Marketing, Outreach, Development and Recruitment
Learning for the 21st Century - Part 4: Section 9 - Point 4

9.9 The large increase in the numbers of learners that we envisage will not be possible without the deployment of imaginative strategies designed to reach out to those currently excluded from lifelong learning or who are disinclined to become involved. Providers, stimulated by leadership from the University for Industry, will need to devise innovative methods of marketing. More support will have to be given to programmes of outreach and development work.

9.10 Recognition and support will also need to be given to those organisations and bodies already working in the community and who demonstrate understanding of community needs and have already won the trust of the members of the communities or groups in question. Many of these organisations exist on shoestring and short-term budgets and yet they perform vital functions. If more learners are to be drawn into lifelong learning from amongst those groups that are currently absent or under-represented it will be essential for providers to work more closely with community-based bodies and funders will need to ensure that their existence is not constantly under threat because of shortage of finance.

9.11 In lifelong learning, recruitment to programmes of study will occur throughout the year and this will require adjustment to the organisation of learning programmes. Once recruited, as research has already demonstrated, new kinds of student, with different backgrounds and different educational biographies, will require new and often additional forms of support - financial, organisational, educational and emotional. As new groups of learners are drawn into lifelong learning, so the institutions which seek to meet their needs will also need to change.

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