In 2019, Gordon Marsden, then Shadow Minister for Higher Education, Further Education and Skills brought together a genuinely cross-sector group to from the independent Lifelong Learning Commission. The Post 16 Education and Skills White Paper published this October is the first attempt by a government since the work of the commission to try and outline a vision for lifelong learning and how to implement it. At the heart of the commission’s final report was the idea that learning should be available to all via a joined up, coherent system enabling progression across and through based on a right to learn. It was this idea of an entitlement through life that formed the basis of the Right2Learn (R2L) campaign which Gordon, me, Professor Vicky Duckworth of Edge Hill University and Matt Waddup then of the University College Union (UCU) launched in 2020 to build on the work of the commission.
Several years on, this new White Paper includes much of what the commission and R2L argued for – attempts to join up the post 16 system, acknowledging the importance of careers advice, recognising the potential role for skills passports, some new investment for further education and prioritising those most in need of support. Reflecting though how this government is dealing with the country’s economic challenges it stops way short of a right to learn that puts less onus on the individual and thus can include all who truly need it. Some parts of a right to learn are funded for individuals – via the Growth and Skills Levy and directly for those furthest from the labour market. But levering in more funding is a big challenge at department level, even when three departments are involved now, given the Chancellor’s fiscal rules. To have greater hope of doing this a bigger vision is required which is why the right to learn remains a critical idea. Wisely the Government has shelved references in a document like this to a ‘tertiary’ system. This idea has great importance for those within the post 16 sector as a way of giving weight and rigour to what a joined- up system means but it isn’t one that can translate wider.
What is needed is something that can capture the attention of those outside the sector. R2L and Ruskin College supports the Get the Nation Learning campaign because it attempts to do just this. By bringing a range of organisations together including education providers, employers and charities it will amplify the lifelong learning message and reach a far broader audience than the those who have signed the Get the Nation Learning charter can do on their own.
Reaching that broader audience though means not just those individuals and communities outside of learning but politicians outside of these three departments. The White Paper was peppered with mentions of the industrial strategy but little on the skill needs and budget of the NHS, or how learning could be fundamental to the recent £5bn Pride of Place programme which is focused on over 300 of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country. Framing the Government’s aspirations around a right to learn for everyone connected to its work on employment rights, funded as the economy grows more by the state and business and less by the individual, encompassing skills for life as well as employment, would have the potential to propel lifelong learning to the forefront of politics today.
When Gordon was chairing the commission’s meetings he would exhort us to think how can lifelong learning be articulated in two minutes on the doorstep in his constituency in Blackpool as a big political idea. The Government needs big ideas that can transform lives and which it is possible to deliver on. A right to learn is one of those.
Professor Graeme Atherton, Vice-Principal, Ruskin College, Oxford and co-founder the Right2Learn campaign