Concluding Address Dr Kim Howells, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Lifelong Learning, UK The issues discussed over the past three days have been at the very heart of the UK Presidency's Education and Social Affairs agenda, lifelong learning, Employability, Social Inclusion and active citizenship. When my colleague, Tessa Blackstone, opened this conference on Sunday - all that time ago - I do not think any of us expected to achieve as much as we have in just three days. But we had one thing in common. A desire to learn from each other - to learn from each other's strengths and to see how we could apply them to our own countries. It falls to me, in this very final session, to try to sum up what we have achieved in these exciting, but exhausting, three days. Not an easy job and I cannot possibly do justice to the breadth and depth of all the sessions. At a conference such as this, there is so much going on - so many ideas being thrown into the melting pot. It is too easy to forget the original aims of the conference. So let me remind you of our original aims. They were to develop practical strategies which: Maximise the contribution lifelong learning can make to: Employability, adaptability and competitiveness Promoting social inclusion Active citizenship Maximise opportunities for all through the creative use of information technology. In the very first session of the conference - before you had heard a single speech we asked you to identify the issues you wanted to discuss. To quote from our Conference newspaper you said that, for most of you, 'lifelong learning must be seen as inclusive. It is not only about people learning over long period of their lives, but about new and different people learning.' Many of you have pointed out that between us we have many of the tools for achieving the changes we all want to see. We have heard in workshops over the past three days about Europe-wide partnerships - LEONARDO and SOCRATES. To quote just two examples. Under LEONARDO, one of 300 projects involving the UK, Down District Council and the Essex's Returners' Unit, with partners in Italy and the Netherlands has developed a community based employment information service to help both men and woman return to work. And through the SOCRATES programme, sixth formers from a Widnes school have used ICT to communicate with their Spanish partners to research and publish bi-lingual tourist literature for each of their regions. We have also heard that the next generation of European programmes, when they come into being in the year 2000, should aim to improve people's employability as they prepare for work in a global economy. This is no doubt something the Joint Council of Education and Social Affairs Ministers will address when they discuss the new generation of programmes in Luxembourg on 4th June. Feedback The feedback from the workshops, and your discussions this morning have given us all a flavour of some of the many ideas and issues that have been shared about the nature of citizenship and its relation to learning how people can take ownership themselves how technology and broadcasting can help engage people as well as entertain them engaging small and medium sized enterprises in the learning revolution about partnership and providers' perspectives. During the conference we have had the benefit of the combined expertise of over 80 speakers from all parts of Europe. We have seen young people and older people enjoying learning, the activities in the square outside and in the town hall including the wonderful People's Cyber Café, and the visits you have made to Old Trafford and the Manchester United Shop. Finally, I must say a few thank yous to all the people and organisations who have put in so much hard work to make this conference the success it has been. Thank-you to all the speakers - all of whom provided such high quality and thought provoking contributions on which we were able to focus our discussions. Thank you to all the chairs and rapporteurs of the group work and to Juliet Morris, for being such an excellent chair on the first two days, and to many a politician's sparring partner, John Humphrys. I would like to say a big thank you, and I'm sure delegates will join me in this, to the European Commission for their support. Also, without whom we literally would not have been able to hold this conference, thank you to all those companies and organisations who have provided invaluable support in a variety of forms both before and during the conference: EMTA, Manchester City Council, Manchester TEC, Oracle, ICL and NIACE. I'm sure you will also want to join me in thanking the exhibitors, whose colourful show really brought this conference alive. Finally, I would like to say thank you to you all - the delegates - for working so hard over the last three days. I hope that we can keep up the momentum of discussions here and that you will have learnt something of use to you, something you can put into practice. 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. Back Home