The Skills Funding Agency announced this week that public funding is to be withdrawn from a further 1,600 adult qualifications for which, they say, there is little or no demand. Two thirds of publicly funded qualifications (6,900 in total) have been removed from government funding since 2013. Skills minister Nick Boles welcomed the move, saying the qualifications were ‘cluttering up the system’. On the face of it, this looks like a smart move. Employers want a qualifications system that is streamlined and easy to comprehend. And students want to know that the qualifications they are seeking are worthwhile and, if the purpose of study is vocational (and the expectation is that it will be), valued by employers. But even if we accept that qualifications that support progression to and in employment are what we should be focusing on, it’s not clear that student take-up is, in itself, a reliable indicator of what is valuable or worth funding - or, indeed, of what local businesses need if they are to prosper. In fact, the qualifications from which funding is to be withdrawn include a larger number in sectors important to the economy, such as engineering, manufacturing, ICT, and building and construction, and where there are growing skills shortages, particularly in higher-level technical jobs. Nor is it particularly useful to directly equate student take-up with student demand or interest. Prohibitive fees and an unwillingness to take on large amounts of debt are other factors which should be part of a much more nuanced, intelligently thought-out approach to streamlining qualifications. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the ongoing cull of qualifications is indicative of a really remarkable narrowing of the educational offer to adults - one which began in earnest under the previous government as it became increasingly fixated on a funding model based on boosting employability and vocational skills. It’s not that employment and vocational training aren’t important - obviously they are - it’s just that they aren’t everything. Among the qualifications considered of no or low value will be many that adults have found hugely valuable, in giving them a foothold in learning again, building their confidence, broadening their horizons or simply offering them a second chance. Education isn’t only about getting people into work or on at work. It’s also about confidence and aspiration, family and community, citizenship and social cohesion. It makes people better citizens, better parents. It can make them more flexible, more resilient, more rounded and civilised, helping them become better people as well as better employees. The wider public value of adult education is far too infrequently asserted. As Helena Kennedy wrote in her 1997 policy paper Learning Works, while ‘prosperity depends upon there being a vibrant economy … an economy which regards its own success as the highest good is a dangerous one’. There are other claims upon public support for education, Kennedy went on, namely justice and equity. Ignoring those claims is likely to be disastrous for us as a society, as a democracy and, ultimately, as an economy. This seems to me common sense. Yet parts of Kennedy’s paper - those in which she asserts the wider value of adult and further education - now read like something from another era. Part of the problem with adopting the circumscribed language and outlook of funders and policy makers is that it becomes more and more difficult to assert the value of those things that lie outside it. The less we talk about them the less relevant they seem until those things become almost unsayable (at least without inviting ridicule or marginalizing oneself - either as too wishy-washy or too radical). You either talk within the circumscribed limits or you talk to yourself. And the harder it becomes to talk about what we value, the harder it is to defend it against cuts. Increasingly, I find myself asking, who will stand up for adult education? Under the coalition, we have seen the realm of publicly funded adult education continue to shrink. Indeed, the pace has quickened under the all-consuming (and all-justifying) blanket of austerity politics. UCAS’s latest figures on full-time applications to higher education show that while applications from younger students continue to hold up, applications from those over the age of 25 continues to decline - this on top of an 18 per cent decline between 2010 and 2013. And while applications from young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are up, people from advantaged backgrounds are still more than twice as likely to apply to university as their less-advantaged counterparts - even more so in the case of the most selective universities. The numbers are even worse for part-time students, the vast majority of whom are older students (with a large proportion from disadvantaged backgrounds). Over the past four years, part-time student numbers in the UK have fallen by more than a third - with the figure even higher for part-time students aged above 25. In England, according to HEFCE, part-time undergraduate student numbers fell by 46 per cent between 2010-11 and 2013-14. The reasons for the decline are complex, but include Labour’s introduction of the ELQ rule - which denied funding to students studying at a level lower or equivalent to a level at which they were already qualified - the increase in part-time fees and the introduction of loans for part-timers (unsurprisingly adults with a range of other financial commitments have not been keen to take them up and incur more debt in their 30s, 40s or 50s), and a growing reluctance among employers to support employees to study part-time alongside their work. Despite protestations to the contrary, it is increasingly obvious that the government considers the damage caused to part-time HE a price worth paying (as long as applications from younger students holds up). Adult education in FE is also under huge pressure. The government’s February 2014 skills funding statement included a 19 per cent cut to the adult skills budget by 2015-16, meaning an overall fall in adult skills funding from £2.8 million in 2010-2011 to £2 billion in 2015-16. Unsurprisingly, the cuts have resulted in an 11 per cent overall drop in adult participation in state funded learning between 2012-13 and 2013-14, with the numbers even worse for older adults -27 per cent fewer adults aged 25 and over in Level 3 provision and 34.2 per cent fewer in Level 4. At the same time, the Department for Education has reduced spending on 16 to 18 year olds from £7.7 billion in 2009-10 to £7 billion in 2013-14, with a swingeing 17.5 per cent cut to the funding rate for 18 years olds from last September, placing still more pressure on college principals. And while funding for 16-18 year olds is expected to be stable in 2015, further substantial cuts are expected in adult skills. All of this has coincided with a substantial reduction in the public library service, making it even more difficult for adults to learn in their own time, on their own terms. Some 324 libraries have closed, with many more under threat, as a result of a 40 per cent cut in local government funding since 2010. Even on the government’s own narrow terms this is self-defeating. In an ageing society in which social mobility has stalled - seemingly irreversibly - and compulsory education is so unhelpful to so many (the educational achievement gap between rich and poor at GCSE is widening), we simply cannot afford to put adults off returning to education. We cannot afford to be a society in which second chances are out of reach to so many people. It’s bad enough that our education system seems designed to write people off at as early a stage as possible, and to qualify the success of almost all but a small, mostly already privileged, minority. But to close down so much opportunity later in life makes no sense, not if we are serious about moving towards becoming a high-skill, high-productivity economy. If the system we have cannot offer good, affordable and varied opportunities for people to learn as adults, wherever they live and whatever their social background, then the system simply isn’t working. Helena Kennedy wrote that education ‘has always been a source of social vitality and the more people we can include in the community of learning, the greater the benefits to us all’. It ‘strengthens the ties which bind people, takes the fear out of difference and encourages tolerance. It helps people to see what makes the world tick and the ways in which they, individually and together, can make a difference. It is the likeliest means of creating a modern, well-skilled workforce, reducing levels of crime, and creating participating citizens’. Wonderful words - as true now as they were in 1997. We haven’t changed and the social and economic needs Kennedy talks about are, if anything, more acute. Education has to offer more than a rounded liberal education for the few and patchy vocational training for the rest - or at least those that can afford it. As Kennedy argued, we can no longer afford to weight education spending on the already privileged in the expectation that this will produce ‘an excellence which permeates the system’. The trickle-down theory of economics doesn’t work - nor does the trickle-down theory of education. Apart from anything else, it is incredibly damaging to social cohesion or any sense that we are ‘in this together’. I’m sure nobody working at the Treasury would think mere training good enough for their children. Well, it isn’t good enough for other people’s children either.

