Theme 3:
Expanding the Learning Community - Promoting Access to Lifelong Learning using Broadcasting and the new Technologies
Dr Kim Howells,
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Lifelong Learning, UK
|
|
Chair's Opening Remarks
I have just been up in Mancat, amongst other places, and listening to students tell me about the problems with GNVQs. Listening to the students, many of them studying for the first time in ten or twelve years, was a bit of a mind-blower. We have got a long way to go yet. There is a lot of rhetoric around and there are a lot of problems around which we have got to sort out.
Now, new technology has a very crucial role to play both in improving competitiveness and in promoting social inclusion. These are two of the Conference's themes that you have heard about in Nick Stuart's and John Monks' sessions this morning. And we're particularly lucky this afternoon to have three very excellent speakers to address the issue of new technology: Lord David Sainsbury, Jane Drabble and Stephen Heppell.
With 99% of households having a television set, broadcasting obviously has enormous potential to open up access to learning. Jane Drabble will talk about this and talk about the Computer's Don't Byte series which is running at the moment. She and I launched the series last week at Broadcasting House, and we hope it will be instrumental in harnessing broadcasting to enable people to learn at home.
This morning I visited in this city the office of the telephone helpline Learning Direct - 0800 100 900 - and although I've been espousing the virtues of Learning Direct all over Britain, I went in to see it in action for the first time today. It is brilliant. It is extraordinary how something designed to help other people to learn becomes a learning experience for the people who are involved in it. And I do not think I have ever met such a great bunch of missionaries for lifelong learning as I did when I went around Learning Direct this morning. We hope that Learning Direct will stimulate demand and open up access in ways which have not happened before. I want it to become the helpline, the information spine, for the University for Industry, a dynamic new concept at the heart of this Government's commitment to lifelong learning.
|
Dr Kim Howells, MP for Pontypridd, was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State of Lifelong
Learning at the Department for Education and Employment in May 1997.
He was educated at Mountain Ash School, Hornsey College of Art, Cambridge College of Art and
Technology and Warwick University.
Before becoming MP in 1989, Dr Kim Howells worked in a number of industries, including coal and steel
and helped construct a research archive on post-war UK energy policy for University College, Swansea.
He worked for the South Wales miners as their spokesman and research officer and wrote and presented
programmes for radio and television.
|
