|
|
Plenary Speeches
|
Theme 1 |
Theme 2 |
Theme 3 |
Theme 4
I have been struck by how, in just two days, so many of the boundaries which by tradition keep us apart - culture, language, convention - have been broken down by our shared enthusiasm for, and our commitment to, lifelong learning. But if we are to make a reality of lifelong learning we must find new ways of working across some of the other boundaries which traditionally have stood in our way. Lifelong learning should know no bounds. Lifelong learning is for all. It is central to the three key themes of the UK Presidency: strong economies; reducing unemployment, focusing on employability; and tackling social exclusion and multiple disadvantages in communities right across Europe. These are not separate issues to be dealt with in isolation, by different polices, programmes or Ministries. They interact one with the other and lifelong learning is the thread in the tapestry that weaves them together. Just consider these figures for the UK: 100,000 pupils leave primary school each year without basic literacy or numeracy; 68 % of school-age offenders sentenced in court are either excluded or persistent offenders; those without qualifications earn one fifth less than average earnings; 75% of people on custodial remand have a reading age of 10 or less. Despite our relatively strong record of falling unemployment, job growth and a flexible labour market, the exclusion cycle starts young. The link between, on the one hand, unemployment, a weak economy and social exclusion, and, on the other, poor educational standards is clear. Two thirds of school age offenders have either been excluded from school or played truant. Those with the lowest income are also those with the lowest levels of literacy. And if you look at any exclusion cycle you will find low educational standards and low skills at the core. The Exclusion Cycle:
Boundaries and Barriers This morning, I want to explore some of the boundaries and barriers that have stood in the way of translating the rhetoric of lifelong learning into reality, that make achieving our vision of a learning society across Europe such a challenge. I want to explore boundaries and barriers facing individuals: information and knowledge barriers; too rigid boundaries between leisure and work related learning; the excessive divide between the academic and the vocational; institutional and bureaucratic boundaries. I want to think about the potential of technology as a means of crossing boundaries. In this country, we recently published the results of a large scale National Adult Learning Survey. It tells us who is learning and who is not, and if they are not, why not. Much of this information is completely new because it covers informal learning and non-vocational or academic learning as well as structured education or training. It shows that people's attitudes to learning, and their involvement or lack of involvement, result from a complex mix of factors. Barriers and boundaries which they face include: the views and expectations of their families, which have often developed over several generations; boundaries created by low income and lack of employment; the fact that the better educated and better qualified are more likely to have jobs and therefore more likely to participate in learning; the fact that the better educated and better paid are likely to receive more training than the underqualified and poorly paid. The survey shows the barriers which are created by the cost of training for so many people. Those are boundaries and barriers which we hope in this country to at least partially address, with the introduction of individual learning accounts into which we hope that individuals, employers and the Government will invest. There are barriers which have resulted from previous experiences of learning, memories of a poor teacher, irrelevant classes or a qualification failed, all of which can put people off of learning for life. There are practical barriers caused, for example, by difficulties with travel, the lack of public transport at suitable times of day and night. - If you think that that is not really a great problem, just talk to David Blunkett some time about the problems he experienced in getting to evening classes to do his O-levels as a young man. - There are problems we know which are caused by family responsibilities, the question of who looks after the children or an older person who needs constant care. Four out of five non-working mothers said they would go out to work if they had the child care of their choice. They would involve themselves in education and training if they could. Today we have announced the National Child Care Strategy, part of which will be about making it easier for people to learn and to return to work. The Government is backing this commitment with over 3 hundred million pounds over the next 5 years. Innovative Opportunities There are barriers created by the lack of time. We cannot make time for people, but we can offer opportunities which are better suited to their circumstances: learning at home through broadcasting, information technology, videos; learning in local community centres and in libraries; developing learning centres in places like supermarkets where people go naturally every day. We need more imaginative, innovative and boundary-breaking approaches, approaches like the one that we see in the North East at the MetroCentre. There are other boundaries, age for example. Older people are much less likely to take part in learning, but learning can contribute vitally to an active life, to independence, to health and to citizenship. And there is the final frontier, the boundary of fear: 'I cannot learn; it is not for me.' Those are attitudes which we still encounter too often and I am afraid they have been exacerbated by the elitism and the exclusivity which has for too long affected the English education system. 