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…

Few university leaders can speak with as much authority about the transformative power of learning as Mary Stuart, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Lincoln. She knows first-hand both what it is like to be poor and down on her luck and how "second chance" education and a willingness to work hard and take risks can turn lives around.…

When 75-year-old Margaret Corston saw a poster in her local library advertising a course in basic radio broadcasting skills, she little thought that some 18 months later she would be hosting her own weekly show, with thousands of listeners, on community radio. From small beginnings--her first course was called "First Steps in Radio"--she began to…

Open Stages is Britain's biggest amateur theatre project, a hugely ambitious scheme to bring the professional and amateur theatre worlds together. It is a learning project but, as the Royal Shakespeare Company's Ian Wainwright tells this author, it is not only the amateurs who are learning. Wainwright states that the amateur and professional…

Melaneia Warwick has never found it difficult to empathise with her adult students. She knows first-hand how untidy and unpredictable an adult's learning journey can be. She also knows how difficult it can be to take the first step, and how rewarding the experience can be if the teacher manages to create an atmosphere that is both supportive and…

When Toni Pearce ran for National Union of Students (NUS) Vice-President for Further Education she put adults at the heart of her manifesto, pledging to champion the cause of learners "studying in the workplace, as distance learners or re-skilling later in life" and to make the NUS more accessible to them. It's a promise which, now in…

A new Labour government was elected in May 1997 and wasted no time in signalling its enthusiasm for the education of adults. Secretary of State for Education and Employment David Blunkett gave his first speech in office at the launch of Adult Learners' Week 1997 and announced the creation of a National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and…

When John McAnuff came to London from Jamaica in 1958 he was not planning to stay. Like most of the people who made the crossing to England, frustrated by low pay, little opportunity and poor living conditions, he intended to work hard for a few years before returning home a bit richer. McAnuff, now 72, worked for 10 years as a passenger guard on…