education
through life_______________
Tom Schuller
young fabian pamphlet 47 65p
young fabian pamphlet 47 education through life
chapter
1	introduction	1
2	recurrent education and the	
	labour market	5
3	areas for action	9
4	finance	19
5	coordination with the	
	labour market	23
6	conclusions	25
7	resume of main points	27
Tom Schuller worked for 4 years at the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation at OECD, Paris, He has been a Research Associate with the Trade Union Research Unit at Ruskin College Oxford, and a Visiting Fellow with the Higher Education Research Group at Yale University. He now holds a research fellowship with the University of Glasgow and is working on the training needs of worker representatives.
this pamphlet, like all publications of the Fabian Society, represents not the collective view of the Society but only the views of the individual who prepared it. The responsibility of the Society is limited to approving publications it issues as worthy of consideration within the Labour movement. Fabian Society, 11 Dartmouth Street London SW1H 9BN. January 1978 ISSN 0513 5982 ISBN 7163 2047 9
1.	introduction
Confidence in the efficiency of education and in the value of educational reform have plummeted over the last few years, as both research and general public opinion has come to express increasing scepticism towards the capacity of education to meet social and economic requirements. The criticisms have taken a variety of forms: the lack of success in meeting the changing needs of youth ; failure to cater properly for the potential adult clientele ; the production of people far too inadequately prepared for working life; disappointing performance in promoting greater equality; an indifference to changes in the world of work and the need to more thoroughly integrate theory and practice.
To some extent, schools and colleges are being blamed for failings essentially beyond their control. But what these criticisms have underlined is the fact that education’s potential—to whatever end—is determined by its relationship to a series of socio-economic factors. Hence the claim of education to a constant or even growing share of limited resources is likely to find fewer and fewer supporters unless the resources allocated to it are more effectively deployed. Once, however, the need to relate education to other policies has been recognised, and the way in which it can influence and support them examined, some of its most obvious weaknesses may be eradicated and the creeping pessimism halted.
The basic aim of recurrent education is to modify educational provision so that access to it is available at intervals over the individual’s lifetime, in alternation with work and other activities. Opportunities for people who have finished their initial schooling to resume study exist at present in a number of forms. Some attend evening or weekend classes provided by the local authority, or follow an Open University course. Others are on day or block release. An unknown but very substantial number of employees receive industrial training to keep them up to date with technological change or to enable them to progress professionally. Trade unions and voluntary organisations put on courses for
their members. Some adults return as mature students to. regular higher education.
The objectives of those who take up study again are as variegated as the courses they follow: purely vocational or for reasons of personal development; towards some collective end, or simply as a social activity. A recurrent education approach furnishes a planning framework to strengthen all the types of provision which meet these needs, and to supplement them by filling the gaps in the net through which some may fall. It aims at welding together policies, so that the opportunity to learn is made systematically available to everyone at recurring intervals throughout his or her life.
The rationale for this has been set out in detail many times, especially over the last few years (Recurrent Education:	A
Strategy for Lifelong Learning, ceri/oecd, 1973). Presentations of the case have varied in their emphasis, some putting the accent solely on the need for individual development, others stressing more the economic and cultural requirements of society, but the message common to all has been the illogicality of confining educational opportunity to the initial period of the individual’s life cycle.
Lip service may be regularly paid to the principle of life long learning but policy decisions often run counter to it. The purpose of this pamphlet is to define those areas which need to be systematically considered if a coherent policy of recurrent education is to be formulated and to focus attention on the major stumbling blocks which will have to be surmounted if a more effective and fairer distribution of education is to be achieved.
The argument is based on the premise that education is concerned above all with power—power to control one’s personal development, power to contribute to the production of goods and services and influence their distribution and power to participate in the decisions which determine economic and social life at national, regional and local level.
2
PUBLIC EXPENDITURE		ON
EDUCATION		maintenance grants and
net		allowances
expenditure		(leas and
per full time		central
student		govern-
(1975-76).		ment), 1974.
	£	£ millions
primary	263	—
secondary 11.16	382	—•
16-18	699	1.1
further education		
non-advanced	810	| 47.9
advanced	1260	
colleges of education	1280	33.1
polytechnics	1960	| 63.5
universities	2225	
evening institutes	185	—
source: Statistics of	Education, 1975,	
volume 5, Department of Education and		
Science, 1976.		
Durch Bildung zur Macht (through education to power) was the slogan adopted by German craftsmen at the turn of the century, and if that has a somewhat apocalyptic ring about it, the distribution of both these elements is still sufficiently lopsided in Britain today for it to be well worth thinking about the changes needed in the educational structure to accommodate a more general move towards socialism.
