpret a back-to-back house at Bradford Industrial Museum. The project has provided the museum with a wealth of new research material, objects for display and written and audio information for visitors, as well as inspiring a passionate interest among the volunteers. The author found out what motivates a remarkable group of learners.

The work unions do in providing and supporting learning for their members rarely makes the news headlines, but it will be essential if people are to engage those workers who most need to acquire new and better skills to cope in the economic downturn. In this article, the author talks about the power in a union and describes UNISON, a comparatively new union, formed in a merger in 1993. UNISON is the UK's largest public service union. It is committed to bringing principles of equality and diversity to its own organisation as well as to its members' workplaces and communities. The steps UNISON takes to provide and support learning opportunities are designed to make it a more democratic and effective trade union, as well as to improve the working lives and prospects of individuals. For UNISON, adult learning in communities and in the workplace is about more than skills--important though they are--it is also about the kind of society people want to live in; one in which adults get the chance to achieve their ambitions, to change direction and to be involved in their communities.

This article features Liverpool University's Go Higher, a one-year programme for adults who want to return to part-time education with a view to going on a degree course. For 10 years, Go Higher programme has been helping adults with few or no formal qualifications gain access to university-level study. The standards of learning and teaching on the course are uncompromising--proving, for some, a springboard to postgraduate study--but the only criteria for entry are enthusiasm and a desire to learn.

There is consensus across the three main parties that adult learning, in all its forms, matters. As the Government publishes its White Paper on informal adult learning, this article asks what the three main parties think needs to be done about it. John Denham, Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, argues that by working in co-operation, the Government and a multitude of partner organisations can create a new movement for informal learning. John Hayes, Conservative Shadow Minister for Lifelong Learning, Further and Higher Education, states that only when the policy matches the rhetoric will adult learning be revived. On the other hand, Stephen Williams, Liberal Democrat Shadow Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, states that providing new spaces for learning is one thing, but it can only be one element of the successful promotion of adult learning.

The Government says it wants to see a "revolution" in informal adult learning. It is calling on universities to take "a more strategic approach to the current and future needs of the economy". Yet, as it sets out its plans for both these objectives, higher education institutions across England are contemplating the closure of hundreds of public courses which link formal and informal learning opportunities and give adults the chance to retrain for a new career. The author reports on a Government policy, announced in September 2007, and introduced from 2008/09, which denies funding to students studying for a qualification at a level equivalent to or lower than one they have already been awarded, the so-called "equivalent or lower qualification"--or ELQ--rule. The rule, which will remove a total of 100 million British Pounds in public support from university budgets by 2010/11, means that any learner who possesses a first degree will have to pay full fees to study for another, equivalent, qualification in another subject area. The Government's decision to withdraw funding for students who already have a qualification of equal status has resulted in the closure of lifelong learning courses across England, with some universities shutting down their public programmes altogether. As the full extent of the damage becomes clear, the clamour for ministers to reverse the policy is growing ever more intense.

Last month, the Government published "The Learning Revolution," its long-awaited White Paper on informal adult learning. This article asks some of the key players and commentators whether they thought the paper lived up to its optimistic title. It presents the views of these commentators about the "Learning Revolution" White Paper.

More than 500 people from across the country attended the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning's February lobby of Parliament. They made sure their voices were heard, lobbying their MPs and ensuring politicians from all parties got the message that the loss of over a million adult learning places is unacceptable. This article describes the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning's lobby of Parliament and how the people lobbied their voices about adult learning.

Every year, access to affordable adult learning transforms lives and life chances, giving people new perspectives on themselves and what they are capable of achieving. Yet, despite the Government's significant investment in adult learning and skills, opportunities are in ever-shorter supply. Over the past two years, 1.5 million publicly funded adult learning places have been lost as a result of rising fees and the "rebalancing" of the adult learning budget to the employer-led Train to Gain programme. Increases in work-based provision have been bought at the cost of a decline in publicly funded opportunities for adults--including those outside the workforce--to take courses below or beyond Level 2, laying waste to the range of affordable opportunities available for adults to study what they choose outside work. Little wonder then that the founding meeting of the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL) in September last year attracted almost 200 people, including learners, union officials, educators and college managers. Within two months, more than 100 organisations had registered support, joining the five founding organisations--NIACE, the National Union of Students, the University and College Union, Unison and the Workers' Educational Association--in lending their voices to the deep concern already being felt across civil society at policies which, in the words of Paul Mackney, CALL campaign co-ordinator and NIACE associate director, "have turned what should be lifelong learning for all into an expensive hobby for reasonably-off dilettantes". On 25 February the campaign culminates in a lobby of Parliament. In this article, the author discusses what CALL's organisers and supporters hope it will achieve.

The Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning is to lobby parliament for the restoration of the 1.5 million adult learning places lost over the past two years. The campaign has attracted supporters from an astonishingly wide range of backgrounds. In this article, Gordon Marsden, Caroline Biggins, Beth Walker, Mike Chaney, Peter Davies, Sian Moore, Deborah Annetts, Richard Bolsin, Bernard Godding, Barbara Isherwood, John Breadon, Muhammad Abdul Bari, Deb Smith, James Doeser, and Joyce Mace tell why they believe the campaign matters.

The virtues of "lifelong learning" may trip off every minister's tongue, and launch countless speeches, but the only sorts of adult learning which actually have legitimacy, or are seen as deserving of support, are those which make people do their current jobs better. "Skills" rule, and the skills in question are narrowly defined, and vocational in the most short-term and immediate fashion. In the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the proportion of the adult education and training budget dedicated to "employer-based" expenditure. Current government expenditure plans mean that between 2006 and 2010, and excluding apprenticeships, the proportion of the adult budget directed through employers is set to more than double. In practice, this means more money for Train to Gain--a programme for workplace-based training, leading to formal qualifications, which does not involve much learning at all. As a number of the leading private providers explained to a House of Commons select committee last year, funding levels cover the costs of certifying people for skills they already hold, but not much else. The Government's mind-set is very clear. Top priority must go to "workplace skills", the skills that people are practising and using now, in their current workplace--because, otherwise, they will not meet employers' immediate needs. So it is through the employer, rather than as an individual, that people gain access to Train to Gain funding: it is the employer who contacts, or is contacted, by providers, the employer who negotiates, the employer who is the intended beneficiary. The recent launch of the "Skills Funding Agency" confirms the approach. According to the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills' (DIUS) launch documents, the reorganisation is designed to provide ""more" young people and adults with the skills "employers" need". One result of recent funding patterns has been a very sharp drop in the number of adult learners, and the closing of large swathes of adult education provision. In this article, the author contends that if people want to stop, and reverse, the destruction of adult education perhaps they have to start here; with the mysterious fact that the concept of education is more narrow and impoverished than any previous generation. Change that, and the rest will follow.

The Government's informal adult learning consultation attracted 5,500 responses. Last month it published a reaction promising to work closely with partners to develop a strategy. Some of those partners were asked what they wanted to see in the strategy and their responses are presented in this article.

How can people make the most of their lives in a fast-changing world? And how should adult learning help? These are large questions, and the answers are unlikely to be simple or straightforward. Yet if adult learning does not help people to flourish, then it is hard to see why it should enjoy any public support at all. The evidence for the contribution adult learning can make to wellbeing and mental capital is robust, but learning is only one of many possible interventions in policy. The Foresight report on "Mental Capital and Wellbeing: Making the most of ourselves in the 21st century," brings together a number of ideas for long-term interventions designed to address future challenges to Britain's wellbeing and intellectual potential, based on a systematic review of research into the factors that influence people's wellbeing and mental development, from conception until death. Foresight's ability to look over the longer term, and ask how people's actions shape their future in 30 years or more, is enormously empowering. And while recommending a number of learning interventions, it also raises some important challenges. First, there are some obvious messages about the importance of wellbeing as an outcome of learning. Then there is the human brain. Much of the brain is shaped by what people experience as infants, and public policies could do much more to help people grow their potential by promoting brain development in the first days and years of life. The author suggests policymakers to consider other potential interventions, some of which may have a larger impact than investing in adult learning and ultimately cost no more. (Contains 3 online resources.)