The three main parties have begun to unveil their manifesto promises ahead of the general election in May and education has been centre stage. Last week the Prime Minister promised to protect the schools budget though, it turned out, only in cash terms. This means that, under a Conservative government, the budget will go up as pupil numbers increase, but per-pupil funding will, in real terms, fall as inflation and other demands on the schools budget increase. The Liberal Democrats were more generous (in the circumstances they can, perhaps, afford to be), undertaking to ‘guarantee education funding from nursery to 19’ and pledging to protect the schools budget in real terms. Nick Clegg promised to fight ‘tooth and nail’ for these commitments in any coalition negotiations. Then, yesterday, Labour leader Ed Miliband pledged to protect the Department for Education budget, also in real terms, maintaining investment in schools, sixth-forms and further education colleges (for 16 to 19 year olds) and protecting early-years provision, if Labour wins the general election. The schools budget has, up until now, enjoyed real-terms protection, in line with undertakings made by Chancellor George Osborne in 2010. The loss of the ring-fence would leave schools in the unprotected territory so familiar to further education colleges, many of which have struggled to remain viable in the face of eye-watering cuts. Even if it is maintained in real terms, and increases in line with projected increases in pupil numbers, rising pension and National Insurance costs will take funds away from teaching and learning. Funding for 16 to 18 year olds in England has already been heavily cut, from £7.7 billion in 2009-10 to £7 billion in 2013-14, with a 17.5 per cent cut to the funding rate for 18 years olds from last September (while schools funding has been protected, the overall DfE budget fell by 7.5 per cent between 2010-11 and 2014-15). Stability in funding for this age group is expected this year but there could be more pressure on this budget and it will be interesting to see if Conservative plans for cash-terms protection for schools extend to 16-19s. Funding stability for schools is to be welcomed. But in the prevailing policy climate there is bound to be a cost. Ring-fencing areas of public spending has a huge effect on the areas outside the ring-fence, as further education has discovered over the past five years. The overall Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) budget was reduced by a quarter between 2010-11 and 2014-15, with a further six per cent cut imposed this year. Ewart Keep has estimated that, on current projections, the overall reduction in the BIS budget between 2010 and 2018 will be 42.5 per cent. The bulk of the cuts so far have fallen in adult further education. The government’s February 2014 skills funding statement included a 19 per cent cut to the adult skills budget by 2015-16, which means an overall fall in adult skills funding from £2.8 million in 2010-2011 to £2 billion in 2015-16. Professor Keep suggests that ‘cumulative cuts of 60 per cent or more in funding for adult skills do not seem an unrealistic expectation’. The continued privileging of certain parts of the education budget could mean even bigger cuts in a sector with which few politicians or civil servants are even remotely familiar (as the current skills minister admitted shortly after his appointment). This poor level of recognition combines with further education’s unprotected status to make the sector a relatively easy target for cuts. Further massive reductions in spending on post-19 further education and skills are all but certain. Perhaps that is why adults did not feature noticeably in the education announcements of any of the major parties. Few would disagree with Ed Miliband’s statement that the emergence of a new, stronger and more resilient economy depends on investment in ‘the talents and education of all our young people’. But it surely does not depend only on the education of young people. The fact that 70 per cent of the 2020 workforce is already in employment - while half of the current workforce is not qualified beyond Level 2 - demonstrates just how important adult education is in meeting the needs of an economy in which higher-level skills are becoming increasingly important. Of course, it is right to put the needs of children and young people first. Getting things right at school pays dividends in every area of national life and is, without doubt, the smartest investment any government can make (provided it gets it right). But, for various reasons, some more entrenched than others, it does not work for everybody - far from it - and we simply cannot afford to write off those who do not succeed first time around. Of course, we should maintain schools investment, but we need to invest strongly and intelligently in the skills and education of adults as well. Unhappily, it seems, increasingly, that we unable or unwilling to do both. Whichever party holds the balance of power come May, austerity will continue, with spending reductions biting ever deeper into an already beleaguered sector. All the main parties support ‘cutting the deficit’ and ‘balancing the books’ - they differ only as to timescale. There is little challenge to this consensus, notwithstanding the devastation austerity politics is causing in parts of the public sector. Since 2012 the pace of deficit reduction has slowed and the government has allowed its targets to recede somewhat. The economy has begun to grow and employment is rising (though tax receipts have not followed suit - a reflection on the sort of low-pay, low-status jobs the economy is creating). But, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned in the wake of the Chancellor’s autumn statement, the pace of austerity will soon again quicken, with ‘colossal’ cuts to come in the next parliament. Although £35 billion of cuts have been made thus far, £55 billion more are still to come. The Treasury has scheduled an average 17 per cent real-terms reduction in spending across government departments between 2015 and 2019 - and with schools and health protected that will mean much bigger cuts in other areas. As the Office for Budget Responsibility noted, public spending as a percentage of GDP will fall to 35.2 per cent by 2019-20, its lowest level since the 1930s, with a further one million public sector jobs set to go as a result. Those who remain in public sector employment will face continuing pay restraint at least until Treasury books are balanced. Difficult choices are inevitable, particularly for colleges which will have to make yet more stark choices as to which areas of provision they retain and which they let go (with obvious implications for their own sense of mission which seems likely to further narrow). BIS will have to cut funding steams it has previously fought to protect (the modest but important community learning budget so far protected in cash terms will come under even greater pressure). But there will also be increased pressure on schools to achieve more with less (political expectations rarely diminish in line with resources), while pay restraint and the pressures of accountability (reflected in teacher responses to the DfE’s workload challenge) will continue to press heavily on teacher morale. There is, however, something to welcome in the recognition that falling levels of investment in education won’t deliver economic success, and in some of the more specific commitments made by the main parties, particularly, for me, Ed Miliband’s espousal of a broad and balanced curriculum offering creativity and an equal focus on academic and vocational skills (though the challenges here are enormous - and the opposition to meaningful reform likely to be intense, as Mike Tomlinson discovered when he recommended replacing A-levels with an overarching diploma for both academic and vocational subjects). However, as Nick Clegg will no doubt confirm, manifesto pledges are not written in stone - however hard we promise to fight for them - and delivery will depend, in part, on whether the election delivers a majority, a coalition or a minority government. The unpredictability of contemporary politics makes it less likely than ever that you will get what you vote for. And the seeming inevitability of further deep and damaging cuts means it is also less likely than ever that you will really know what you are voting for. As long as the narrative of austerity - that reducing the deficit must be our number one priority (rather than a means to a more ideological goal) - prevails, we can expect more of the same, and worse, with a continuing reduction in state-funded adult learning. In an important sense, the big decisions are already made. We just await the detail. The march of austerity continues to strip our public discourse of its important civic and moral dimensions, narrowing not only the options for public policy but the space in which alternative ideas can be debated and developed. What remains is not pretty.

Last week, education secretary Nicky Morgan suggested that qualifications should be linked to income in order to show their ‘true worth’. This week, the Warwick Commission on Cultural Value warned that creativity, culture and the arts are being ‘systematically removed from the UK education system’. These developments are not, of course, unrelated. They highlight a deplorable - and largely unchallenged - narrowness in current policy thinking about education, a grotesque reduction of the value of education to a crude utilitarian calculation of future earnings typified in the steady erosion of lifelong learning and the disappearance of vital public learning spaces such as libraries. The critical infrastructure that is being lost includes some of the jewels of the British education system, such as university continuing education, and will be incredibly difficult - perhaps impossible - to replace. Nicky Morgan’s words were shockingly blunt and, in black and white, look pretty crass, but they are not particularly surprising. In fact, they articulate one of the most fundamental principles of this government’s approach to education, one that now runs through policy in every part of the education sector, from primary level to university: the only real value is economic value - and the only education a skeletal state impoverished by an ideologically driven programme of austerity measures can afford to support is education that has an economic return. It was this thinking that, under the previous government, drove the introduction of the ‘ELQ’ rule denying funding to anyone studying in higher education at a level equivalent to or below the highest level at which they had previously studied. And it is this thinking that has driven the current government’s attempts to introduce a market into the skills system by putting money directly in the hands of employers and in its recasting of university students as consumers. It is felt by primary school children as young as five who face inappropriate tests and selection at an age when children in most developed countries haven’t even begun formal schooling and are learning in other, less pressured ways. And it is experienced by every prospective adult learner who finds that the opportunity to return to education has either disappeared, narrowed beyond recognition or relevance, or become prohibitively expensive. Of course, all of this is part of a bigger trend towards the marketisation of parts of our lives in which, formerly, the market was thought not to have a place - or at least to have only a marginal place. As Michael Sandel argues, once we begin to put a price on goods such as education, health and political influence it becomes much harder to be poor. Increasingly, wealth determines access to health, good schools, higher education (especially the elite universities) - and, of course, politicians. In a society such as ours the poor are not only poor, they are disenfranchised, excluded, without access to many basic goods (not just material ones), and, for very many of them, also without hope (the absence of hope is perhaps the greatest unexplored public health issue of our times). Perhaps worst of all, when markets become an end rather than a means, political debate is stifled, it becomes trivial, managerial and, for the vast majority of people, incidental. The gap between politics and the people politics is about - those, at any rate, who are not in a position to buy access - grows ever greater. Behind all of this, justifying everything and making the impossible possible in policy terms, is the spectre of austerity: an unnamed threat so amorphous and ill-defined, so universally endorsed by the mainstream parties and political journalism, that it can make almost anything seem a price worth paying. And because the implied cause is excessive public-sector spending - and not, of course, the financial crisis and reckless rich so seldom mentioned in connection with austerity - it is here that cuts must be made: disfiguring, anti-society cuts which penalise the poorest and most vulnerable (those whose reckless demands for decent schools and health care have put us in this mess), and in which all three main parties are to varying degrees culpable. The impact of this trend can be seen very clearly in education, where it has distorted our values, our ways of talking and our sense of value as professionals - even our capacity to articulate clearly what it is that we think valuable about what we do. This is no better illustrated than in adult education. Since David Blunkett, in his foreword to the 1998 Green Paper The Learning Age, stressed learning’s ‘wider contribution’ in helping ‘make ours a civilised society’, developing ‘the spiritual side of our lives’ and promoting active citizenship, strengthening family, neighbourhood and nation in the process, there has been a steady attenuation in policy thinking concerning the benefits of education (despite large amount of evidence to the contrary). Skills and employability became the order of the day as funding focused increasingly on young people and shifted to provision that was expected - in some magical way, almost - to secure our economic future. The results included a much narrower and more expensive offer for adults, the closure of university lifelong learning departments across the country and the loss of well over a million adults to publicly funded provision. Despite our decade-long pursuit of ‘world-class skills’, under Labour and the coalition, the UK continues to show poorly in international league tables, with productivity proving equally resistant to improvement. Labour’s ambition had narrowed so much that shortly before the 2010 election, when I approached the three main party leaders to set out their position on adult learning, David Cameron was able to position his party in the space the Labour government had lately abandoned, expressing a view of learning as being ‘about broadening the mind, giving people self-belief, strengthening the bonds of community’ - values, he added, that ‘Labour don’t seem to get’ - and citing its wider benefits, particularly in boosting active citizenship and helping make savings in other areas, such as health and crime. Despite the warmth of the Prime Minister’s words, the reality has been rather different. The coalition has continued to press for ‘world class’ skills, making employment and economic demand the drivers of their education reforms - and, like Labour before it, choosing to focus on the supply side of skills rather than address underlying issues concerning the demand for skills and skills under-utilisation. Despite playing well in the context of the coalition’s early emphasis on ‘big society’, the wider benefits of adult education were quickly forgotten. This trend has been reinforced by the onward march of austerity, which has seen funding cuts in all areas of education, but particularly in adult education. Funding for adult qualifications not considered economically useful has been withdrawn, while further education colleges have had to cope with massive cuts - amounting so far to around £260 million - to the adult skills budget. Promises to protect schools funding will make this budget even more of a target in the next Parliament. In higher education, mature students have been the main casualties of the coalition’s reforms to HE in England. Between 2008-09 and 2012-13 the number of first-year mature (21-plus) students in the English system fell by 37 per cent, with post-1992 institutions, which traditionally cater for more mature students, hit particularly hard. The story is even starker for part-time students, the vast majority of whom are mature. Part-time student numbers in England fell by 46 per cent between 2010-11 and 2013-14, according to HEFCE. And while it has performed better than national trends, the Open University has lost more than a quarter of its total student numbers. The causes of the decline in part-time and mature study are complex, but involve a toxic combination of increased fees, debt aversion among older people, wage stagnation and the prevailing economic climate, employer reluctance to invest in the education of their workers and the ineligibility of part-timers to maintenance support. Elite higher education remains geared to young people and, in particular, to highly privileged young people who understand how to work the system and are supported by state-sponsored private schools in doing so. Despite the sterling work of outreach teams within many of these institutions, the in-built advantage they offer to pupils from wealthy backgrounds ensures that they continue to maintain privilege and perpetuate disadvantage. Sadly, this division is characteristic of the whole education system, where, increasingly, a rounded, liberal education - one that encourages creativity and cultivates an interest in literature, culture and the arts - is largely available only to the rich, who can afford it. The Warwick Commission report found that creativity and the arts are being ‘squeezed out’ of schools, with big drops in arts subjects at GCSE. Pupils from families with the lowest incomes fare the worst. Children from these families, the commission found, are least likely to be employed in the creative industries, while people from privileged backgrounds are overrepresented. This divide was reflected in the lack of diversity in arts audiences, the report said. The wealthiest, best educated and least ethnically diverse eight per cent of society make up nearly half of live music audiences and a third of theatre-goers. There was a danger that we were creating a ‘two tier creative and cultural ecosystem’, one commissioner warned. What happens at school is reinforced by the internship system which effectively denies a start in many creative industries to any but the most affluent. As the Warwick Commission points out, this is bad both for the economy and for society. It is difficult to see how we can thrive as a nation while we deny so many the opportunity either to discover or develop their talents. But we lose more than this. A rounded creative education makes people more open, critical and tolerant. It helps them engage as citizens and fosters an interest in equality and democracy. It makes people question and it makes them hope. Crucially, perhaps, it makes them want more, for themselves and for their communities - something governments may be reluctant to encourage given how unequally social, cultural and economic goods are currently split. These are all critical functions which, for much of the twentieth century, adult education helped provide for many of those who were failed by the education system first time around. I think we need this more than ever. Children require an education which prepares them not only for the workplace but for civil society and democracy, which helps them become good parents, good neighbours and active citizens. And adults need spaces in which to access second chances and the resources they need to stay engaged - they need creativity and context as well as workplace training. I don’t say government should be paying for all of this but it has a role and responsibility which it shouldn’t be permitted to duck. To talk as though these things don’t matter or are not a crucial part of what makes us who and what we are is a kind of betrayal. To respond to the challenges we face as a society and as an economy we need to be smart, resilient, creative, open and engaged, as well as literate, numerate and job-ready. And, as the Warwick Commission argues, everyone has a right to a ‘rich cultural education and the opportunity to live a creative life’. Our failure to cultivate and support these capabilities, in our adults and young people, is a much more dangerous legacy to pass on to our children than the legacy of public debt.