Several limitations of the pamphlet must toe acknowledged from the outset. It is not a thorough empirical survey of all that is happening in the uk in the field of recurrent education. Most obviously there is a wealth of both traditional and innovatory adult education and there are many arrangements for paid educational leave so that chapter three, for example, should not toe taken as implying a total lack of activity at present. Secondly, specific suggestions for action are made in the last chapter, but the principal aim is to generate a political commitment to meeting adult learning needs than to present a cut and dried set of proposals. Thirdly, the question of youth is not dealt with in any detail, chiefly because
the education and the employment of youth are too important to be tackled adequately as subordinate subjects. However, it is clear that the transition between school and work is critical to the development of recurrent education, especially in whether it allows a genuine choice for all of the age group between further study and employment. Youth unemployment has rightly received urgent consideration in the Green Paper Education in Schools (hmso 1977) and the Manpower Services Commission (msc) paper Young People and Work (1977) which sets out proposals for preparation for work and work experience. But the proposals are fashioned, understandably but regrettably, to meet the immediate needs of specific groups and in no way represent a shift away from the conception of education and training as solely an initial preparatory process. In the long term, the resolution of youth education and employment will have to be found in the emergence of alternating periods of work, education and leisure over each individual’s entire lifetime.
a better balance____________________________
This pamphlet will attempt to put the case as succinctly as possible that our attitude to education, its funding and distribution is still heavily conditioned by existing patterns which are, predictably, supported by vested interests and that those patterns are not immutable but can be changed if politicians and educationalists are made to take their own rhetoric seriously and the vested interests identified and asked sufficiently awkward questions. Priorities, if they are to mean anything, are painful —not in the Victorian sense that if it hurts it must be good for you, but in the sense that they require the interests of some parties to be deliberately attacked.
To suggest that we should in future pay more attention to adult learning needs in no way implies that initial schooling needs no further resources or reform. In particular, we need renewed efforts to prevent initial schooling from effectively inoculating the majority against any desire to take up further study. But even if
3
SOCIO-ECONOMIC GROUP OF FATHER BY AGE OF THOSE BETWEEN 16-49 RECEIVING EDUCATION (1973)
inter-
mediate
profes- employers non- junior
sional and manual or non- skilled semi- unskilled % or managers % or manual manual skilled % or age_________number_______% number %	%	%	number
20-24	(37 out of 55)	53	(37 out of 62)	41	32	36 (15 out of 45)	
16-19	(18 out of 63)	19	(18 out of 76)	18	9	9	5
25-49	12	9	9	7	4	4	4
total	24	16	19	13	9	9	6
	—	—	-—-	—	—	—	—
source: The General Household Survey, hmso 1976 (figures in brackets give the numbers where the sample was under 100).
one does not wholly accept the notion of schools as simple microcosms of society, reproducing all the latter’s inequalities, it is fairly easy to demonstrate the regressive nature of current educational expenditure. The correlation between social class and educational achievement is well documented. And since achievement at compulsory school determines access to further and higher education, this correlation means that the higher social groups benefit more from expenditure in this area. “ Because higher education has expanded so rapidly in recent years, and because it offers financial rewards in the form of higher earning capacity, this means that older tax-payers, and those with average incomes, are subsidising, through taxation, the young who will enjoy higher than average incomes in the future, as a result of their income ; and because students from upper income families are so heavily represented in universities and other institutions of higher education, this means that high income families are subsidised by those with lower income” (M. Woodhall, Distributional Impact of Educational Finance, oecd, 1974). The tables on pages two and three, in juxtaposition, bear this out, even if they refer to different years. Also illustrated is the starvation of the adult education sector, expenditure on which falls largely under the “ evening institute ” heading. Concentration of educational expenditure on the initial phase of the individual’s lifetime reduces the potential of education for helping the disadvantaged, in that
it continues to assign to education an essentially preparatory role. The aim of giving everyone a fair start is admirable, but a fair start is not everything and should not overshadow the need for positive measures to ensure continuing access to education for all, and especially for those who benefited least initially. The motto so far has been: “ if at first you don’t succeed, you won’t get much chance to try again.”
Until recently, the room for manoeuvre in shifting resources between sectors was always considered to be extremely limited—the figure of 2 per cent of the total budget was generally estimated as the sum available but demographic trends, changes in the pattern of demand and, ironically, harsh economic circumstances have opened up new possibilities. Moreover, “ educational expenditure ” has generally been interpreted as money spent on formal education—if one includes expenditure on training and on informal education, the margin for manoeuvre becomes much greater.
