In this article, Tom Schuller and David Watson, who were responsible for a major review of lifelong learning in the UK published in 2009, describe the main proposals from that review and compare them with the 1996 UNESCO report, "The Treasure Within". They find many points of similarity, as well as clear differences. Apart from specific…

Adult Learners' Week has whirled round again, but the author has been looking backwards. An invitation to speak at an event to mark the retirement of Richard Bolsin as General Secretary of the Workers' Educational Association prompted him at last to get hold of Jonathan Rose's "Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes." Rose's concern is…

Lifelong learning has a crucial role in enabling individuals to handle key transition points in their lives, but what can education do to prepare them for the final, inevitable transition. Some of the educational contribution to managing the final transition is very broad, a matter of general enlightenment. But there are some more specific…

One effect of the recession has been substantially to alter the position of part-time workers in the economy. As a result, part-time jobs now make up over a quarter (27 per cent) of the total numbers working. Everyone knows that women work part-time far more commonly than men. How far this is a matter of "choice" is a real political as…

Toxic mortgages are one of the causes of the current economic crisis. Where did they come from--apart from those spectacularly down-at-heel areas of American cities where loans for housing are peddled on a day-rate basis? One driver was the demutualisation of building societies, on the basis that, as banks, they would have access to the capital…

A decade after the National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (NAGCELL) report, "The Learning Age", born in the first flush of the New Labour Government, the task of providing and securing an overall strategic framework for lifelong learning remains as large as ever. NIACE is the Inquiry into the Future for…

Innovation, Universities and Skills. The new title of the department offers much food for thought. The title is indeed an intriguing and important one. Bringing the idea of innovation right to the fore is, to use an overworked term, challenging. Pinning down what innovation means is not at all easy. There are three different lines of argument. The…

To address older adults' learning needs in United Kingdom, the Carnegie Inquiry into the Third Age was established in 1991. Paper reviews current adult education situation, provides framework for further policy analysis, and provides list of policy options. Paper calls for development of a "social economy of the third age" that would…

Imagery could add an extra dimension to analyses of lifelong learning, which need to draw on diverse sources and techniques. This article has two principal components. First I suggest that the use of images might be divided into three categories: as illustration; as evidence; and as heuristic. I go on to explore the latter two categories, first by…

Although it is true that education is an investment, there are risks associated with relying too strongly on the metaphor of education as investment. The main problems with the investment metaphor are as follows: (1) it pushes aside the notion of education as a consumption good that people want for its own sake; (2) the human capital approach can…

Adult participation in education and learning in the United Kingdom was examined through a Gallup survey of a stratified (by region and town size) national sample of 4,673 adults aged 17 years and over from England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland. Interviewers were given quotas for sex by respondents' age, class, and employment status.…

This document attempts to lay the groundwork for modeling and measuring the "wider benefits" of learning. The introduction distinguishes between two categories of "wider benefits" of learning. The first category is noneconomic benefits (benefits that are not measured directly in terms of additional income or increased…

The relationship between learning and continuity and change in adult life was explored in a study involving 140 in-depth biographical interviews of adult learners in 3 different areas of England and case studies of 6 adult learners. The study methodology was based on a triangular conceptualization according to which personal identity, human…