Suddenly, if belatedly, adult education is in the news. Planned cuts to adult further education, amounting to 24 per cent of the total budget once apprenticeships - the government’s shamelessly over-hyped, all-purpose panacea for the gathering skills crisis - are taken out of the equation, have prompted a petition to reverse the move and provoked some unusually strong (some would say overdue) words from college groups and others. There have even been one or two articles outside the specialist education press. Finally, the staggering and deplorable withdrawal of learning opportunities for adults is making ripples outside the world of adult and further education. The latest cuts are massive, inflicted in full knowledge of the damage they are certain to cause. It’s nice to see Vince Cable launching a well-intentioned consultation on adult vocational education but it is hard not to think that this is far too little, far too late. When you consider the scale of cuts already made by the government - a 35 per cent reduction in spending on adult skills resulting in the loss of one million learning opportunities for adults since 2010 - it is easy to understand why the Association of Colleges is forecasting that state-supported adult education and training will have ceased to exist altogether by 2020. The loss will be huge. These are not just numbers. They represent the frustrated ambitions, aspirations and life chances of hundreds of thousands of people, their families and their communities. In research published today, the Association of Colleges estimates that more than 190,000 further adult learning places could be lost next year alone as a result of the latest cuts, with courses in health, public services and care, and information and communication technology likely to be hardest hit. It notes that funding cuts to adult education have already resulted in a 17.9 per cent drop in adult students participating at Level 3 between 2012-13 and 2013-14. If the government continues to cut adult education at the same rate, it says, there will be no adult education system left to support students aged 19 and over by 2020. It says a lot about the government that it has been prepared to oversee this near collapse in what was, for many years, a vital and vibrant part of our education system, something that took decades of effort and inspiration to build up. And this at a time when the need for adults to access education throughout their lives has never been more pressing or evident. As the AoC notes, the proportion of over-50s in the workforce is set to rise to a third of the workforce by 2020 - from 27 per cent now - while 50 per cent of workers aged over 55 are proposing to work beyond the state pension age. These people will need affordable, accessible opportunities to upskill and reskill, to improve their prospects at work or to start a new career. The government talks a decent game, publicly at least, when it comes to the skills and education needs of adults but, privately, it has been happy to see the sector which supports adults in accessing second chances to learn all but destroyed. But it isn’t all about the economy and it isn’t all about skills. Even if we accept the government’s narrowly economic rationale for funding provision, the current obsessive focus on apprenticeships is certain to be self-defeating if people aren’t equipped with the more basic, lower-level skills necessary to undertake one. We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that we face a major challenge in improving UK adults’ literacy and numeracy skills, still terribly poor by international standards, despite decades of interventions. These are not only economically useful, they are basic requirements for any adult who dreams of living a happy, fulfilled life. But there is a deeper point here about the kind of society we aspire to be. Do we want to be the sort of society where the wider benefits of a broad, liberal education are available only to the already privileged, while the rest of us have to make do with training for employment, in one form or another, and the prospect of spending much of our adult lives paying for it? Or do we want to be a society populated by thoughtful, caring, active and engaged citizens, with inquiring, resilient minds, willing and able to learn new things and embrace new challenges throughout their lives? These are important questions, but you won’t hear them on the lips of mainstream politicians, not publicly at least (and not privately either for the majority of them). Instead, the main parties have used the false but compelling narrative of austerity and deficit reduction to affect to have no choice over what are, truthfully, ideologically driven decisions with massive social implications. The things we are losing - part-time higher education, adult further education, the public library system, and much else - may seem a price worth paying now, but, faced with the task of rebuilding what is, after all, part of the essential infrastructure of any civilized society, it may seem very expensive indeed to the future generations who will pay the real cost of our current short-sightedness. I’m constantly taken aback by the senselessness of all of this. How can we have got to a point where the idea of education as an important public good has been all but superseded by the notion that education has only private benefits and so should be funded very largely by the private individuals who benefit from it? How can the devastation of something so valuable - to individuals, to employers, to society more widely, both economically and in terms of social inclusion - be met with such public and political indifference? How can we have failed to see that spending in this area is a critical investment in all our futures (amply repaid by the clear economic and social benefits), not just another cost to be disposed of in the march of austerity? There is not much left of what we used to think of as ‘this great movement of ours’. What remains is pretty embattled, with even the most illustrious institutions forced to recast their values and sense of mission in order to survive. But second-chance learning is not a luxury. If we want a fair society, a vibrant, humane democracy in which everyone has a decent chance of success and the circumstances of a person’s birth are not the overwhelming determinant of their life chances, we need a flourishing system of lifelong learning as surely as we need strong, fairly funded schools and world-class, widely accessible universities. Please sign the University and College Union petition opposing the cuts. More than 20,000 people already have.