The latest demographic projections show the 18 year old population rising to about
920,000	in 1982, but dropping thereafter to under 700,000 in the 1990s, with obvious implications for school and higher education enrolments. In some areas, particularly urban ones, these trends are accentuated by migration patterns. At the other end of the spectrum, we are faced with increasing numbers of elderly people
4
who must toe provided for, both as a matter of right and in order for them not to become a massive drain on society’s resources. Demand, too, is changing, with more adults requesting access and more young people hesitating about whether to proceed directly into post school education.
These trends are, of course, subject to considerable fluctuation. But demand, at least, is not an independent phenomenon but can be influenced by policies which encourage certain people to present themselves at certain times in their lives and discourage others. In any case 'there will remain a strong case for a more substantial and flexible corpus of educational provision for adults and, if the unemployment rate is taken into account, the argument gains further credence (see chapter two). The basic point is that we should look hard at the distribution of the overall budget for education, question the degree to which room for manoeuvre is limited and as a result make more explicit decisions on how the resources are to be allocated.
Of course there will always be a large place for adult education conceived of simply as the provision of opportunities for the individual to pursue his or her personal interests. Britain has a long and highly respected tradition in this respect, though the prolonged failure of policy makers to regard it as anything more than a sideline activity has 'been vigorously pointed out yet again in a recent book by Jennifer Rogers and Brian Groombridge (Right to Learn, Arrow Books, 1976). Much of the case they make for adult education is equally applicable to the broader field of recurrent education but the main focus of the arguments which follow is on the potential fruitfulness of relating educational provision for adults to other measures. And, since for most people their social identity and status is closely linked to their occupation, particular attention will be given to the relation of education to the world of work, without forgetting the dangers of concentrating too narrowly on vocational issues. The approach is, therefore, very different from that of the Russell Report (Adult
Education: a Framework for Development, hmso, 1973), whose terms of reference restricted it to non vocational education.
A final introductory point follows from this. The split between education and training is commonly deplored but in practice rarely contested. The distinction is at times essential and helpful, but it is often unnecessarily divisive. A coherent policy for recurrent education must comprehend both vocational and non-voca-tional learning, and in the argument that follows no attempt will be made to insist on a precise usage of the terms education and training, except where specific emphasis needs to be laid on the narrowly vocational character of the provision.
2.	recurrent education and the labour market
Planning the provision of learning opportunities for adults must take account of labour market trends. It should be emphasized at the outset that labour market policies are concerned with much more than the supply of manpower. Faith in narrowly conceived manpower projections, fostered by the technocratic euphoria of the early 1960s, is now virtually dead. It has proved technically impossible, as well as ideologically unacceptable, to forecast manpower needs to anything like the degree of accuracy which would be needed to allow educational policy to be tightly geared to those projections. Even in the professions, where demand is in principle more easily regulated, the prediction of requirements in five years’ time is hazardous in the extreme, and certainly would not be used as a basis on which to build a stable educational policy. The obvious example is the recent teacher training fiasco, in an area where planning has the benefit of several years’ lag between a child's registration on the birth records and his first appearance at the school gates.
In any event, manpower planning is to be seen in terms of broad occupational fields, not single trades or professions, with the emphasis on flexibility and transferability of skills. But unacceptability of narrow manpower projections as a basis for educational planning should not divert us from the need to look at education and labour market policies in conjunction. What we are talking about here is a process of mutual adaptation, the provision of sufficient employment of a kind appropriate to the capacities and aspirations of working people, as well as the development of those capacities to meet the productive needs of society.
The important point is that action can be taken on both sides. Education can, and should, respond to occupational trends but the demand for labour can equally be influenced, both quantitatively and qualitatively, to take account of the educational level and distribution of the workforce. This process of mutual adjustment will not result in a static equilibrium but requires continual action ; to oppose it on the grounds that the character of edu-
cation should not be determined by economic needs is implicitly to subscribe to a non-interventionist standpoint on employment issues. A socialist view on this question should aim at accommodating the claims of the individual to be able to study when and what he or she chooses within the requirement of society that its members should contribute to meeting collective needs, the corollary of this being that these collective needs should be democratically determined and should be taken to include the volume and character of employment.
There is often a hidden premise in the argument for excluding employment considerations from educational policy, namely that education should be in some sense a refuge from work. It is unfortunately true that for many people any respite from their job is welcome, and if the respite is for study then the less the study has to do with the job the better. But there are two essential remarks to be made. First, in many cases—and especially for those whose initial experience of education was an unhappy one—motivation for further study derives largely from problems arising out of their working environment. Of course, much recurrent education is covered by the regular adult education sector and will have nothing to do with work or vocational issues in general, but if educational institutions ignore labour market trends and keep wholly aloof from the world of work, they are in effect refusing to serve the needs of the majority and in particular of those with least initial education.
