At WEA, we consider the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill as the most important piece of legislation for adult education in recent years.

We welcome that the government has acknowledged the importance of adult learning to individuals, employers and our economy through the publication of the skills bill, but we are concerned that it will not go far enough.

The bill includes provision for the Lifetime Skills Guarantee, which will provide support for many adults seeking qualifications, but this approach is too narrow, leaving many others behind.

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Although the skills bill moves in the right direction, we urge the government to ensure that a wide range of courses is truly accessible to all, including those who need to gain qualifications below level 3.

It is those people from disadvantaged backgrounds who did not pass their GCSEs at 16 and need English and maths proficiency to gain skills and access work. They must be a key focus for the government as it is this hard-to-reach group of people who have been badly hit by the pandemic. 

Lifelong learning has been treated as a marginal issue for too long within the education system and the skills bill is an important first step. With major changes in the economy and society, many people will need to work for longer, so opportunities to learn and retrain are increasingly important. 

The emphasis in the Lifetime Skills Guarantee has been on upskilling but we would also encourage the government to recognise the vital role that adult education plays within the local community and economy. We urge support for a lifelong learning system that provides a breadth of subject choices for students, including those strategically important yet vulnerable arts and culture subjects that are an important part of our communities and that improve the wellbeing and mental health of adult learners.

The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill: what amendments are needed?

On Tuesday 15 June, the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill began its progress through Parliament. The bill aims to implement measures described by the education secretary as “revolutionary” and, as Lord Watson of Invergowrie noted, it is “the first piece of government education legislation laid before Parliament for almost five years.”

We were reassured by the level of positive engagement in the Lords debate and the willingness to use the bill as a good starting point to build a post-16 education system that works for everyone. The bill has a long way to go and will accumulate many amendments as it passes through the Lords committee in July and then on to the Commons.

Prior to the Lords committee, we are writing to parliamentarians to encourage amendments. 

Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs)

Adult education providers - and also learners - should have a clearer role in the development of LSIPs. As the bill is currently drafted, employers are given the leading role but the plans would be much stronger if they were produced more collaboratively. We would like to see the bill acknowledge FE colleges and community learning providers as equal participants.

LSIPs need much clearer links with the work of the mayoral combined authorities (MCAs). Unless LSIPs complement existing plans and strategies, there will be scope for duplication and gaps and the MCAs are already well advanced with their plans for the adult education budget.

Employer representative bodies

The bill is quite vague on who should be represented by these new bodies. They should represent small and medium-sized enterprises, the self-employed and public and voluntary sector employers. This would not only be inclusive of all local employers but would also acknowledge that local adult education providers often work with many different sections of the local economy.

Local needs

The bill is even more vague on the term “local needs” - even though it places a duty on providers to show that they meet them. We believe that the bill ought to speak in terms of local social and economic needs, including contributions to employment, health and wellbeing and community capacity. This would capture the much broader impact that community learning has in local areas.

We also noted that in the second reading debate many peers spoke about the need for adults to retrain in new sectors and how funding for a second level 3 or lower qualification would greatly help this. We would certainly support such a move.

Finally, there are a number of things that we don’t expect to see as part of the bill itself but that are crucial to its success: the outcomes of the long-promised review of the post-16 funding framework, the ongoing review of qualifications below level 3, and ultimately the way post-16 education funding is handled in the comprehensive spending review (CSR). These things will all be settled later in the year and they provide crucial context to the future of post-16 education.

So through the bill and through the CSR, we hope to see community adult learning strengthened to support the social and economic recovery we so urgently need after the blows of the pandemic.

Simon Parkinson is the chief executive of the WEA