"Informal adult learning today matters in every one of this Government’s priorities for a fairer and more prosperous society"
20 May 2008
Thank you very much indeed, it’s wonderful to be here. It’s really wonderful to be here in Adults Learners’ Week because, of course, I was previously a Minister for Culture as well as now being Minister for Skills and, when I left my job as Minister for Culture back in June last year, many people said to me oh you must be devastated, the free tickets to film openings and theatre trips and all of that wonderful art and culture, you must be so sad now. And then sort of would look really wistfully, you must be so sad now they said, to be the Minister for Skills, and I said do you know what, it was a wonderful opportunity to see the breadth of arts and culture in this country, to be immersed in it, to have the opportunity, and that’s rare sometimes in political life, to have the opportunity on a daily basis to be in your imagination, because you’re inspired by something you’ve seen or watched. And actually, I think many of my political colleagues understand that that space is sometimes lacking in modern political life.
But in this job as the Minister for Skills, I experience something that’s almost more profound. It is being close and in proximity to people who are taking those steps that so many of us take for granted; steps that are about lifelong learning, steps about that powerful journey that you experience because of a wonderful teacher or mentor, that you experience when the grip and idea or a particular fulfilment comes from a particular craft. Those experiences that then create not just personal fulfilment but family fulfilment, community and beyond, and that is a powerful thing that in some ways unites the world of art and culture but also very much of informal learning. And that’s what I want to talk about.
The American humorist Christopher Morley once said there are three ingredients to a good life; learning, earning and yearning. You’ll be pleased that I’m not going to talk very much about the yearning, I’ll leave that for your imaginations. But that journey of learning, once you experience that in a creative and positive way and move on through life, and then the earning that obviously can come from that and obviously rightly preoccupies me as Minister for Skills, hugely and hugely important. Education is essential there to securing a well paid job, that a decent income offers greater security for people and their families, and that the ability to satisfy your innate curiosity can and should bring real rewards. Informal learning is an absolutely vital part of this community, and at its best – and that’s what I love – at its best it is absolutely about community, and often the coming together of people who share very little other than their love and preoccupation in the learning that is taking place.
It’s sprung out or sprung up most particularly in this country out of the foresight and generosity of Victorian politicians and philanthropists who oversaw the creation of great public museums and libraries in towns and cities across the country, institutions which became and remain our universities of the street corner, informal learning has flourished in working men’s and women’s colleges where artisans could be inspired not just in their trades but in arts and cultures where teachers ranging from John Stuart Mill, Rossetti, Ruskin, EM Forster, and Seamus Heaney have all made that inspiring contribution. And informal learning swelled with the rise of the trade union movement as working men and women came together to share not just ways of working but ideas, and were encouraged to learn for learning’s sake, often for the first time. And to glance only briefly at British cultural history in the last two centuries is to see informal learning everywhere, in places of worship, in local councils, in technical and manufacturing institutes, in the Open University, the Arts Council, in so many, many places that make up the life of this country.
And if the history of informal learning is incredibly rich in this country then we are certainly reaping the benefit today. Nearly 340 million visits to our libraries in 2007, over 21 million more than visited three years ago. The proportion of people amongst ethnic minorities higher than ever before. Two-thirds of us in Britain visited a historic site in the last year, and the same number of people took part in arts activities. Two out of five people visited a museum or a gallery. And there’s also the network of union learning representatives, which number some 18,000, whose sole mission is to increase the life chances and opportunities of working people through learning. Their work encouraging both formal, of course, and informal learning in the workplace sits alongside I hope a renaissance in apprenticeships and train to gain.
Above all, I think we can say that talking today about this consultation without the explicit recognition from Government that informal adult learning today matters in every one of this Government’s priorities for a fairer and more prosperous society is important to state that, to state that as a fact but because we want to build on that huge achievement. Adults who learn more about their own health and that of their children, communities that learn together are more curious, more understanding and, above all, more cohesive. And neighbourhoods that come together to take part in informal learning in places and social groups where it’s been forgotten or neglected for a long, long time are things that we should be concerned about, and we should certainly be aiming to build on that achievement.
What history shows us then is that for all the chance encounters that characterise informal learning, it only really flourishes with the right support, and that’s including the support from Government. And that’s why the time for this consultation is now, because society is changing. The diversity of people in Britain has never been so varied or so rich. As different heritages, traditions, ways of learning and expressing ourselves become more established, in short as what I describe as modern Britain’s encounter culture becomes democratised as never before, education providers need to learn and adapt themselves to that new social fabric because technology is changing, the traditional image of people reading a book or a newspaper has given way to that of commuters on the train plugged into their iPhone, logged into Wikipedia or YouTube, blogging or twittering, sharing images and experiences from around the world.
Informal learning takes on a whole new meaning then for the net generation, free from deference and hierarchy, taking its cues from peer to peer recommendation rather than the instruction of elites, setting and destroying trends at breakneck speed. And because jobs, businesses and indeed public services are changing. Something like 80%, perhaps even more, of how people learn their trade, learn their job, is informal. Workers learn much more from watching others at work than from asking their colleagues, calling the helpdesk or through trial and error on their computer than from formal structured training. Not only are businesses demanding a workforce that meets the demands of the modern workplace, but employees are demanding the same level of investment in their own future and for their employers.