Adult education matters. It matters at home, in work, and in the community. It matters to families, to the economy and to our health and wellbeing. It makes society fairer, more resilient, more creative and more democratic. It ought to matter in the ballot box too. Its demise is indicative of the huge price this and future generations are set to pay for the politics of austerity. The figures are stark. Since the coalition came to power in 2010 more than a million publicly funded adult learning opportunities have disappeared. Over the same period, according to the Association of Colleges (AoC), funding for post-19 further education has been cut by 35 per cent. The 2015-16 adult skills budget is to be cut by a further 24 per cent - a move which has prompted the AoC to warn that state-supported adult education will be a thing of the past by 2020 if the next government does not offer a change of direction. At the same time, the escalation in tuition fees in higher education has prompted a dramatic decline in mature student numbers, particularly in part-time provision, which has all but collapsed. The new vice-chancellor of the Open University, Peter Horrocks, described the slump as a ‘tragedy’ for individuals, family and society. The OU has lost a quarter of its total student numbers since 2010, while, across the sector as a whole, the number of people studying part-time for an undergraduate degree has fallen by 37 per cent. Yet it could not be clearer that we are living through times that demand more adult education, not less. We need more of it if we are to respond to growing skills gaps in engineering, technology and construction, for example. We need more if we are to respond to the productivity gap - productivity in the UK lags woefully behind that of our economic neighbours - and develop a higher-skill, higher-wage economy in which the benefits of growth are shared more equally. Ours is an ageing society. The jobs of the future cannot be filled by young people alone. If we are to fill those posts adults need more and better opportunities to refresh their skills and to learn new ones, adapting to the rapid, incessant pace of technological change. What we have seen, instead, is a relentless squeeze on such opportunities. But adult education matters in other ways too. Crucially, it gives people let down by our enduringly class-ridden education system a vital second chance to succeed. We are far too willing to divide our children up into winners and losers. That’s not what education should be about (though, all too often, that is precisely what it is about). School isn’t for everyone, for a range of different reasons (most, seemingly, inexplicable to those who followed the gilded path from public school to Oxbridge before washing up at the Treasury). It’s a matter of social justice that we do not brand those who have not succeeded at school as failures. They are not, as anyone who works in adult education will tell you. They want to succeed, to make a positive difference for their families and communities, as much as anyone. What they lack, increasingly, is the opportunity to do so. There is, for me, another crucial function of adult education, which perhaps goes along with a commitment to a fair and equal society in which everyone, and not just the wealthy, has the opportunity to live a meaningful, fulfilled and happy life. I believe adult education is as an essential part of the fabric of any civilized, democratic society. It is not just about employability - and that should be reflected in the sort of provision on offer to adults. Adult education provides safe, open and collaborative spaces in which difference and diversity are tolerated, where people can question and challenge, provoke and create, where they can ask awkward questions and develop the skills of political engagement. It engenders solidarity, makes us feel less powerless and hence more willing to engage politically, and, crucially, helps us learn to live and think together. These may not be popular values within a coalition government which has maintained its hold on the electorate’s imagination through a smoke-and-mirrors approach to policy debate, frequently happy to confuse, frustrate and obscure rather than speak truth about the challenges we face as a society. Nevertheless, they are absolutely essential if we are ever to build a fairer, more equal and democratic society, populated by creative, resourceful and resilient citizens. The funny thing is, many politicians would agree with much of this, publicly at least. What is lacking is the political will and imagination to make it a reality. It’s far too easy to cut adult education. As the civil servant who urged Vince Cable to withdraw all funding from further education advised, ‘nobody will really notice’. And we may get to this point yet, if the massive cuts planned for the next parliament are implemented. The scale and immediacy of the cuts planned by the Conservatives, in particular, are likely to wreak yet more devastation on a beleaguered further education sector, followed, no doubt, by the usual hand-wringing and disingenuous protestations about ‘the need for tough decisions’. But all the main UK parties are, to some extent, pro-austerity; they all make a fairly urgent priority of ‘balancing the books’, though they differ as to the scale and pace of cuts. Given the protection afforded to other budgets, however, this makes further cuts to adult education more than likely, whoever is in power (though, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has argued, the differences in scale and pace are not insignificant). Unsurprisingly, then, adult education has not featured much in the main parties’ manifesto thinking, despite the acknowledged threats of demographic change, low productivity and skills shortages. In fact, the manifestos, as a whole, do not have much to say directly about post-compulsory education beyond universities, and there is little appreciation of the well-documented role adult education can play in supporting related agendas, such as health care. There are, however, some important commitments, including that of Labour and the Liberal Democrats to protect in real terms the education budget, including some post-16 provision, and a few welcome shifts in emphasis, notably the Lib Dems’ pledges to establish a cross-party commission on lifelong learning and to enable more part-time study, and Labour’s promise to raise the standards and status of vocational and technical education (including turning high-performing colleges with strong links to industry into specialist ‘institutes of technical education’). The focus on apprenticeships, from all the main parties, also deserves a cautious welcome though it remains the case that many still are not deserving of the name. It should also be acknowledged that apprenticeships, though important, are not for everyone, and are not the answer to every one of the challenges of vocational education. It shouldn’t be paid for at the cost of the adult skills budget. The elephant in the room in all of this is, of course, the resumption of austerity politics, and the certainty of still more massive cuts to government spending, though no party of course is prepared to detail them. The growth we have seen over the last couple of years has coincided with the coalition taking its foot off the austerity peddle. We can expect an enhanced push towards austerity in the new parliament, particularly if the Conservatives are in charge, with the IFS warning of ‘colossal’ spending cuts to come: £55 billion’s worth - on top of £35 billion already cut. This won’t be achieved without significant damage to the faltering recovery and a great deal of pain, including the loss of a significant part of what many of us regard as the architecture of a civilized society. Adult education is part of this architecture. Its demise is important not only for the reasons set out above, but also because it is indicative of the high price we are set to pay for austerity politics and our own acquiescence in an unwarranted drive to reduce drastically the size of the state. It is incredibly short-sighted, and all, I fear, for a goal that is ideological rather than economic. This will be the real legacy of debt the two coalition parties leave for future generations. Under the cover of austerity they have imposed cuts that put at risk institutions critical to the humane functioning of our society. A new cycle of austerity cuts would see some of the notable achievements of our civilization, adult and continuing education, public libraries, an NHS run for patients rather than profit, lost. Resisting the narrative of austerity - and the supporting fiction that it was excessive public spending that necessitated it - must, realistically, be part of any attempt to save these institutions. If we don’t make our resistance felt, the world our children grow up in is likely to be colder, crueller, poorer, more indifferent, less caring and thoughtful, more divided and less cohesive, less well resourced, less democratic, less resilient and less hopeful. And of course it will be less skilled and more unequal too.

