Adult education is being slashed and burned – this is too important to ignore

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/26/adult-education-funding-cuts

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That poor hounded millionaire Jeremy Clarkson needlessly lost his job just for punching a colleague in the face and repeatedly shouting abuse at him. What will the BBC and, by extension, the UK, do without him? As if this wasn’t bad enough for British exports, Zayn Malik has announced his exit from the boy band megabus One Direction. A nation can only take so much loss at any one time. Is this why news announcing that adult education in England “will not exist by 2020” sounded like a pin dropping during carnival? Was it all just too too much to bear?

Well, probably not. If we were a nation that valued the concept of learning as a lifelong necessity rather than something only young people do, we might worry more about the swath of cuts to further education.

The Association of Colleges warns that 190,000 adult education places will be lost next year as funding is slashed by 24%. Since 2010, the adult skills budget, which funds non-academic (university-based) education and training for those 19 or over, has been cut by a staggering 40%.

When it comes to education, one size does not fit all

The government, in its defence, points to prioritising apprenticeships, and English and maths. This is consistent with a drive to lend the same prestige afforded university degrees to apprenticeships, and is to be commended. Yet raiding the coffers at the expense of further education (FE) colleges is to fundamentally devalue the important work they do.

FE colleges offer a confounding array of courses. They teach basic numeracy and literacy skills that will form the basis of re-entry into education for some; for others it is their delivery of vocational training, plugging skill gaps as identified by employers, that is important. For yet more, it’s that the route to higher education can be accessed at a pace and level that suits them; 10% of undergraduates are in FE colleges.

If we believe in the beautiful variety of people then we must accept that when it comes to education, one size does not fit all. Some will be interested and successful in gaining an education only after their mid-20s. The reasons for this are varied and complex but we do know that they are linked to social inequality. Denying the already marginalised an opportunity to skill up and progress into a world of meaningful, better-paid work is unacceptable. These cuts are happening within the context of a UK workforce in which 21% of people are low paid, one of the highest proportions of any OECD nation. This means some people are being confined to careers of poverty pay and no prospects.

Much of our education policy has been introduced as a bracing antidote to the competitive threat China and India pose; without a population that is better skilled, economic stagnation will become our fate. This narrative, if the government’s ever-diminishing commitment to further education is anything to go by, assumes that only the young are worth the bother. You can, at best ,call it counterintuitive at a time when the proportion of over-50s in work is forecast to rise significantly. Indeed, half of those aged over 55 plan to work beyond state pension age. It stands to reason that retraining will become an inevitable fact of life. Even by the government’s own logic, these cuts make no sense.

This narrative assumes that only the young are worth the bother

Viewing adult education as the poor relation of schools and universities misses the point entirely. Rather than being a drain on the public purse, it is as an investment that leads to improved skills and greater productivity.

Focusing too much on economic benefit when thinking about FE risks dehumanising those who access it. There are far less tangible markers of success. The improved mental health of someone who once believed they were useless at everything; their increased interest in their child’s education; that child’s improved sense of themselves, in turn, as a learner and their parent’s ability to help when school gets difficult. These benefits are harder to quantify but important nonetheless.

Writing a section of society off because they “failed” at 16 or 18 is a form of barbarism. Continuing to attack adult education in this way is economically and morally misguided.

If only a million of us were outraged enough to sign a petition in response to this story. That would really be big news.