What is lifelong learning?

1

• What is lifelong learning? 
• Campaign for Learning definition
• Learning is a process of active engagement with
  experience
• It is what people do when they want to make sense
  of the world
• It may involve an increase in skills, knowledge,
  understanding, values or the capacity to reflect
• Effective learning will lead to change,
  development and a desire to learn more

2

• Article 24  of the Universal Declaration of Human
  Rights,
• Article 14 of the International Covenant on
  Economic, Social And Cultural Rights (ICESCR)  
• Education is indispensable for realising other
  rights
• Education has an intrinsic value for the
  development of the individual for the exercise
  of capabilities, choices and freedoms
• Education has a care function as well as a
  development function this cannot  be guaranteed
  in a commercialised system
• Education enables one to overcome other social
  disadvantages
• Education is a Public Good as well as a Personal
  Good - it enriches cultural, social, political
  and economic life locally and globally
• Education credentials play a crucial role in
  mediating access to other goods, notably
  employment, culture etc.

3

• So, why do we need CALL? Why now?
• Rising charges and course cut backs have seen up
  to two million learners places lost from further
  and adult education in England since 2005. Now
  groups representing students, staff and local
  communities have come together to campaign for
  the right of everyone to access to learning
  irrespective of class, gender, age, ethnicity,
  sexual orientation, disability, asylum status or
  employment.
• We have founded CALL, the Campaigning Alliance
  for Lifelong Learning because we believe that
  affordable access to the life changing
  opportunities provided by education is the
  hallmark of a civilised society.

4

• Markets are driven by to maximise profit
• A marketisation model is not an appropriate
  template for adult education as
• some educational activities, such as those
  encouraging voluntary public service,
  participation in civil society, creativity,
  health and wellbeing have public value but are
  not intended to create a financial profit.
• some people are not major producers in market
  terms but still have a right to learning. These
  include older and isolated people, people with
  caring responsibilities and people whose
  long-term mental and physical health difficulties
  or learning disabilities restrict their
  employment options.

5

• Social capital is at risk as well as economic
  capital 
• Can we afford the consequences if notions of
• Collectivism, cooperation and service
• are overshadowed by
• individualism, competition and target-driven
  performance?
•    What we risk losing, many agree, are those
  communal spaces where meaningful social
  interaction broadens peoples sense of self
  beyond the me and I into the we and us.
• (Crossman et al 2000)

6

• Marketisation represents authoritarianism - rule
  by experts
• Much of part-time adult and community education
  is not directly for the market but is to educate
  citizens as members of civil society, and rounded
  individuals (with personal, cultural, social,
  emotional, health and care needs)
• Education for the citizen as a tolerant,
  cultural, responsible, political and engaged
  members of society should be valued and not
  simply market-led to produce citizens who are
  producers and consumers.
• In a market-led system based on buying training
  to produce measured employment-based outcomes,
  access to a broad curriculum of lifelong learning
  is no longer a matter of choice but of ability to
  pay.

7

• The WEA avoids coercion and uses the concepts of
• Involvement
• Democracy and active participation in planning
• Critical thinking
• Encouragement
• Shared learning
• Guidance
• Community as well as individual benefit
• rather than compulsion, prescription, testing and
  assignment.

8

• The impersonal teacher is saying in effect
  I am here because I am paid you are here
  because you have to be. We will both be satisfied
  if you get passing grades. I cant be concerned
  about how you develop as a person or what you do
  in life with the information I am communicating.
  I teach you what I am told to teach and that is
  the limit of my responsibility for you.
• D. J. Reitz 1998 Moral Crisis in the
  Schools What Parents and Teachers Need to Know
  Baltimore Cathedral Foundation Press
• Education based on a template approach is
  ultimately self-limiting. How can people and
  society develop if the adult curriculum is
  restricted to skills - without any emphasis on
  knowledge and understanding - and access to
  learning is on the basis of prescription or
  access to disposable income?

9

• There ARE economic benefits of adult learning
• Voluntary activity in the adult and community
  learning sectors is a social service that adds
  value.
• Active and engaged older people make fewer
  demands on health services.
• Increased tolerance improves community cohesion,
  with financial as well as social benefits.
• Childrens attainment and future employability
  increases if parents and carers are actively
  engaged in learning activities.
• Part-time adult learning is the doorway that
  makes educational systems easier to enter for the
  so-called hard to reach.
• Creativity and increased confidence can lead to
  employment.

10

• CALL believes our education system should
  provide
• equality of access to high quality education for
  all learners (regardless of class, gender, age,
  ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, asylum
  status or employment status), including a
  statutory right to learning in the workplace
• universal access to basic skills, ESOL and ICT
  courses and a first level three qualification
  regardless of age
• learner, teacher and community  involvement in
  all levels of decision-making about their
  learning wherever it takes place
• learning for personal wellbeing and development
  and the maintenance of local authority adult
  education
• a path out of poverty and disadvantage including
  widening participation in higher education and
  the provision of a second chance later in life
• a stable, motivated and rewarded workforce of
  professional practitioners.

11

• WHAT YOU CAN DO
• Join CALL
• Write to your MP about the Early Day Motion
• Join the Parliamentary lobby on 25 February
• Information on all of this is at
• www.callcampaign.co.uk

12

• Early Day Motion EDM no 533
• That this House welcomes the launch of the
  Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL)
  in September 2008 shares its concern that over
  1.4 million places have been lost in the last two
  years in English adult education due to cuts and
  fee rises notes that over 150 organisations are
  CALL supporters believes that particularly at
  this time of recession, affordable access to the
  life-changing opportunities provided by education
  is the hallmark of a civilised society considers
  that adult learning needs to be simultaneously
  expanded, resourced and promoted alongside
  work-based skills training in the Children,
  Skills and Learning Bill and calls for immediate
  action to ensure a full range of learning
  opportunities for adults to adjust the Personal
  and Community Development Learning budget to
  increase with inflation, and redirect any
  underspend on the Train to Gain programme to meet
  individual learner demand.

13

• Parliamentary Lobby
• On Wednesday 25 February 2009 the CALL Campaign
  is holding a mass lobby of Parliament to take our
  message to MPs across all parties.
• The lobby will start at 10.30am with briefings
  and registration for participants at a venue
  close to Westminster (to be confirmed soon). The
  rally in the House of Commons will start at
  12.30pm in Committee Room 14 and the lobby will
  finish at 4pm.
• You can register your interest is attending
  through via on onloine form on the CALL website
  at www.callcampaign.org.uk
• or by contacting Funso Akande at
  funso.akande_at_niace.org.uk, 020 7922 7960.