On 7 May 2015 the UK electorate voted in a majority government on a platform of more austerity and increased hardship for the most disadvantaged and vulnerable in society, precipitating, among other things, Labour’s almost immediate resignation as a true party of opposition - convinced, seemingly, that it is only by endorsing the Tory fiction of its fiscal irresponsibility in office that Labour can restore the country’s faith in it as a party of, erm, fiscal responsibility. Like many other left-leaning voters, I feel trapped in a bad dream in which it is always 10pm on election night and that exit poll in replayed, over and over again, forever, to a soundtrack of Michael Gove endlessly congratulating himself. Two things particularly struck me during the general election campaign. First, the narrow and impoverished nature of the debate and the utter failure of the mainstream media to do anything to dispel the statistical fog of claim and counterclaim or to take a step beyond the confining narrative established by the coalition in its first few months in office and enthusiastically taken up by its friends in the press. And second, the way fear - whether of economic ‘chaos’, a disgruntled business community or a minority Labour government controlled from Edinburgh - was endlessly and very effectively stoked, in the end trumping any sense of hope or solidarity. In politics, as in life, it is fear that prevents us taking creative chances, whether that is a leap of imagination or a leap of empathy and understanding. Labour’s subsequent capitulation in the myth that it overspent in office and caused or (in a more nuanced spin for the economically better-informed) exacerbated the economic crisis (a capitulation with qualifications, I know, but who has time to read the qualifications?) could be said to make a very effective case for more political education. But it also, it seems to me, represents an implicit concession that the language of empathy, informed compassion and solidarity have little place in modern politics, and that only tough-guy posturing, usually in the face of imagined or invented demons (‘uncontrolled’ immigration, benefit cheats and Greek-style economic collapse are three of the most popular phantoms), can win over the electorate. Politics, of course, is not the only area of life where empathy is in short supply. The hostile and at time callous language used by the media (and, indeed, by politicians) to describe asylum seekers, refugees and immigrants is another case in point, stereotyping and scapegoating migrants while overlooking their positive contribution and over-reporting the problems they create (it is telling that while people’s perceptions of the extent of these problems diverge ridiculously from reality, they are broadly in line with the priority given them by the parts of the media). Social media too, for all its virtues and possibilities, seems at times almost a test lab for every kind of meanness, closed-mindedness and spite, often in the guise of some sort of moral crusade; usually one fatally detached from any sense of human sympathy or fellow-feeling. As Adam Smith argued long ago, it is this sympathetic imaginative effort to put ourselves in other people’s shoes that is at the heart of morality and virtuous behaviour. If, as Smith believed, the imagination is the faculty responsible not only for populating our moral world but also for the entire creative sphere of commerce and the arts and sciences, it is surely something we should cultivate. This was something strongly hinted at by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, in an interesting interview on the Today programme in May. Productivity, Carney said, was the way forward for the UK economy, yet it was faltering because of under-investment and the disproportionate number of low-paid, low-productivity jobs created by the economy, prompting the Bank of England to downgrade its growth forecasts. Productivity, he went on, could be improved through investment in skills and innovation, empowering people at work, and more creativity. This reiterated points he was able to make at greater length in a speech about pay and productivity at the TUC congress last year. ‘Skills levels need to be raised continually,’ he said. ‘That is, of course, first and foremost about education. But crucially it also means access to lifelong learning, both on and off the job, available to all.’ What I particularly like about these comments is the link Carney makes between creativity, education, skills and productivity. We need a school curriculum that is geared to delivering the skills and resources young people need to thrive in the modern world, and that includes, critically, creativity, resilience and imagination, and, perhaps just as importantly, a willingness to think of themselves as learners throughout their lives. We also need a system of lifelong learning that unlocks people’s creativity later in life, when and where they need it. As John Dewey wrote, ‘the object and reward of learning is continued capacity for growth’. The alternative is a continued decline in productivity relative to our competitors and an economy characterised by poorly paid, low-skilled jobs and calcified patterns of inequality. Carney’s remarks point to a great deal that is wrong about the government’s approach to education. This is in some ways typified by education secretary Nicky Morgan’s comment that studying an arts subject ‘holds pupils back for the rest of their lives’, but it is also evidenced in the government’s more general denigration of arts and culture in the curriculum, prompting the Warwick Commission last year to wonder why it is that ‘the English educational system is not focusing on the future needs of the cultural and creative industries and the broader needs for innovation and growth in the UK?’ Not only is the curriculum narrowing, with arts subjects steadily downgraded and excluded, but the pressures brought to bear on teachers and school leaders are making it increasingly difficult for schools to bring a creative ethos to teaching and learning. Morgan used her first public appearances following the general election to warn that ‘failing or coasting’ schools would have their head teachers removed and be forced to join an academy chain (though she failed to specify why this would help - for the very good reason that there is no evidence that it would). It is doubtful whether the threat of this kind of punitive intervention is the best way to improve teaching and learning outcomes for pupils, particularly in a context of declining funding and rising costs, where teachers and school leaders already struggle with excessive workload, driven by an inspection system that encourages them to value looking good above doing good. Little wonder schools are struggling to recruit and retain teaching staff. But perhaps the most vivid example of the short-sightedness of the government’s approach is in adult further education, which has seen the deepest cuts of any part of the education sector. Further education as a whole is having a tough time. The coalition’s near-obsessive focus on apprenticeships, combined with a willingness to put the interests of other sectors ahead of those of FE, has seen courses cut, staff made redundant and sector morale plummet. As a result, options for students are narrowing. Further education appears to have few friends in parliament - and has one supporter less with the significant loss of Vince Cable. Adult further education has seen the most devastating cuts of all, reduced by 25 per cent between 2009-10 and 2014-15, with a further 24 per cent cut to non-apprenticeship adult learning planned for 2015-16. The Association of Colleges is warning that adult further education could be a thing of the past by 2020. As Mark Carney suggests, the loss of these opportunities is nothing short of disastrous. It represents the continued prevalence of a narrowly conceived economism in education, an approach which is a failure, even on its own terms. Opportunities to learn should be available to all, at every age, on and off the job, with funding following the learner rather than the prejudices of ministers. Instead, we are moving towards a two-tier, one-chance education system in which most children are trained for employment, with a fully rounded creative and cultural education available only to those following the gilded path to an elite university - overwhelmingly those who start out privileged - and few opportunities to return should things not work out first time around. Education should not be about joining the dots of a picture someone else has already sketched. It should be about (to borrow Paul Klee’s phrase) ‘taking a line for a walk’, gaining the resources we need to learn and develop in our own way - and that, above all, demands a wide curriculum and a creative one, as well as opportunities for second, third and even fourth chances. To quote Dewey again, it is ‘illiberal and immoral to train children to work not freely and intelligently but for the sake of the work earned, in which case their activity is not free because it is not freely participated in.’ Sadly, our schools and colleges increasingly resemble factories churning out young people with the requisite qualifications to gain employment and not much more (and often failing to do even that). The economic pay-off at the end is everything, the consequences of failure enormous and second chances are increasingly squeezed. As the OECD reported recently, the skills gap between young people not in employment, education or training and those in work is significantly wider in England and Northern Ireland than in other developed countries. The scale of social inequality makes the consequences of slipping down the ladder still graver, as every good middle-class parent knows. And we make sure our children feel the pressure as early as possible through a regime of testing that begins ludicrously early. As they get older, study further, and take on the huge debts now associated with a decent education, the pressure to remain on the treadmill, to work not reflect, to accept not criticise, grows greater. We are a society increasingly governed by our private and public fears, unwilling to take risks or think creatively, unable, seemingly, to expand our moral horizons, even to include people in mortal peril. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that we are stuck with the education system we have rather than the one we need.

I was saddened to hear that Adults Learning - a magazine I edited for 12 years, between 2002 and 2014, and the only UK periodical dedicated to adult education and learning in the round - is to close. Before it disappears into adult education history - unremarked alongside the loss of so much else that is valuable - I thought I would spend a little time remembering it and its place in what we still, in 2002, thought of fondly as ‘this great movement of ours’. The British Institute of Adult Education (BIAE) was founded in 1921 as a branch of the World Association for Adult Education, an organisation set up by Albert Mansbridge, who also, of course, founded the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). The institute’s aim, in the words of its first president, Lord Haldane, was to be ‘a centre for common thought by persons of varied experience in the adult education movement’, and both a representative body and a ‘thinking department’, focused not on teaching but on discussion and advocacy. Publication was seen an as important dimension of the work. The institute became an autonomous organisation, independent of the World Association, in 1925. The following year it set up its own journal, the Journal of Adult Education, a twice yearly publication which became the quarterly Adult Education in 1934. The BIAE’s new Secretary William Emrys Williams (best known perhaps for his work as editor in chief at Penguin books, which included the launch of the Pelican imprint), who had edited the WEA’s The Highway since 1930 (and would continue, at times controversially, as editor until 1939), wanted to turn the institute into a more influential, dynamic voice in the debate about adult education, and to engage a wider audience in that debate. When Williams assumed editorship of The Highway he told readers he intended to run the journal ‘in the interests of the adult education movement as a whole, and not just those of the Association’. His aim was to make the journal more democratic and participative, very much in the spirit of the WEA itself, which Williams described as ‘not just a federation of students, but a fellowship of all who believe in education and who wish to make it more and more accessible. It stands above all for the abolition of privilege and of competition in educational systems.’ He was true to his promise ‘to provoke opinion and to foster controversy’ in the pursuit of a better national education policy. Williams’ leadership of the BIAE was energetic and creative, typified by a willingness to push back the boundaries of what was considered relevant to the movement. Up until 1934, the institute saw itself more as ‘a research laboratory’, setting up inquiries and producing a series of reports intended to support ‘the revision and development of educational policy’ (one of its reports, The Film in National Life [1932], resulted in the creation of the British Film Institute). Williams’ far-sighted innovations included the Art for the People programme, which gave working people around the country an opportunity to see important works of art (leading, eventually, to the creation of the Arts Council), and the Army Bureau of Current Affairs, which produced a series of topical short papers to stimulate discussion among troops during the Second World War. Somehow, Williams managed to sell the idea that the troops defending democracy should also be active participants in it. Williams was very open to the possibilities of different, often new, forms of educational activity, and was concerned always to encourage ‘spectators’ to become participants - the most immediate requirement of adult education, as he saw it. Students’ voices mattered, he believed, and the need to create a better understanding between participants and providers became a theme of his early editorials in Adult Education. The publication became a vital forum for discussing the work of adult educators and adult education’s future as a movement. Williams’ first contribution to the journal - ‘The Institute: Terminus or Junction?’ - invited members to bring their understanding of ‘what is going on in adult education and what ought to be going on’ to discussions of the future of the institute. In another article - ‘The Storm Troops and the Militia’ - he launched a debate among adult educators on how best to reconcile the different needs of the ‘storm troops’ of the three-year tutorial classes with those of the ‘militia army’ of less able or less ambitious adult students. Williams saw the journal not just as a way of communicating institute business to members but as a forum for wider, democratic debate, going well beyond the day-to-day concerns of the institute and attempting to put the work of adult educators in a much broader context. The British Institute of Adult Education merged with the National Foundation for Adult Education in 1949 to form the National Institute of Adult Education. The NIAE continued to publish Adult Education, under the shrewd leadership of Edward Hutchinson who, adapting to straitened circumstances, took to editing the journal himself (he was also finance officer, conference manager and research and development officer, among other things). Hutchinson grew the organisation into a prominent national source of information and thought about adult education, giving the journal a leading role in developing that thought and supporting others to contribute to it. The Highway had ceased publishing in 1959, leaving Adult Education as the only serious periodical publication in the field. The journal continued to publish under Arthur Stock’s directorship, which, in 1983, saw the institute again change its name, this time to the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE). Alan Tuckett, who took over the directorship of NIACE in 1988, was a social entrepreneur in the tradition of Williams (though, like Hutchinson, he also had a talent for encouraging others). He launched the monthly Adults Learning as a successor to the quarterly Adult Education in 1989, making what Judith Summers described as ‘a statement of intent to reach out actively to a widening constituency’. He also organised the first Adult Learners’ Week (in the teeth of a good deal of internal opposition), launching an idea now copied in countries around the world, developed NIACE’s campaigning and publications operations, and transformed NIACE’s research and policy-making capability, supported by outstanding staff such as Naomi Sargant and Alastair Thomson. I joined NIACE as editor of Adults Learning in September 2002 having spent the previous few years teaching and researching. The panel that interviewed me included Jane Thompson, one of the best and most influential writers on adult education and a big supporter of the journal. I had worked in journalism in the past but not for the best part of a decade. I knew very little about publishing and had no experience whatsoever of magazine production. I came to it with the idea of creating something that was thoughtful and rigorous, yet accessible to the average reader, while making it look ‘as nice as we can afford to’ (to quote Williams’ reply to a critic of his editorship of The Highway). I also, like Williams, wanted to make it about ‘the interests of the adult education movement as a whole’ rather than the narrower concerns of NIACE (something, I should add, Alan Tuckett enthusiastically supported, recognising that an editorially independent journal was, in some respects, better for NIACE, as well as for the wider sector). The people who agreed to write for me or be interviewed by me included not only some of the luminaries of the adult education world but also adult education teachers and students. All, almost without exception, were happy to contribute their work without a fee. I was lucky to be able to include the work of some outstanding writers, including regular columnists John Field and Tom Schuller, Alison Wolf, Ewart Keep, Mick Fletcher, Anna Coote, Ian Martin, Ann Walker, Mike Campbell, Mary Stuart, Stephen McNair, Frank Coffield, Jane Thompson, Ken Spours, Ann Hodgson, Lorna Unwin, Kathryn Ecclestone, Gert Biesta, Veronica McGivney, Jim Crowther, Mark Ravenhall, Alastair Thomson and, of course, Alan Tuckett. There are many more and I apologise to those I have omitted to mention. Keen to broaden the appeal of the journal and to highlight the wider relevance of adult education I also interviewed a number of people who, while outside the sector, had things to say which adult educators would find relevant, engaging or inspirational. These included Richard Hoggart, Tony Benn, Maggi Hambling, Esther Brunstein, David Puttnam and the incredible Margaret Aspinall of the Hillsborough Family Support Group (the interview that will stay with me the longest). One-off issues on special themes, such as poverty and low pay, were an attempt to do something similar. I also visited and reported on some remarkable projects, such as the North Edinburgh Social History Group, Tent City University, Lincoln’s Social Science Centre and Liverpool’s The Reader Organisation. One small coup, in May 2010, was publishing one of the first interviews with new Prime Minister David Cameron (though it was actually written shortly before the election - we also persuaded Gordon Brown and Nick Clegg to answer the same questions). Mr Cameron’s warm words and passionately stated commitment to ‘adult learning and the way it inspires people’ are well worth revisiting in the light of the cuts which have since decimated the sector. Funding cuts and the decline in policy interest in adult education which accompanied the growing obsession of ministers with skills and employability (narrowly conceived) made it difficult to maintain a journal that was about adult education as a whole, rather than, say, skills or training, or further education. Subscriber numbers fell and, without resources to market or source advertising, it was perhaps inevitable that the journal would close. Nevertheless, I think it did something very valuable in offering a very diverse and often disconnected readership a sense of being part of something bigger, whether that was understood to mean a movement or a sector. As John Field said to me once, it gave people a sense of the whole forest, not just the trees surrounding them. It was a place where it was all brought together: what adult education does, the difference it can make and why it matters, in all its different guises and settings. It helped people think and encouraged them to become participants in the leadership of thought in adult education. It also tried to keep alive the link with adult education’s historic roots. It is a real concern that there is now so little defence of adult education that is about anything other than skills for work. We need to do more to resist this and rediscover some of the values of our past, as well as finding find new ways to talk about them. I fear there is no bringing back Adults Learning but I do believe there is a need for something that does what it used to, though perhaps in a new form. I’d love hear what people think about this and what their thoughts are as to what might replace Adults Learning, what the sector needs and what would be valuable as a way of developing thinking and advocacy within and about adult education. Please feel free to comment on this post. I’d love to hear what you think. Some of the material for the article draws on Sander Meredeen’s excellent book, The Man Who Made Penguins: The Life of Sir William Emrys Williams (Darien Jones Publishing, 2007)