This leads on to the second remark. Implicit in the position referred to above is an acceptance of the unpleasantness of labour, a passive attitude to the character of work as if it is irremediably determined. But if it is to overcome this alienation, a socialist policy must take up the challenge of transforming, through education amongst other means, the quality of working life so that people can find satisfaction in their jobs as well as outside.
Clearly this is a long term aim. Yet there are certain straws in the wind which show
6
that the character of work is susceptible to change. At the time of writing, the fate of the Bullock Report recommendations (Report of the Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy, hmso, 1977) is highly uncertain, but their acceptance would mark at least a significant step forward towards greater industrial democracy. New regulations on health and safety are promised (involving, incidentally, educational leave for safety representatives). More broadly, restrictions on wage increases may to some extent be compensated by improvements in working conditions. But above all the message is finally getting through—supported by evidence from abroad, especially from the Scandinavian countries—that workers can no longer be asked to accept to the same extent the imposition of meaningless tasks. Education has already helped to bring this about, by raising people’s aspirations and endowing them with the capacity to challenge existing structures ; it has also a positive part to play in the further transformation of the working environment.
unemployment and costs : the counter cyclical argument
There is another crucial reason for bringing educational and labour market policies into line with each other. Overall, for society as a whole, it is cheaper in real terms to provide educational opportunities for adults during a recession than in a period of full employment. If everyone has a job, the release of a worker for study purposes involves not only maintenance costs but also the loss of his output. When, on the other hand, there is significant unemployment, there is all the more room for expanding the volume of education and training, and the difference ibetween gross and net costs becomes important. For if an adult without a job re-enters education no loss of output is entailed and, given reasonable levels of unemployment benefit, the expenditure on maintenance need only be marginally increased (there should, let it be stressed, be some increase in order to provide an incentive); in the case of an employee the loss of output is likely to be minimised as there will be others ready to
take his place—the so called “vacuum effect.” Of course, things do not run as smoothly as this implies, but the essential point is that the real cost cannot be estimated simply by looking at individual cases of educational provision without taking macroeconomic factors into account.
Direct costs — building, educational materials, teacher salaries and so on— will remain, but even here the same argument has some application. Given current levels of teacher unemployment and the problems associated with spare teacher training capacity, the redeployment of teachers to the adult sector becomes a realistic alternative. Again, this is not a simple measure, and there are several obstacles to be overcome—in particular, the danger of fostering the impression that the teaching of adults and children involves the same skills—but the principle of the low marginal cost of paying people to acquire and use new skills rather than remain unemployed can be usefully borne in mind.
The discussion so far on the relation of employment rates to educational costs may have given the impression that they are concerned only with the unemployed. But a major plank in the argument is that more flexible educational training provision would cater for the whole workforce, and would not be restricted to a “ fire-fighting ” role for those hit by unemployment. It would, in fact, precisely help to reduce the cruel costs of structural changes in the economy, currently largely borne by those who have had no opportunity to cushion themselves beforehand by acquiring different and marketable skills.
More broadly, the arguments for a reduction in the working week and for new employment patterns such as job sharing are gaining ground, partly for their intrinsic validity and partly in response to the realisation that unemployment is a problem that will not simply disappear in the next upswing.
Finally, the influence of labour market trends on the distribution of learning op-
7
portunities must be recognised. The labour market can be seen as divided into “ segments,” and movement between these segments is difficult for a variety of reasons. In particular, a number of people become locked into low pay, low prospects jobs, which carry no training opportunities with them, and the longer they stay in that segment the more difficult it becomes for them even to move out. However those who are well launched on a skilled or professional career have in general easy access to further training which enables them to sustain and improve their skills and to keep alive their aptitude for learning. (The position of university teachers, surrounded by libraries and with sabbatical leave a normal part of their life, illustrates the point forcefully.) In this way, the initial gap between those who enter employment with prospects and those who don’t becomes steadily wider, and the distribution of enducation reinforces this divergence. Just as orthodox adult educational provision is predominantly utilised by the middle classes, so opportunities for learning within employment tend to go to those who are already skilled. The vicious circle of low educational achievement/ limited access/diminishing prospects reproduces itself in the world of work.
Availability of recurrent education is also affected by the development of internal labour markets. In order to maintain a stable workforce and avoid the costs of labour turnover and recruitment, employers tend to establish career structures which favour internal training and promotion. This has advantages for those already employed in jobs which allow them to benefit but it is at the expense of those in occupations characterised by high turnover and of those outside the active labour force altogether, who find it increasingly difficult to gain employment.
