Under-represented Groups
Learning for the 21st Century - Part Two: Challenge 10
2.28 Even with these reservations, the list of groups under-represented
across the whole range of post-school education and training still
appears to be disturbingly long. It includes:
- Unskilled manual workers
- Part-time and temporary workers
- People without qualifications
- Unemployed people
- Some groups of women - notably lone parents, and those on
the lowest incomes
- Those living in remote or isolated locations
- Some ethnic and linguistic minority groups
- Older adults
- People with learning difficulties and/ or disabilities
- People with literacy and/or numeracy difficulties
- Ex-offenders
- Disaffected young adults, and notably young men
2.29 For a lifelong learning strategy to succeed, policy development
must direct support and development towards the learning aspirations
and confidence of people in these groups. The demand for learning
from them must be substantially increased and the availability
of opportunities for them be greatly widened. All funders and
providers of lifelong learning -whether in schools, colleges,
universities, at work or in the community - should audit the provision
under their control and the social composition and achievements
of the learners involved in order to identify unacceptable biases
or absences and take steps to remove them.
2.30 The personal and social damage inflicted by inequality, social
exclusion and restricted opportunity is now widely recognised.
Lifelong learning should represent a resource for people, and
whole societies, to help them identify such inequalities, probe
their origins and begin to challenge them, using skills, information
and knowledge to achieve change. Learning alone cannot abolish
inequality and social divisions, but it can make a real contribution
to combating them, not least by eliminating the ways in which
social exclusion is reinforced through the very processes and
outcomes of education and training.