Over the next few years, Generation Z will be begin entering the workplace. Born around the year 2000, the internet has been a constant presence in their lives, and 81% of this new generation use some kind of social media. From the way they interact with one another to their use of new technologies, Gen […]

I was surprised to read today in a new report by Bersin that 66% of L&D professionals say that they are having trouble getting employees to engage with L&D offerings, and worryingly, less than 25% of line managers think that their L&D department is critical to achieving business goals. An organisation must rely on their […]

Motivating and engaging staff is essential to creating a happy and industrious workplace.  However today’s performance management processes seem to be hindering rather than helping managers bring out the best in their employees. Around one in three UK workers think their company’s performance management process is unfair (CIPD, 2014), a waste of time, and fails […]

For more information, visit www.kallidus.com/content References 1. The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-platform Consumer Behavior. Google and IPSOS (2012) 2. Gaming Britain - Pull-out guide and infographic. Internet Advertising Bureau UK (2012) 3. When Screens Collide: Viewer Behavior in Multi-screen Environments. Yume.com (2015) 4. The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-platform Consumer Behavior. Google and IPSOS (2012) […]

CIPD recently released the results of their seventeenth annual Learning and Development survey, and this year’s results were interesting to say the least. The survey, which examines current trends and practices in L&D, reported that a third of organisations feel their learning and development processes are not properly aligned with business strategy, with 6% having […]

LearnUpon will be exhibiting at Learning Solutions on the 24th and 25th of March in the Hilton Orlando Lake Buena Vista, Florida. The eLearning Guild’s Learning Solutions Conference & Expo is the leading industry event for technology-supported learning and performance support professionals.   This year the conference is running three featured panels to explore the main areas in which technology is disrupting training. LearnUpon’s Brendan, Caoimhín and Phily will be at Booth #413 from 9:30am to 6:30pm on Wednesday the 24th and 9:30am to 3pm on Thursday the 25th. Stop by our booth to say hello and get a demo of our amazing LMS. Conferences like Learning Solutions offer us an invaluable opportunity to meet our customers, get feedback on our system, and meet others in the eLearning industry. It’s our second time exhibiting at this event and we’re really looking forward to spending a few days in sunny Orlando! The post LearnUpon exhibiting at Learning Solutions 2015 appeared first on LearnUpon.

  Learning happens everywhere Tin Can API, also known as Experience API (xAPI), tracks activities that happen as part of learning. According to Rustici Software, learning happens everywhere and the minds behind the API have built it to track all learning experiences. Tin Can is effectively the new SCORM, although SCORM isn’t going away anytime soon. The main difference between Tin Can and SCORM course content is the type of learning that is tracked. Tin Can doesn’t just track online course learning, as is the case with SCORM. Tin Can tracks any type of learning, both online and offline. The Tin Can syntax features three core elements: a noun (actor), a verb, and an object (action). For example, "I did this" or "Mary completed health and safety training" or "John read LearnUpon’s help guide". Tin Can tracks data using these statements and reports the data back to a Learning Record Store (LRS) where it is stored. Of course, you don’t need a full LRS to track statements. Your own learning management system (LMS) may well be Tin Can compliant making it possible to track, store, and report on said statements, very similar to how LearnUpon works in this regard. LearnUpon is not an LRS but it can still store, track and report statements. One misconception when it comes to adopting Tin Can is that using this format will provide you with beautifully designed course content. It’s a new way to track a user progress, it’s not a new way to present your content. The quality of your course content is still down to the authoring tool and associated instruction design, not Tin Can. In addition, while Tin Can offers improved tracking of eLearning content on mobile devices, it should be noted that the course content itself will not be responsive if it hasn’t been developed that way.   What are the benefits of Tin Can API? As the Tin Can API is capable of tracking all learning experiences it allows you to capture each learner’s activities which means you can see the bigger picture. With Tin Can the type of learning that can be tracked is infinite. You can track online learning, offline learning, games, simulations, informal learning, interactive learning, adaptive learning, real-world performance or On-The-Job training (OJT), blended learning, team-based learning, and long-term learning. All this tracking results in a substantial increase in the quantity and quality of learner data being captured. The label "quantified learner" has emerged as a term to reflect the tracking of individual learning data through technology. This data can be used to review previous learning experiences and, more importantly, it can be analysed to plan for future learning by mapping what the learner knows to what they need to know and using this analysis to define goals that the learner can work towards.   What’s next? If you found this post helpful you might be interested in reading Project Tin Can Explained. Stay tuned to our blog for Tin Can announcements over the coming weeks. The post What is Tin Can API? appeared first on LearnUpon.

Dublin, Ireland, April 15th 2015 - LearnUpon, a cloud based learning management system (LMS), have announced the launch of an iOS app version of their LMS making it super easy for learners to complete their courses, exams and surveys on their iPhone or iPad, with their progress and completion data synced up to LearnUpon in real-time.   LearnUpon’s new app improves the learning experience by delivering content directly to the learner’s iOS device in various formats including documents, video and audio, so they can learn when, how and where they want to learn. Learners can also use the iOS app to track course progress, complete exams and surveys, access results, and send messages to instructors, directly from their iPhone. Instructor and admin users can also use the app to respond to learner questions while on the go.   Commenting on the announcement LearnUpon’s CEO, Brendan Noud, said "As we continue to release exciting new features to LearnUpon we are delighted to now make our native iOS app available to learners. As learners increasingly think mobile first our new iOS app for iPhone and iPad will enhance their learning experience, providing them with a simple way to learn anywhere through their mobile device. We have lots more exciting enhancements planned for release over the coming months which our customers can look forward to."   LearnUpon’s iOS app is available to download now from the App Store.   The post LearnUpon announces launch of iOS App appeared first on LearnUpon.

