After years of continually having to repeat that adult education shouldn’t be forgotten, I’m glad there have been signs in 2019 that things are starting to change.

Although it’s smaller than it was 10 years ago, we still have an agile, quality local adult education service with centres in every town.

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This year, we’ve had five separate commissions and reviews on lifelong learning, and a Commons Education Select Committee inquiry, which has helped to put adult education and skills on the top of the agenda.

The new government has committed £3 billion over the lifetime of the Parliament to a new National Skills Fund for adults.

This exciting commitment has been proposed to help transform the lives of people who have not got on to the work ladder and lack qualifications, as well as those who are keen to return to work after, say, raising a family, or to switch from one career to another. The government has also said it will replace the European Social Fund cash and ensure that £500 million of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund will be used to give disadvantaged people the skills they need to make a success of life.

This injection of funding is really welcome and should be applauded. We are really pleased and relieved that the government wants to support those who have no qualifications. However, I wonder if any thought has been given to how to get adults back into learning? With nearly 2 million fewer adults participating than 10 years ago, people have got out of practice and the intermediary infrastructure of support into learning is no longer there. So, there is now some urgency in rebuilding the public narrative about why to retrain as an adult, signposting, initial assessment and support systems, whether it be in the workplace and/or the community.

The existing entitlements to free provision are beneficial and, coupled with the new low-wage pilot, they facilitate and reduce the cost barrier for individuals, but they don’t help with living expenses, which puts learners at a disadvantage compared with those going on to a higher education course who have access to maintenance loans. It is now time to expand free provision to all adults and underpin this with help towards living costs.

When the Department for Education and ministers start to determine the shape of the National Skills Fund, it would be constructive if they considered the work of the various commissions and reviews of adult education undertaken in 2019, building on those recommendations and not falling into the trap of thinking they need to start from scratch. More words were written and spoken about adult education in 2019 than in the previous eight years put together - what’s needed now is action. 

A coherent strategy for adult education

In 2020, we need to move on to an implementation phase in which the government starts to pull together the existing strands of adult education and skills programmes into a coherent strategy that covers all budgets and available funding. It is important and will be more efficient if the new National Skills Fund sits within, and is distributed through, existing infrastructure. If run separately, it will lead to higher administrative costs and duplication of effort. There also needs to be a readjustment of existing funds to provide the correct level of funding to cover the real costs of programmes and to give further education teachers and trainers salaries and training comparable to that of schoolteachers.

The new adult education and skills strategy needs to bring together the work of different government departments - such as the Department for Work and Pensions, the Home Office and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government - and to build joint plans for dealing with issues around work skills, English for speakers of other languages, integration and loneliness. It should recognise how people on the ground in local authority adult community education services are key to bringing services together to increase participation and ensure local accountability and scrutiny.

Adult community education services focus on, and are experts at working with, those adults who didn’t do well school and who might not have the same level of motivation as those who have already made the system work for them. These services, institutions and centres currently educate or train 600,000 adults annually.

The services are ready to expand their activity. They are agile and work with employers, local authority colleagues and Jobcentre Plus to create programmes of learning that work for both the job market and for the learner. Learners and employers are the focus of their work and their business models do not rely on large buildings with expensive underpinning services and high management costs. They can, therefore, ensure that funding is spent wisely on the learner.

With this new injection of funding, time should be given to consider what the national devolved and local landscape should look like and what would be the most effective. Research shows that those who have low skills would prefer to undertake their learning experiences in local centres. Therefore, provision for basic and intermediate skills should be local, built around local requirements and be coordinated locally by people and elected members who know what residents need.

Local authorities should be given this coordination role with the power to require all providers working in their area to demonstrate, through local scrutiny committees, how their provision meets local need and how they provide true learner progression paths for learners to progress on to work, further learning, or volunteering and to become more active citizens.

Susan Pember is policy director of Holex