What is lifelong learning? Campaign for Learning definition

1. What is lifelong learning?  • Campaign for Learning definition • Learning is a process of active engagement with experience • It is what people do when they want to make sense of the world • It may involve an increase in skills, knowledge, understanding, values or the capacity to reflect • Effective learning will lead to change, development and a desire to learn more

2. Article 24  of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, • Article 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social And Cultural Rights (ICESCR)   • Education is indispensable for realising other rights • Education has an intrinsic value for the development of the individual – for the exercise of capabilities, choices and freedoms • Education has a care function as well as a development function: this cannot  be guaranteed in a commercialised system • Education enables one to overcome other social disadvantages • Education is a Public Good as well as a Personal Good - it enriches cultural, social, political and economic life locally and globally • Education credentials play a crucial role in mediating access to other goods, notably employment, culture etc.

3. So, why do we need CALL? Why now? • Rising charges and course cut backs have seen up to two million learners’ places lost from further and adult education in England since 2005. Now groups representing students, staff and local communities have come together to campaign for the right of everyone to access to learning irrespective of class, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, asylum status or employment. • We have founded CALL, the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning because we believe that affordable access to the life changing opportunities provided by education is the hallmark of a civilised society.

4. Markets are driven by to maximise profit • A marketisation model is not an appropriate template for adult education as: • some educational activities, such as those encouraging voluntary public service, participation in civil society, creativity, health and wellbeing have public value but are not intended to create a financial profit. • some people are not major producers in market terms but still have a right to learning. These include older and isolated people, people with caring responsibilities and people whose long-term mental and physical health difficulties or learning disabilities restrict their employment options.

5. Social capital is at risk as well as economic capital  • Can we afford the consequences if notions of: • Collectivism, cooperation and service • are overshadowed by • individualism, competition and target-driven performance? •   “What we risk losing, many agree, are those communal spaces where meaningful social interaction broadens people’s sense of self beyond the “me” and “I” into the “we” and “us”.” • (Crossman et al 2000)

6. Marketisation represents authoritarianism - rule by ‘experts’ • Much of part-time adult and community education is not directly for the market but is to educate citizens as members of civil society, and rounded individuals (with personal, cultural, social, emotional, health and care needs) • Education for the citizen as a tolerant, cultural, responsible, political and engaged members of society should be valued and not simply market-led to produce citizens who are producers and consumers. • In a market-led system based on buying training to produce measured employment-based outcomes, access to a broad curriculum of lifelong learning is no longer a matter of choice but of ability to pay.

7. The WEA avoids coercion and uses the concepts of: • Involvement • Democracy and active participation in planning • Critical thinking • Encouragement • Shared learning • Guidance • Community as well as individual benefit • rather than compulsion, prescription, testing and assignment.

8. The impersonal teacher is saying in effect: ‘‘I am here because I am paid; you are here because you have to be. We will both be satisfied if you get passing grades. I can’t be concerned about how you develop as a person or what you do in life with the information I am communicating. I teach you what I am told to teach and that is the limit of my responsibility for you.” • D. J. Reitz: 1998 Moral Crisis in the Schools; What Parents and Teachers Need to Know Baltimore Cathedral Foundation Press • Education based on a ‘template’ approach is ultimately self-limiting. How can people and society develop if the adult curriculum is restricted to skills - without any emphasis on knowledge and understanding - and access to learning is on the basis of prescription or access to disposable income?

9. There ARE economic benefits of adult learning: • Voluntary activity in the adult and community learning sectors is a social service that adds value. • Active and engaged older people make fewer demands on health services. • Increased tolerance improves community cohesion, with financial as well as social benefits. • Children’s attainment – and future employability – increases if parents and carers are actively engaged in learning activities. • Part-time adult learning is the doorway that makes educational systems easier to enter for the so-called ‘hard to reach’. • Creativity and increased confidence can lead to employment.

10. CALL believes our education system should provide: • equality of access to high quality education for all learners (regardless of: class, gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, asylum status or employment status), including a statutory right to learning in the workplace • universal access to basic skills, ESOL and ICT courses and a first level three qualification regardless of age • learner, teacher and community  involvement in all levels of decision-making about their learning wherever it takes place • learning for personal wellbeing and development and the maintenance of local authority adult education • a path out of poverty and disadvantage including widening participation in higher education and the provision of a second chance later in life • a stable, motivated and rewarded workforce of professional practitioners.

11. WHAT YOU CAN DO: • Join CALL • Write to your MP about the Early Day Motion • Join the Parliamentary lobby on 25 February • Information on all of this is at: • www.callcampaign.co.uk

12. Early Day Motion: EDM no: 533 • That this House welcomes the launch of the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL) in September 2008; shares its concern that over 1.4 million places have been lost in the last two years in English adult education due to cuts and fee rises; notes that over 150 organisations are CALL supporters; believes that particularly at this time of recession, affordable access to the life-changing opportunities provided by education is the hallmark of a civilised society; considers that adult learning needs to be simultaneously expanded, resourced and promoted alongside work-based skills training in the Children, Skills and Learning Bill; and calls for immediate action to ensure a full range of learning opportunities for adults; to adjust the Personal and Community Development Learning budget to increase with inflation, and redirect any underspend on the Train to Gain programme to meet individual learner demand.

13. Parliamentary Lobby • On Wednesday 25 February 2009 the CALL Campaign is holding a mass lobby of Parliament to take our message to MPs across all parties. • The lobby will start at 10.30am with briefings and registration for participants at a venue close to Westminster (to be confirmed soon). The rally in the House of Commons will start at 12.30pm in Committee Room 14 and the lobby will finish at 4pm. • You can register your interest is attending through via on onloine form on the CALL website at www.callcampaign.org.uk • or by contacting Funso Akande at funso.akande@niace.org.uk, 020 7922 7960.