We’re thrilled to announce that LearnUpon picked up not one, not two, but three awards at the inaugural Blacknight SME Awards last Saturday! LearnUpon won the ‘Customer Focus’, ‘B2B Export’ and ‘Grand Prix’ categories. The event, which celebrated Irish SMEs from all over the country, took place in the Radisson Hotel in Cork and was organised by Damien Mulley of Mulley Communications. LearnUpon was represented by Susan Nolan, Operations Manager, who said it was a fantastic night that provided a great opportunity to meet and chat with some very talented fellow SMEs. Susan was honored to accept the awards and say a few words on the company’s behalf. While we’re delighted with each of the awards we received, we’re particularly delighted that we won the ‘Customer Focus’ category. We place a high priority on delivering outstanding customer support and every member of our support team is dedicated to helping each and every one of our customers. We believe our customer support is one of the most important things that sets us apart from the competition so it’s brilliant to see it get the recognition it deserves. We’d also like to say well done to Damien Mulley for organising such an outstanding event! The post LearnUpon wins Grand Prix at the 2015 SME Awards appeared first on LearnUpon.

We’re getting ready to head Stateside for the 2015 ATD International Annual Conference & Expo which is taking place in Florida next week. The Orange County Convention Center is hosting this year’s event and it’s sure to be a busy one with over 10,500 learning and development professionals expected to attend. If you’re attending ATD and looking for a learning management system we recommend you visit Booth 1009 to take a first hand look at LearnUpon, the world’s fastest growing LMS. Brendan, Caoimhín and Phily will be on hand to demo LearnUpon’s latest features and releases, including our brand new iOS App. We love exhibiting at these type of events as we get to catch up with our colleagues in the industry, meet our customers and also get feedback from attendees. Visit our stand next Monday (9:30am to 3pm), Tuesday (9:30am to 3pm) and Wednesday (9:30am to 1:30pm). View this map to see LearnUpon’s booth (#1009) location on the ATD exhibition floor. The post LearnUpon exhibiting at ATD 2015 appeared first on LearnUpon.

Dublin, Ireland May 20th 2015 - LearnUpon, the world’s fastest growing cloud-based learning management system (LMS), today announces the introduction of support for Tin Can compliant course content. LearnUpon now supports the launching, tracking and reporting of Tin Can content, including the shipment of the resulting Tin Can statements to their customers’ preferred Learning Record Store (LRS). In addition, LearnUpon now provides seamless integration with not one, but four of the leading Learning Record Stores on the market - Wax LRS by Saltbox, Grassblade LRS, WaterShed LRS and Learning Locker. Tin Can API, which is also known as Experience API or xAPI, has been delivered by Rustici Software and is the latest standard in online learning. Tin Can provides a more flexible and detailed view of a learner’s progress than its predecessor SCORM, with the distinct advantage being its ability to track the learner’s individual activities or experiences both inside and outside traditional learning environments. Commenting on the announcement LearnUpon’s CEO, Brendan Noud, said "We are delighted to announce the introduction of Tin Can to LearnUpon. Tin Can is the next step in eLearning technology and we are happy to make it available to all LearnUpon customers. Similar to our approach to SCORM support, when it came to Tin Can we wanted to remove all the pain often associated with importing 3rd party content to an LMS. LearnUpon’s Tin Can support allows our customers to import their content in seconds. "In addition to providing Tin Can support we also wanted to provide seamless integration with the leading LRS platforms on the market, allowing our customers to combine the power of the world’s leading cloud based LMS with the added functionality an LRS offers," he added. Try out LearnUpon’s Tin Can features by signing up for a 30 day free trial. For further information on Tin Can support and other LearnUpon features email hello@learnupon.com. The post LearnUpon introduces Tin Can support appeared first on LearnUpon.

With a name like Learning Record Store you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s a dusty old shop full of the world’s groundbreaking vinyl records, all the ones you’d have to listen to learn what music is all about. An LRS is very different to that dusty old record store. What is an LRS? A Learning Record Store, or LRS, is a new system that’s used in conjunction with the Tin Can API to collect, store and retrieve people’s learning experiences. By storing the learner experiences it allows the data to be presented in a way that makes it accessible and easy to interpret. Although LRSs are relatively new to the eLearning market there are a substantial number of systems to choose from including, Wax LRS by Saltbox, Grassblade LRS, Watershed LRS and Learning Locker. These are four of the market’s leading LRSs and LearnUpon supports integration with each of these systems. How does it work? An LRS uses the Tin Can API to collect learner data (or experiences) from both online and offline sources. These experiences are reported back to the LRS in the form of Tin Can statements, where they are stored. These statements can then be retrieved for reporting and interpretation of the learner data. Typically an LRS will provide dashboards and reporting functions built specifically for these purposes. What is the difference between a LRS and a LMS? The main difference between these two systems is the LRS is primarily in place to track and store Tin Can statements whereas the LMS (in addition to managing all your learning needs) tracks and reports the statements through its own native reporting but can also forward the data to an LRS if needed. It’s important to note that a LRS is not a replacement for a LMS or vice versa. It’s also important to note that LMS providers may very well build an LRS into their overall LMS product. But ultimately, you don’t have to have an LRS to generate reports, you should be able to do that within your LMS. For example, with LearnUpon’s learning management system it’s possible to store, track and report Tin Can statements without the need for a Learning Record Store. However, as mentioned previously, LearnUpon is capable of forwarding these statements to your LRS of choice where you can report on, and crunch, your Tin Can data in the format you require. While building an LRS into an LMS is possible, we felt that it was best to focus on the learning and course content and leave that the management of Tin Can data to a system that is specialised in such data, i.e. a LRS. Taking this approach also opens LearnUpon up to lots of current LRS users who might now want to expand the functionality available to them when it comes to assigning and tracking course content by implementing a LMS. What’s next? If you found this post helpful you might be interested in reading What is Tin Can API? or LearnUpon introduces Tin Can support. The post What is an LRS? appeared first on LearnUpon.

About the role Due to our rapid growth we are now looking to hire a dynamic Content Marketing Specialist who will be responsible for the generation of unique marketing content. This is an exciting opportunity that will see the successful candidate play a key role in LearnUpon’s future growth.   Specifically the role will involve: The development, implementation and execution of a clear, engaging and brand building content marketing strategy. The development of creative and compelling content that increases awareness and brand visibility, drives demand generation and enhances audience engagement. Copywriting activities including the generation of blog posts, website, press releases, online/print ads, social media posts and email marketing content. The creation of shareable content marketing assets that help learning management system (LMS) buyers at each stage of the purchasing funnel, including infographics, customer showcases, presentations, audio and video. Identifying and reporting key metrics on how the content has been received in order to deliver consumer insight. Collaborating with, and reporting to, the Digital Marketing Manager.   Who we are looking for The person we are looking for will have: Strong content generation skills to include copywriting, image, audio and video. SEO, online, social media and brand building experience At least 4 years exposure to digital marketing in a fast-paced dynamic environment, preferably in SaaS-based B2B marketing. Third level degree in marketing or business A proven track record at creating, monitoring and optimizing content marketing assets Be highly motivated and want to achieve something special with our company You will be bright, hard-working and have the initiative and ability to solve problems by yourself while knowing when it’s time to call on your colleagues for some assistance. Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment Ability to develop and maintain strong relationships Strong organizational skills and an ability to multi-task You will have excellent written and spoken English for communicating with our customers (in a friendly and personable way!).   Considered as a bonus for the role: Experience with SaaS and/or at a SaaS company is a big plus An eLearning / LMS background while not necessary would be a bonus   Benefits Competitive salary and benefits 22 days annual leave Flexible working hours Exciting start-up environment with rapidly expanding superstar team Excellent career progression opportunities for the right candidate Team building events   If you are interested in applying for this role please send your CV in confidence to caroline@learnupon.com. Please include a sample of your previous content marketing work with your submission. We look forward to hearing from you!   About LearnUpon LearnUpon is a new, exciting cloud based software company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Our mission is to change the way online learning is delivered by developing a Learning Management System (LMS) that companies love to use. We are addressing the common frustrations with traditional learning management systems by developing a platform that can be set-up in minutes, is easy and intuitive to use, looks amazing and doesn’t cost a fortune. Since launching LearnUpon in mid 2012 we are now one of the fastest growing LMS platforms in the world with new customers signing up for our platform every day. Our customers are based in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Spain, Holland, South Africa and of course here in Ireland.   LearnUpon is growing incredibly fast with established and increasing revenue. The company is a very open, collaborative environment where team and individual accomplishments are celebrated and encouraged. Our product is on the path to being very successful and the people who join now will be critical contributors to its ongoing adoption throughout the world.   Life at LearnUpon is fun and challenging. You will get to work with a great team in a Dublin city centre location. We are constantly making LearnUpon better for our customers and never adopt an "it will do" attitude when it comes to our platform. We love releasing new features which make our customers go "wow". All the team are given time-out each month to go off and think and come up with amazing new ideas which will make LearnUpon even better. Everyone contributes and everyone’s ideas are respected. We treat our staff like our customers, they are the most important elements in our business without whom we would just be another run of the mill, boring, clunky LMS. The post We’re hiring! Content Marketing Specialist appeared first on LearnUpon.