With the formation of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in 2001, a single post-16 learning and skills sector (LSS) was created for the first time in England with huge potential to support lifelong learning. It was this momentous change that prompted the authors in 2004 to begin a study entitled "The impact of policy on learning and inclusion in the new learning and skills sector," funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its Teaching and Learning Research Programme. Three and a half years later, as the authors were completing their research, the unified LSS was being dismantled, to be replaced by an age-based bifurcated system. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) took over responsibility for all education up to the age of 19 and the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) was charged with the education of those over the age of 19. In this article, the authors reflect on the findings from their research and what its relevance might be for the new arrangements.

The UK Government's consultation on informal adult learning recognises the importance of self-directed learning, learning in social movements, and learning that involves the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). There is a much clearer picture of how computers and the Internet are used by people in their everyday lives and for learning. What is less known, however, is how social movements and adult learning are influenced by ICTs and how people learn through the use of ICTs when they are involved in campaigns. This research examines the role of technologically enhanced learning in the environmental justice movement in Scotland through three case studies. Two involve community-based campaigns: one against fish farming in the north west of Scotland; the other an occupational health campaign over working conditions in a microchip processing plant in the industrial belt of Scotland. This article considers the third case study, which concerns a national organisation, Friends of the Earth Scotland (FoES), and a survey undertaken among activists and users of the organisation's website. It also discusses four main types of learning that can be identified from the survey. (Contains 2 tables.)

Life is serious and serious literature can help people through it. That's the message of Jane Davis's remarkable Get into Reading project. Jane Davis's Get into Reading project is one of two main strands of work undertaken by The Reader organization, at Liverpool University. In 1997, Jane and two other continuing education teachers, Sarah Coley and Angela Macmillan, launched "The Reader," a quarterly literary magazine aimed at "confident, literate" people who already have a passion for reading and perhaps want to stretch themselves further. The organisation grew out of the magazine. Get into Reading, part of the organisation's participation programme, aims to take books to people who, for whatever reason, don't read, though usually they can. In this article, the author takes a look at the project's impact on the lives of those who became part of it.

"Informal Adult Learning: Shaping the Way Ahead," the Government's consultation on the future of informal adult learning in England, was launched by Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, John Denham, on January 15, 2007. The consultation invites respondents to help shape "a new vision for informal adult learning for the 21st century" and "identify the most appropriate support that Government can give." This article presents the responses of some of the leading voices on informal adult learning: (1) Richard Taylor, Director of the Institute of Continuing Education, University of Cambridge; (2) Alan Tuckett, Director of NIACE; (3) David Sinclair, Head of Policy; and Amy Swan, Engagement and Communities Policy Officer, Help the Aged; (4) Ceri Williams, Principal and Warden of the Mary Ward Centre and Settlement; (5) Richard Bolsin, General Secretary of the Workers' Educational Association (WEA); (6) Natasha Innocent, Senior Policy Adviser Learning, Museums, Libraries and Archives Council; (7) Stephen Crowne, Chief Executive of Becta; (8) Bernard Godding, Chair of the Educational Centres Association; and (9) Stephen McNair, Associate Director, Older Learners, NIACE.

In the October 2007 issue of "Adults Learning," Paul Stanistreet wrote an article which celebrated the successes of the countryside access movement of the twentieth century. He highlighted how, while some of the legal barriers to access have been reduced, not all citizens are able to take advantage of the rights that were won by an earlier generation. This article offers a reflection on the importance of countryside access in the author's personal and professional life. It considers some of the challenges ahead and the role that adult learning could play in opening up the countryside to all citizens.

The Foundation Learning Tier (FLT) is a welcome initiative that aims to support the millions of people with few or no qualifications below level 2 (one GCSE A* to C--a full level 2 is equivalent to five GCSEs A* to C). It is an ambitious project with far reaching implications. It is work in hand and, as such, its central principles are being refined, however the practicalities of its implementation are becoming clearer, with the "Prospectus for Progression Pathways" offering much needed information, advice and guidance. This article describes the genesis of the FLT, what it "looks like", its strengths, and what issues exist that need addressing if the FLT is to realise its potential.