To neither of these problems is education alone a solution—they require a combination of political decisions involving investment, tax and recruitment policies. But education does have a part to play in enabling the individual to overcome disadvantages. It must, however, be stressed that without specific measures to the con-
trary, recurrent education may serve to accentuate inequalities—there is no inherent guarantee that it will be used to favour the disadvantaged.
The question of equity in the actual provision of recurrent education poses a dilemma for public policy. On the one hand, there is a dear need for public authorities to meet the educational needs of the disadvantaged by designating specific resources and providing facilities directly to the target groups. But this carries with it the risk that public sector provision will be stigmatised as a second best service concerned only with the least able, and thus reinforce the segregative tendency of current adult education and training patterns.
It is reasonable to suggest that public provision should be based on broader criteria than those adopted under privately financed schemes. Yet given the very substantial resources devoted to training by employers in both the public and the private sector, the role of the authorities responsible for recurrent education should include pressuring employers to devote a proportion of these resources to people who may not represent the best “ investment ” in narrowly economic terms—in other words, to accept a certain responsibility for establishing a fairer balance in the distribution of recurrent education. Investment grants, for example, could be accompanied by the requirement that the recipient firm should recruit a specified proportion of its work force from certain categories of the population.
Such instruments exist already and the unemployment crisis has caused them to assume considerable importance, with action being taken to influence labour supply and demand in both public and private sectors. On the supply side, financial assistance has been made available to industry, for example to help offset the pressures imposed on employers by the recession to cut back on training: for 1977/78, 41,500 grants have been approved at a cost of £46 million, in the form of premium grants for on and off the job training, support for college based
sandwich courses and so on. The Training Opportunities Scheme (tops), aimed at people aged 19 or over who have spent three years or more away from fulltime education, has continually expanded since its introduction in 1974 and covers a variety of courses geared to the needs of different groups. On the demand side, the Jot> Creation programme launched in October 1975, had approved 6,917 projects ‘by March 1977, creating over 68,000 jobs ; Community Industry, in operation since 1972, has employed over 11,000 young people since its inception ; and a number of employment subsidies are aimed at staunching the flow from the active labour force. There is, incidentally, a demonstrable need for vigilant monitoring to ensure that these subsidies complement employers’ efforts rather than substitute for them—a recent survey showed that^ some 70 per cent of employers receiving the Temporary Employment Subsidy would have acted as they did without the subsidy.
the need for a permanent poiicy
It is important that measures on behalf of disadvantaged groups become a permanent feature of educational and labour market policies rather than a con-junctural response to employment difficulties. As the msc paper Young People and Work (op cit) says: “an essentially ad hoc approach should be replaced ... all these schemes need to be brought together into a single, coherent programme.” This holds true not just for youth employment but for all educational policies aimed at helping the disadvantaged. The basic point is that the relegation of a significant proportion of the population to a spiral of low educational achievement and poor employment is socially unacceptable and potentially explosive. In consequence all those involved should be called upon to help avoid it.
Attitudes to the relation between education and the labour market have changed very significantly over the last few years. Until recently, a closer relationship was urged primarily by industrialists who sought to exercise tighter control over the
supply of labour. Reactions to this on the part of the educational world tended to be phrased in defensive terms, partly due to a reluctance to take up the political challenge involved. Rather than accept a share in the responsibility for transforming the world of work, educators preferred to leave it to put its own house in order. The interdependence of the two is now more widely acknowledged. If nothing else, educational isolation is under pressure for crude financial reasons: in contrast to the “ no growth ” plans for government expenditure on higher and further education (from £1,977 million in 1973-74 to £1,980 million in 1977-78), the budget for the functioning of the labour market, including industrial training, is planned to rise from £224 million to £842 million over the same period (Government Expenditure Plans, Cmnd 6271-II, hmso, 1977) and in its first three years, the Manpower Services Commission has expanded its budget by 300 per cent to £446.8 million. It would be sad if the educational system was seen to change only as a result of such pressure.
In concluding this chapter, I want to refer again to the theme of power. The concern with education as a significant factor in determining access to power has tended not to confront the uncomfortable fadt that the distribution of power, unlike that of material goods, gets close to being a zero sum game: when an individual or a class gains in power, it is likely to be at the expense of other individuals or classes. If, therefore, recurrent education is concerned with power sharing, it can only succeed if there are concomitant changes in the community, the workplace, the educational institutions themselves and the home, and these changes will entail the ceding of at least a portion of their current dominance by those currently at the hierarchical apex —governors and administrators, employers and managers, teachers and husbands.
