Good ideas have many parents, bad ones are often orphans. And since it is now 20 years since the first Adult Learners' Week in England, and the idea has been adopted and adapted to local circumstances in 55 countries, there must be something going for it. As the twenty-first Adult Learners' Week gets underway, the author reflects on the origins of…

Adult Learners' Week is based on a simple idea--that extolling the achievements of adult learners and promoting the benefits of learning will encourage others to take the plunge. Each year, through thousands of events and award ceremonies, and in media coverage that would cost millions of pounds if purchased as advertising, Adult Learners' Week…

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…

The eviction of the Occupy London protesters from their tents outside St. Paul's Cathedral marks the end of one of the most interesting experiments in popular education in recent times. For the past few months a string of leading writers, activists, journalists and academics have held workshops, led discussions and given lectures beneath the…

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) Adult Participation in Learning Survey 10 years ago showed that two-fifths of the adult population said that they had taken part in learning in the last three years. A decade later, the 2012 survey shows that little has changed--active participation in learning remains a minority…

As unemployment levels rise, so education and training move into the policy spotlight. For the government, this is a very uncomfortable place to be right now. A number of large companies have withdrawn from the flagship Work Programme--under which jobseekers are invited to take up unpaid work placements of between two and eight weeks--amid…

Over the last decade, Adult Learners' Week in Wales has attracted 183,925 people back into learning. With the help of its partners, annual participants have gone from around 4,000 in 2001 to 25,155 in 2011. Despite this success, however, the campaign needs continually to evolve, adapt and demonstrate value for money. It also needs to be open to…

This is a fascinating time for adult learning in the UK. With a plethora of reviews reaching report stage alongside ongoing discussion about funding, qualifications and quality and the review of post-16 planning and funding in Wales, there is a real sense that things are about to change after a decade of well-meant but often misfocused reform.…

Community development and adult learning have long shared a common agenda--and often a common fate. People in both sectors are concerned with supporting people to develop their skills and knowledge, and to put them to use in the world around them. They often share a belief in social justice and democratic process as guiding principles for their…

The concept behind "open educational resources" (OERs) has been around for several years. The principle of OERs is simply that teachers and lecturers make their learning materials freely available for others to use. At first, this might sound like a radical, even controversial, idea. Why, after all, should practitioners share materials that they…

Adult learning has benefited from the visibility and profile of lifelong learning across a range of European policy areas. The overall profile of adult learning benefited enormously from the European Commission's decision to group all its education and training programmes together under the brand of the "Lifelong Learning Programme." The…

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…

The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) is the UK national coordinator for the European Agenda for Adult Learning, with the challenge of creating a coherent message across the four countries to inform European cooperation on adult learning. To start the debate, the journal staff asked Sue Waddington, Alan Tuckett, and Fiona…

While people might not be familiar with the term "voluntary arts", they are probably either involved with some voluntary arts activity themselves or they know someone who is. They use "voluntary arts" to mean any situation in which someone is voluntarily participating in an art form for pleasure, social reasons, skills…

In Adult Learners' Week last year there was a first-time national award, sponsored by Pearson, for the Adult Apprentice of the Year. There were 81 nominees from across the age range and from a multitude of jobs. Staff at NIACE were keen to find out more about their stories so they analysed their nominations, asked for more information and…