About the role Due to our rapid growth we are now looking to hire an experienced and passionate Digital Marketing Analyst who will be responsible for the execution and analysis of our marketing activities. This is an exciting opportunity that will see the successful candidate play a key role in LearnUpon’s future growth.   Specifically the role will involve: Quantitative analysis of marketing activities in order to provide business insights and make recommendations that will help improve our digital marketing strategy. Development of metrics and strategies to test and enhance lead generation performance. Generation, execution and analysis of viral growth experiments. Website conversion optimisation and A/B testing. Collaborating with, and reporting to, the Digital Marketing Manager.   Who we are looking for The person we are looking for will have: The ability to take a scientific approach to all marketing activities in order to further analyse and optimise our sales funnel. We’re looking for someone who is analytically minded and enjoys focusing their attention on the details. A passion for data and metrics Strong analytical skills with the ability to understand and interpret data and make recommendations for digital campaigns. The ability to manage and organise data into dashboards, KPI’s and ad hoc reports that can assist management with decision making. At least 4 years exposure to digital marketing in a fast-paced dynamic environment, preferably in SaaS-based B2B marketing. Third level degree in one of the following: Business Information Systems, BI, Analytics, Mathematics/Statistics, Computing A proven track record at creating, monitoring and optimizing marketing activities. Highly proficient in the use of digital marketing and funnel analysis tools, such as, Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, Hubspot Be highly motivated and want to achieve something special with our company You will be bright, hard-working and have the initiative and ability to solve problems by yourself while knowing when it’s time to call on your colleagues for some assistance. Ability to work collaboratively in a team environment Ability to develop and maintain strong relationships Strong organizational skills and an ability to multi-task You will have excellent written and spoken English for communicating with our customers (in a friendly and personable way!).   Considered as a bonus for the role: Experience with SaaS and/or at a SaaS company is a big plus An eLearning / LMS background while not necessary would be a bonus   Benefits Competitive salary and benefits 22 days annual leave Flexible working hours Exciting start-up environment with rapidly expanding superstar team Excellent career progression opportunities for the right candidate Team building events   If you are interested in applying for this role please send your CV in confidence to caroline@learnupon.com. We look forward to hearing from you!   About LearnUpon LearnUpon is a new, exciting cloud based software company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Our mission is to change the way online learning is delivered by developing a Learning Management System (LMS) that companies love to use. We are addressing the common frustrations with traditional learning management systems by developing a platform that can be set-up in minutes, is easy and intuitive to use, looks amazing and doesn’t cost a fortune. Since launching LearnUpon in mid 2012 we are now one of the fastest growing LMS platforms in the world with new customers signing up for our platform every day. Our customers are based in the US, Canada, UK, Australia, Spain, South Africa and of course here in Ireland.   LearnUpon is growing incredibly fast with established and increasing revenue. The company is a very open, collaborative environment where team and individual accomplishments are celebrated and encouraged. Our product is on the path to being very successful and the people who join now will be critical contributors to its ongoing adoption throughout the world.   Life at LearnUpon is fun and challenging. You will get to work with a great team in a Dublin city centre location. We are constantly making LearnUpon better for our customers and never adopt an "it will do" attitude when it comes to our platform. We love releasing new features which make our customers go "wow". All the team are given time-out each month to go off and think and come up with amazing new ideas which will make LearnUpon even better. Everyone contributes and everyone’s ideas are respected. We treat our staff like our customers, they are the most important elements in our business without whom we would just be another run of the mill, boring, clunky LMS. The post We’re hiring! Digital Marketing Analyst appeared first on LearnUpon.

  Earlier this week Capterra, a service that connects buyers and sellers of business software, released a learning management system reviews grid to highlight the top performing LMS vendors according to their customers. We’re delighted to announce that LearnUpon is positioned way up there in the top right quadrant thanks to scoring 5 out of 5 for customer service and 4.8 out of 5 for ease of use.   Amazing customer service and ease of use are two of the three core values on which we’ve built LearnUpon. The third is providing our customers with an affordable learning management solution. An easy to use platform coupled with unrivalled 24/7 customer support has resulted in LearnUpon becoming the fastest growing LMS vendor in the world today. But don’t take our word for it, here’s what our customers have to say.   "They came up top in terms of value for money, having the features we needed, user-friendliness and support. With LearnUpon we received an excellent product, within budget and with excellent support along the way. I couldn’t be happier with our decision to select them as our LMS." Mo Qutub, Education Manager at World Obesity Federation   "The customer service stands out the most. Phily, Ian and Lisa have always answered or fixed anything so quickly. We couldn’t be happier." Tatum Bandy, Owner at American Technical Institute   "They are quick to answer questions and get you the help you need, as well as constantly updating and improving the system based on what their customers are looking for and submitting to them. I would recommend LearnUpon to anyone looking for an LMS system." Ryan Carnes, Partner at Cornerstone Learning House   "Metrics show that our external customer learners are pleased with the system and courses available within it. More than 90% responded that they "Strongly Agree" that the system and modules were easy to navigate." Layne Northsea, Director, Global Education and Training at Xoft, Inc.   "LearnUpon’s mission was to build an LMS that is quick to setup, super easy to use and backed up by exceptional customer support. They have, without a doubt, succeeded on all three goals." Amanda Kizer, Owner at Bright Idea Multimedia   "We needed a hosted system that was affordable, customizable, and allowed for several different training modalities (documents, videos, SCORM content, and Instructor-led sessions). We also needed something that didn’t require us to have dedicated IT staff to manage it. We found ALL of this in LearnUpon." Leslie Dollman, MIS Administrator at Milestone HCQU West   "This is a very powerful and easy to use LMS system. The people at LearnUpon have been willing to work with us to solve our urgent LMS business needs. They have been tremendous asset for us." James Weaver, IT Support Specalist at Avant Healthcare Professionals   "A constantly evolving simple and cost effective LMS with a second to none support team. Even throughout our trial period Brendan and the LearnUpon team couldn’t do enough and the quality, support and level of customer service really is unbeatable and like nothing I have experienced before." Charles Cain, IT Technician at The Harley Medical Group   "Highly recommended Learning Management System. Intuitive and affordable, with a great team behind it. Would highly recommend to anyone looking to deliver online courses." Brian Cahill, Online Coordinator at Sound Training Online   "I don’t feel like I have just bought a product, I feel like I have entered into a partnership with a highly skilled, ambitious and professional team of LMS experts. They’re a young, vibrant, ambitious team who definitely put their customers at the very centre of what they do. They understand that their customers aren’t buying a system, they’re buying a means for taking their eLearning products to market." Richard Smith, Chief Executive at Maybo Ltd   We obsess over providing amazing service and support to our customers along with an easy to use learning management system that meets their needs and expectations. Our 5 star learning management system reviews show that our unwavering dedication to our customers and quick response time is certainly paying off.   If you’d like to try out LearnUpon for yourself then sign up for a free 30 day trial or contact us to find out more about our amazing learning management system. The post Our 5 Star Learning Management System Reviews appeared first on LearnUpon.

Dublin, Ireland July 29th 2015 - LearnUpon, the world’s fastest growing cloud-based LMS, today announces the launch of its learning management system for Associations and Professional Bodies.   LearnUpon understands the importance for Associations and Professional Bodies to allow their members to track and manage their continuing professional development. LearnUpon’s Associations offering includes support for awarding a wide range of learning credits including CPD, CEU, CME and CLE. Learning credits and certificates can be automatically awarded to members on successful completion of online courses, classroom based courses or attending conferences. LearnUpon also provides the ability for members to track their external CPD, enabling them to manage all of their continuing education in one place.   In addition to these great features, LearnUpon also provides support for setting up different membership types and pricing, AMS integration, eCommerce functionality and much more.   Commenting on the announcement LearnUpon’s CEO, Brendan Noud, said "We are very excited to make the world’s fastest growing LMS available to associations and professional bodies all over the world. We already have a number of leading associations using LearnUpon and wanted to expand our feature set to better address the needs of these types of organisations.   "By combining these unique and specialised features with LearnUpon’s renowned 24/7 customer support and affordable pricing, it will be easier than ever for associations to deliver their education offerings to their members," he added.   LearnUpon is currently used by some of the world’s leading Associations and Professional Bodies including NTMA, IIE, ATI, IICIE, the IDA and World Obesity Federation.   LearnUpon will officially launch their LMS for Associations and Professional Bodies at the 2015 ASAE Annual Meeting & Exposition which takes place from August 8th to 11th in the Cobo Center, Detroit Michigan. LearnUpon will be located at Booth 327 on the expo floor from 10:15am to 1:45pm on Sunday the 9th and Monday the 10th of August.   For further information on LearnUpon for Associations and Professional Bodies visit www.learnupon.com or email hello@learnupon.com to schedule a personalized demonstration with one of LearnUpon’s Account Managers. The post LearnUpon launches Learning Management System for Associations and Professional Bodies appeared first on LearnUpon.

Following on from the launch of our learning management system for Associations and Professional Bodies last week, we’re delighted to announce that we’ll be exhibiting at the 2015 ASAE Annual Conference and Exposition. It’s our first time exhibiting at ASAE and we’re really looking forward to it!   You’ll find Brendan, Caoimhín and Phily at Booth 327 in the Cobo Center from 10:15am to 1:45pm on Sunday the 9th and Monday the 10th of August. If you want to see LearnUpon in action just visit our stand and we will happily take you through the feature set we’ve built to meet the specific learning management needs of Associations and Professional Bodies. We’ll also be running a competition to win a brand new iPad Air.   We love exhibiting at these events as it gives us an opportunity to get out of the office to meet our existing customers and also get feedback on our system from attendees.   So if you’re attending ASAE next week be sure to stop by Booth 327 to say hello and get a demo of the best LMS for Associations and Professional Bodies. The post LearnUpon exhibiting at ASAE Annual 2015 appeared first on LearnUpon.