32% of non-learners say that they are simply not interested in undertaking any learning and that they can think of nothing that would persuade them otherwise. Our challenge is to listen and learn just what are the boundaries and barriers which stand in the way of learning for them and then break those barriers down. Information For many people information is the single biggest barrier. It prevents them knowing what is available; from making informed choices about what and how to learn; and from understanding their employment prospects and options. Without informed choice, there can be no commitment. In the UK we have recently launched a free telephone helpline, Learning Direct. It provides information not just about courses, but also about the availability of childcare and financial support for learning. It is now taking some 600 calls a day and Adult Learners' Week and the BBC's 'Computers Don't Bite' campaign mentioned by Jane Drabble yesterday will greatly increase that number. The demand is clearly there. Our plans for the University for Industry will build on this to provide local advice and access to learning that is widely and easily available to both individuals and employers - as well as learning that is tailored to meet needs. The New Deal personal advisors are another example of providing information and advice to people to help them make choices about learning or experience to get back into work. But we need to find yet further ways to reach people - using new technology, exploring the possibilities of the world-wide web and multi-media to help people cross information and knowledge barriers. We need to look afresh at some of the rigid boundaries we have created between learning for work and learning for leisure. For example: almost as many middle aged people give voluntary work as their motivation to undertake learning as they do learning for current or future work; learning related to voluntary activity tends to last longer than learning related to current jobs; a third of learning that started out as non- vocational and for leisure was later felt to be of relevance to work. If the boundaries between leisure, learning and livelihood are so fluid for learners, we must at the very least do more to recognise the potential value of a wide range of learning experience in helping people improve their employability. We might also think again about who delivers programmes and how; about involving the voluntary sector as a partner, not just where intermediate labour markets are concerned, but where a wider range of learning opportunities is concerned too. We need to rethink our expectations about individual progress and achievement, and our qualifications and institutional structures. Such data also reinforces the need to carry on the fight to bridge the gap between academic and vocational learning routes. This is not a new issue. But it has a new urgency as we approach the 21st century. Individuals and employers recognise that employability crosses the boundaries of knowledge and competency. Long-standing values - 'academic = good' and 'vocational = less good' - are no longer applicable. Some employers feel that academic qualifications do not necessarily produce individuals with the skills the workplace requires. Others may feel that even National Vocational Qualifications are in some cases not sufficiently close to the needs of their business or they are suspect them of being less rigorous than academic qualifications - indeed, parents and children may feel the same. The Government's recent consultation document 'Qualifying for Success' looked at the future of post-16 qualifications. Despite the success of our General National Vocational Qualification or GNVQ, many English young people still follow a narrower programme of study and are taught for less time than their equivalents in most other European countries. We want to make it easier for young people to combine academic and vocational learning and to raise the status of vocational qualifications. So, one, we are developing new, smaller GNVQ qualifications which will be equivalent to single GCE A Level and AS Levels respectively. Two, we are creating a new key skills qualification which will record achievements in communication, application of number and Information Technology. And three, we are helping the many adults who do not want to do a full qualification straight off, by developing part-time modular packages and reflecting these in the qualification structures which recognise achievement by giving credits for units and allowing the accumulation of units for qualifications. Individuals will only be able to cross boundaries if institutions and bureaucracies extend theirs. Over a lifetime, people will increasingly want - and need - to mix and match episodes of education and training at home, perhaps using TV or computer packages; at work; in colleges or local learning centres; or at a university. And providers must find ways of making this happen for the individual. They will need to develop new partnerships - as many already have - with others in their local communities; with employers; with industry and with professional bodies. Co-operate More than Compete That means that they will need to co-operate more than compete, to find new ways of thinking, of working and of planning provision, of learning from each other - and do all this without endangering the autonomy of their institutions. There are already plenty of examples of good practice: National