3.	areas for action
Progress towards recurrent education will be evolutionary. It will take place on a number of fronts and will not take the form of an imposed blueprint for an entirely recast educational system. In this chapter, a number of areas are identified where more or less specific changes can be made which wouid result in a better educational distribution. The discussion will draw on examples from abroad ; whilst it is not suggested that foreign initiatives can necessarily be directly copied, there are nevertheless useful lessons to be learned. The chapter is divided into three main sections: demand and access, content and teaching methods, and paid educational leave.
demand and access_______________________
The traditional posture of the education and training authorities has been one of willingness to respond to demand. This has, let it 'be said, often resulted in a rich and diversified provision of opportunities, but it assumes that people are always in a position to express their needs. This in turn assumes that they are fully aware of what already exists in the way of educational provision and that everyone is equally capable of formulating demands for new courses. But one of the great merits of the adult literacy campaign has >been the way in which it has revealed an enormous latent demand for education, a concept hitherto largely excluded from the vocabulary of educational planners. By actively seeking out potential students, instead of waiting for them to present themselves, the campaign has shown that for many people a return to education is a real option if and only if they are actively informed of its availability.
There are many people who in the course of their daily work are well placed to disseminate information without an elaborate new structure being needed. Social workers and others concerned with community life could, as a matter of course, be trained in the diagnostic skills which would enable them to suggest to their clients where further education might be of help. Immigrant communities often contain networks of communi-
cation through which information could ibe channelled. The workplace is potentially one of the most fertile grounds for “ recruitment ” and Sweden has developed a system of “ study organisers ” who are official union representatives with responsibility for informing and advising workmates of their opportunities and for feeding their reactions back to the education authorities. Like shop stewards, they have rights to time off to discharge this responsibility ; the aim is to have some
30,000	such organisers for white collar workers and 15,000 for blue collar ones, for a working population of some 4 million. Of course some dissemination of this type already occurs in the uk but on nothing like such a scale or with the same degree of organisation.
admission policies_________________________
Of course, not all demand can be met. But once it exists, what are the obstacles which block access and how can they be surmounted (leaving aside financial considerations, which will be dealt with later)? The first barrier which confronts many people is the existing admission procedure for a given course. Adults have often not had the chance to acquire the formal qualifications demanded. Yet school examinations are acknowledged to be poor predictors of performance in further education and are often used more as a convenient filter than an accurate or equitable selection mechanism. Most people admit that experience often more than compensates for formal qualifications, yet this truism is not reflected in current admission policies.
To take universities, the number of mature students (over 25 years old grew from 8,909 (out of a total of 178,948) in 1968 to 13,447 (out of 209,078) in 1974- but there are enormous variations between universities, ranging from 19.7 per cent at Essex to 2.2 per cent at St Andrews (in 1975-76). And in any case unqualified adults form only a minute proportion even of the mature student population: in 1971, London University admitted only two “ backdoor entrants ” and the Joint Matriculation Board (which covers the
10
universities of Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Birmingham) enrolled 45 unqualified applicants. In both these cases, formal machinery exists for dispensing with orthodox qualifications, but the fact that there were only 75 applicants to the jmb demonstrates how reluctant universities have been to encourage people to use that machinery. The non-university sector may be better, but only 4 per cent of students currently joining Council for National Academic Awards (cnaa) courses are without formal entrance requirements.
A two pronged reform of admission procedures would allow a higher per centage both of mature students in general and of those who compensate for their lack of specific formal qualification?, by outside experience. Other countries (Holland and Sweden, for instance) grant automatic access to higher education (though not, of course, to any faculty) to those without formal qualifications, provided they are over 25 and have a certain number of years working experience.
The United Kingdom does not have the continental practice of guaranteeing higher education to all those who successfully complete secondary education, but why should there not be quotas for both mature and unqualified people at all institutions of higher education? As the tuc has suggested, “ universities might be asked to agree that a progressively rising proportion of their undergraduate places might be allocated to mature people ” ; it should be added that specific account should be taken of unqualified adults, and a target of perhaps 10 per cent should be set, with half of tne places reserved for those who are the formally unqualified. It should also, apply to polytechnics and other institutions of higher education.
But the case for mature students should not be made on the grounds of equity alone. Results so far, especially from Australia where success rates have been extensively monitored, show that even according to conventional criteria mature entrants achieve significantly higher pass rates—not to mention the potential spinoff for younger students of participating
in mixed age groupings. There is absolutely no need to be apologetic or defensive when arguing for the admission of a higher proportion of mature and formally unqualified students into orthodox post-compulsory education. In short the Robbins Report (hmso, 1963) reference to a pool of talent gains enormously in power if it is applied to adults and not restricted to school leavers.
