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…

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…

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.…

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…

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…

One in three undergraduate students enter university for the first-time when they are over 21--not that one would notice given the obsession of both media and politicians with younger students progressing to university straight from school or college at 18 or 19. This focus on younger students has been put into even sharper relief in the debate…

"Meeting the needs of the learner is at the heart of all our proposals", is the claim in the ministerial foreword to "Putting Learners at the Centre", the document in which recent pre-legislative proposals for reforming the post-16 education sector are set out by the Scottish Government. Such a grand claim warrants scepticism.…

The battle for an adequate careers guidance service for adults has been a long one. A succession of governments have been formally committed to lifelong learning, to broadening choice and diversity in education and training, and to asking individuals to take more control of (and pay more for) their education, but only in the last few years have…

In the person of John Hayes, Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, the coalition government has someone no less committed than was Labour's David Blunkett to the value of expansive and inclusive lifelong learning, as has been attested to by his various speeches and articles since first being appointed. Not…

At their best, adult community learning partnerships not only offer the least educated adults a second chance, they can motivate a whole community by developing a culture of learning. Critical to success is careful planning to meet the needs of individuals and groups of learners, especially those who have been away from learning for many years. At…

During the affluent noughties it was sometimes said of government that it had "more visions than Mystic Meg and more pilots than British Airways". In 2011, the pilots, the pathfinders, the new initiatives are largely gone--implementation is the name of the game--but the visions remain. The latest one, as it affects adult learners, is in…