Training Award winner Priory Primary School - an inner city school - has achieved spectacular results through a training partnership which uses the skills and abilities of parents and the community to improve pupil achievements Middlesex University's work-based learning approach links the learning activities of employees with employers' needs and with both higher and further education and training opportunities in a flexible, adaptable and seamless way. All these linkages add value. The challenge to us all is to develop a range of services that will enable and support people in their learning. Local planning will be critical to our success. But there are also barriers when learning at work. In the UK our research indicates that groups most likely to take part in work related training are men, younger people, those in paid work, those working in managerial or professional occupations and those who left full-time education better qualified. It also shows that: for every plant or machine operative being trained in employment, there are nearly 3 managers or administrators and some 4 professionals; in the UK, about 22% of those in firms with under 25 employees receive job related training compared to over 30% of employees in larger organisations; men, younger people, and those already in paid work are most likely to take part in work related learning. We need to work with employers, to encourage them to train all employees and so enhance their employability and we need better co-operation between learning institutions and the workplace. Central Government We in central government - and our colleagues in regions and in local government - also need to change. When I joined central government, as Permanent Secretary of the Employment Department, Education was the responsibility of another Department. Shortly afterwards, the two Departments were merged. We have already reaped rewards from this. It has been easier to develop innovative Welfare to Work and lifelong learning strategies which meet the needs of individuals much more closely. It has been easier to involve employers in influencing education. Too often Government and local government departments have defined the world by problems and defined the problems by their bureaucratic structures. The public have the right to expect that we will address the issues which matter to them and that if necessary we will reinvent bureaucracies or work across bureaucratic boundaries to do so. We are seeking to do that here with initiatives like the Social Exclusion Unit and the Cabinet Office's co-ordinated initiative on older people. This latter initiative will establish about 20 or so local pilots across the UK to develop models of integrated, inter-agency strategies. They will also explore how we can better take into account older people's own wishes in the delivery of public services. Boundaries also exist at European level. Increased joint meetings between Social Affairs (Employment) and Education Councils of Ministers and collaboration between different parts of the Commission are very welcome. Technology, of course, has the greatest potential to help overcome all these boundaries, but let us not forget that technology can be a boundary maker as well as a boundary breaker. It can create new barriers for those who have no access to it or who are not trained or confident in its use. We must guard against creating a whole new dimension of exclusion. Technology We are determined to maximise the use of technology to help overcome boundaries in the learning field. The National Grid for Learning, a major new Internet resource, is a major step forward, supporting the Government's ambition of an Internet address for every pupil. At present the Grid is just a prototype but we expect great things from it. The Government's commitment to technology in schools is emphasised by the £100m programme in 1998-99, the biggest ever programme for IT in schools. And the Secretary of State announced last month a £23m package to provide nearly 10,000 teachers and headteachers with powerful multimedia laptop computers. The convergence of telephone, computer and television technologies is leading to the emergence of a new generation of digital multimedia services with a wide range of educational applications. I know that all round Europe there are exciting initiatives, often supported by the Commission, in the use of telematics, the development of new learning materials and teaching practices. There are many lessons throughout Europe from which we can all learn to maximise our future gain from the full range of available and developing technologies. We need to find new and different ways to break down barriers and to remove inequalities. I would like to see a system and supporting structures which enables everyone to expand their personal boundaries and achieve more that they ever thought they could, a system which enables individuals to develop a love of learning, from Day One in pre-school nursery, that will last them throughout full time education, working life and into active retirement. Idealistic? Maybe. But what we do not aim for we are unlikely to achieve. The UK is putting its commitment behind turning the lifelong learning vision into a reality. We are keen to learn from you; to work with you to break down international boundaries, to share knowledge and expertise so we can pass on the best skills to those interested to learn. SOCRATES, LEONARDO and ADAPT, and other European initiatives looking at transnational partnerships and ways of working across boundaries, and events such as this, will lead us into the future. But none of us should forget the individuals. Only they can make the Learning Society happen.
|