It is not only admission procedures to degree courses that should be revised. Shorter and lower level courses also commonly fail to recognise the value of work experience. Wholesale reliance on formal qualifications should be replaced by an efficient counselling and orientation service which assesses the students’ needs and capabilities and matches them to available piovision. This again points up the need for some rationalisation of the bewildering variety of courses—ond, hnd, bec, tec, etc.
une can go still further on the question of access. New Zealand, for example, has taken positive measures to encourage adults to return to secondary schools. In 1976, more than half of all secondary schools admitted adults with some schools having over 100 on their roll, and despite initial hesitations—especially on the part of teachers—the results have so far been very favourable. A particular advantage is that the presence of adults in schools does something to eradicate the impression, which for many adolescents takes early root, that education is only for children. Of course there are already examples in this country, such as the Rowlinson campus in Sheffield. The point is to reach a level where adults in schools are no longer regarded as something of a curiosity. This would be an excellent area for innovation Dy leas, particularly where there are sixth form colleges.
There is, as so oiten, a counterpart on the employment side to changes in educational admission policies. Age limits are set for entry into many jobs, which either discourage older people from retraining for them or result in frustration if they were not aware of the restrictions before they undertook the required
11
courses. The public sector could take an initiative in reviewing its own employment requirements, which are often the least flexible—for instance, is it really necessary to insist on 28 as a maximum age for entry into the civil service executive grade?
And not only age limits. There is no room here to go into the whole argument over “ credentialism ” or the inflationary spiral which pushes people into acquiring more and more formal qualifications (see I. Berg The Great Training Robbery, and also Fred Hirsch’s The Social Limits to Growth for an account o.f educational qualifications as a “ positional good ”, whose value depends on other people not having it). But there must be greater pressure on employers, public and private, to review qualification requirements, which often bear little or no relation to the job to be performed.
content and teaching methods____________________________________
However easy access is, take-up of educational opportunities will depend largely on the nature of what is offered. The Open University has done a remarkable job in showing how many people are capable of profiting from a university education, and the fact that working class participation is relatively low is only a partial reproach, since its principal objective was to expand access in general rather than specifically to achieve a balanced student population. The point is that a degree course, lasting for several years, is simply not what many people want, nor in practical terms can it be envisaged for more than a minority. The need is for a whole gamut of courses of various lengths, some of which may require a longer term commitment, but which should be essentially characterised by their ready availability and freedom from physical and temporal constraints. On the one hand, therefore, the Open University (ou) principle could be extended to sub-degree level, and the idea of an Open College for 16 plus students has already received some attention. But whether or not this comes off, which is doubtful even in the medium term given
probable resource constraints, institutions should review the courses they are already offering—at whatever level—to see how they can be made more genuinely available to adult learners.
course structures________________________
Introductory or bridging courses should be regarded as an integral feature of recurrent education provision. Many adults return to education full of apprehension about their own capacity to learn and need help in adjusting to studying again. Evaluation of the Training Service Agency’s (tsa) vShort Industrial Courses revealed that an initial course of deliberate assessment enabled concentrated technical instruction to be given more effectively in a particular area, with lasting effects on motivation. More generally, introductory courses can aim initially at instilling in participants sufficient confidence for them to be able to respond positively to suitable educational and employment opportunities. Diagnostic and bridging courses are especially useful for those with literacy problems or ethnic minorities with language difficulties. It is particularly worth mentioning the right of every immigrant worker in Sweden to 240 hours paid leave for language training, a right established for reasons of industrial peace and efficiency as well as social justice.
Stressing the importance of bridging courses helps counter the idea that the education service is only responsible for what happens when the student walks through the door; a comprehensive service should be concerned with how students enter the courses, and with the use they can make of their education afterwards.
One thoroughly familiar idea is the further development of modern courses which enable students to complete a course in several stages instead of being obliged to finish it in one go. The principle of the Diploma of Higher Education (DipHE) represents a step in the right direction but it also illustrates some of the dangers, such as the discouraging
12
attitude of universities demonstrated by the difficulty diploma holders have had in getting their qualifications recognised for the purposes of further higher level study. (The ou is an exception, having recently reached an agreement with the cnaa which enables DipHE students, and others on cnaa validated first degree courses, to complete their studies on a part time basis at the ou.)
On the one hand, the DipHE could open up new avenues for adults, especially for the unqualified if the two gce a level requirement is modified or abandoned ; on the other hand, it could simply become a second rate qualification, representing a convenient path into lower status courses. A dilemma confronts such innovations: the more they cater for unmet needs by providing new types of courses, the more they distinguish themselves from conventional institutions and hence tend to suffer because the latter’s values dominate the comparison. Nevertheless, the introduction of the DipHE has at least served to stimulate thinking about the possibility of further modular courses at higher level.