And finally, because the global economy is changing. For a young person at school today, just as for a business competing in a crowded marketplace, skills and a passion to develop skills at a pace required for the modern business environment have never been more important or a more important prerequisite for succeeding in the modern economy. And when I talk about that modern economy, let me make absolutely clear, when I was Minister for Culture I learnt this fact. It was something that was celebrated in the creative partnership schemes that we have in so many of our schools where we bring culture to young people that haven’t had it before. And that is that 60% of the jobs that young people entering primary school today will be required to do when they actually enter the workplace have not yet been invented.
That requires imagination, it requires adaption, it requires curiosity, it requires the ability to come together with people with whom you share nothing, it requires critical thinking, it requires dedication and skill, it requires application, and all of that, all of that activity, all of those skills are caught up in the business of informal learning. Many of them are not skills that you have as a consequence simply of passing a qualification or an exam, and that is why the business of culture and informal learning is so important, because we want fully rounded citizens. We have a commitment to that, I believe that my Party has had a commitment to that, that’s why we set up the Arts Council, that’s why we set up the Open University, that’s why we made entry to our national museums and galleries free, and that’s why we have launched this informal adult consultation.
So this is certainly an opportune time to be discussing not only informal learning for pleasure as tens of thousands of people up and down the country seize the chance to return to some form of education in colleges, in community centres and in cyberspace, but also to be discussing informal learning that means both the fundamental human urge for intellectual stimulation and allows people to form social bonds through the sharing of interests and passions, because learning is part of a story of a good society, not just a strong economy. The reason I’m so passionate about apprenticeships is not just because they help people gain a craft and a passport to a better job, important as those things are, it’s also because apprenticeships offer young people the kind of personal development that they can so often miss out on. And the Department for Innovation, Universities & Skills was created because it understood the breadth of all of that experience.
And this is a view that I take from my own experiences in my life. My mother, who very sadly passed away a few months ago, was the direct beneficiary of a trade union which encouraged her to retrain in secretarial and business administration having been home help. And so when she made those steps into learning, as a consequence it affected her family, and that is one of the reasons that I stand here before you, and it’s something that obviously I take on to my own children, that golden thread, one individual in my family getting that bug and being able to take that forward and then that being passed on through the line. That’s why this is so important, and obviously I see this. I see this in a very real way representing one of the poorest communities here in Tottenham. What I want for my own children I want for those that I was at school with too, and who still deserve a second chance to gain the skills that they never did at school. Creating opportunities for the next generation emphatically does not mean giving up on this one.
And that’s why public investment in further education has increased by over 50% in real terms since 1997, why funding for English language courses has trebled since 2001, to the benefit of 2.2 million people, and more than 175 million adults have improved literacy and numeracy skills as a consequence. You may not read about those 1.7 million adults that can now read, that now know what it means when they walk into a shop and see 30% off in the January sales. You may not read about them in the newspapers, but it’s taken public investment, it’s taken good teachers and it’s taken the decision to invest in all of those adults because they were left behind in the past. And I applaud all of those for what they have done to create and bring about that situation. We also want the current informal learning landscape support ... from the National Lottery through the private sector and by voluntary organisations to remain diverse and creative, and that’s why we’re also investing £210m each year in informal adult learning for the next three years through a safeguarded budget, and we allocate our resources of course also to the trade union learning and of course to NIAE as an institution. Most of all, we want to encourage innovation in this sector. It’s in our title for a reason, and that originates of course amongst the learners themselves.
Through this current consultation we’re attempting to map and quantify the full breadth of this activity, especially learning that’s organised on a voluntary basis. We’re examining the role of Government to see how we make the best use of public investment. Whether it’s better, for example, to continue subsidising providers to arrange courses or whether a voucher scheme that’s come up or been suggested in some of the consultation groups could enable ordinary people to organise more of their own provision. We’re paying particular attention to the ways in which technology and broadcasting can support learning, especially with the extension of broadband and the move to digital television. During the consultation process which ends in June, we’ve benefited from the input of many, many organisations, including the BBC, obviously museum, libraries and archives, council, through to many organisations that have, like the University of the Third Age and others who have made a contribution to this story that is informal adult learning.
We recognise too that it’s taking place in many, many different places. That actually our colleagues in health are using their resources, understanding that libraries are good places to educate people about their health, for example, in new and different ways. Our colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, and many of our local authorities using their regeneration funds, using their funds around citizenship and active engagement also engaged in the business of culture as it’s felt in their present communities to ensure that they also are using that informal learning network to encourage things like citizenship that we all feel so passionately about at this time. So recognising that breadth, recognising the different sources of funding, thinking about the infrastructure, thinking about technology, thinking about new ways to inspire more people has been a fundamental part of this journey over the last period.
And of course, the arts and culture remaining central to that story because in a way people are often inspired to come together because of a belief in their local community, a belief in human nature, and in the end arts and culture is often the glue that supports that belief, that rewards that belief whatever your religion, creed, sexuality or background, in that sense arts and culture cuts across and brings people together in the most powerful of ways, whether it’s a local Somali community centre in a constituency like mine, or whether it’s a dramatic art school in other constituencies across the country, all of it places where people are learning or can be reading Shakespeare for the first time.
So this is a big consultation, this is an important moment. The power of this moment is absolutely opportune, it is now, and I’m very, very pleased to be here in Adult Learners’ Week to bring these threads together and to support all that you are doing to help us get this right. Thank you very much.