Modules increase availability. They can also cause fragmentation and a bewildering variety of options with no internal coherence, but there is no reason why existing validating bodies along the lines of the cnaa should not be able to control this. It does, however, raise an issue which requires at least some consideration. The award of qualifications in Britain has so far been based on the principle that they are the same the country over, regardless of the institution which grants them, even if in practice—for example in terms of employment currency—this is patently not altogether the case. The question is whether the growth of modular courses would threaten this principle or whether, for example, it would be preserved in some cases and allowed to go by the board in others. Thus all university degrees might still be held to be equivalent, but some lower level certificates could be freed from the requirement of universal currency, being essentially determined by
local needs. This should not, of course, entail any diminution of control over their intrinsic quality.
The argument so far in this chapter should not be taken as implying that recurrent education is concerned only with formal and certificated courses. Far from it, especially since there are many examples of informal activity whose effectiveness adds a great deal of muscle to the case for a redeployment of resources. But the discussion here has been concerned with orthodox public provision and the way it should change.
curricula and teachers
Our knowledge of adult learning processes is scanty, but there are nevertheless some key principles to be borne in mind, particularly if the needs of those for whom education is basically an unfamiliar process are to be met. The first is that it is more important for adults than for young students that they should be able to perceive the relevance of what they are learning, which implies a pro-lem-centred approach. It is not that suitable curricula are non existent, but that a whole hearted commitment to serving adult needs would require determined efforts on the part of teachers to transcend their own disciplines.
A corollary of this is that adults should be allowed as far as possible to determine their own programmes. This does not mean an abdication of teacher responsibility, nor is it to suggest that student participation in course decisions does not already happen in “ best practice ” situations. But it does seem that the question of power crops up again here: a sense of powerlessness both as regards the content of the education and its outcome is shown to hobble many people’s educational aspirations, and whilst the actual effect of education is dependent on a vast range of factors, the way in which the content is determined is something which is much more readily amenable to democratic control. A 1976 Norwegian Bill on adult education has given formal recog-ition to the principle of joint planning
13
(long upheld by the Workers Educational Association by making financial aid conditional in many cases on the participation of students in the design and management of their own courses.
Much of this question—including other aspects such as the reduction of rote learning to a minimum—boils down to teacher training and here some more concrete observations can be made. For those whose learning takes place at the workplace, there may be less difficulty in focusing on relevant problems. But much of the training is carried out in firms by technically proficient tout pedagogically unskilled teachers and therefore there is a strong case for encouraging them to acquire the necessary teaching skills, especially if the education offered is to progress beyond the narrowest of vocational training.
On the other hand, teachers from outside the world of work may be fully acquainted with teaching theory but be handicapped by their lack of work experience. A more active recruiting of teachers from those with industrial or other experience (for example through preferential admission to training colleges) and the encouragement to those already teaching to spend time at a different occupation would pay dividends.
The value of such work experience for teachers has been recognised in a recent (1977) Department of Industry paper on Industry, Education and Management and a pilot scheme to allow 60 teachers to work for a term in a company has just been announced. These are small steps and are aimed at school teachers but alternation between teaching and other occupations is just as valuable for those teaching adults.
In any case there is a huge disparity between the efforts and resources devoted to training school teachers and those devoted to training adult educators. We need to know much more about adult learning processes and how they can be supported. An indication of serious governmental interest in recurrent education would therefore be the use of in-service
training to encourage teachers, both experienced and aspirant, to turn to adult education. Falling school enrolments make the present an ideal time.
A final reservation, however, on the subject of the training of adult educators: granted the need for teaching skills, it would nevertheless be disastrous if we trudged off down the path towards a fully blown profession of adult educators, formally trained over years, exclusive, certified, corporatised. As Shaw said, “ all professions are a conspiracy against the laity,” and the demystifying power of education will be suborned if those involved are encouraged to constitute themselves into a separate occupational group.
paid educational leave__________________
The ilo Convention 140 on paid educational leave, passed in 1974, is potentially of enormous significance, not so much because of the direct commitment entered into by its signatories as because it marks a point of reference around which future discussions and negotiations can centre. Several countries — France, Belgium, Sweden and some German Lander—have already introduced legislation, albeit of widely differing characters. In others, such as Italy, collective bargaining has made major strides in establishing the right, if only for a limited number of workers, to paid educational leave.
The best way of getting educational leave into perspective is to reflect on the introduction of paid holidays, now accepted as an unquestionable (if often inadequate) feature of any job. An interesting study of the reaction in Switzerland to the ilo proposal for educational leave drew a parallel with the origins of ordinary paid holidays: their introduction was hotly contested by employers’ organisations, initially depended on individual agreements rather than general legislation and was largely restricted to privileged groups such as teachers or those employed in highly organised sectors. We may expect to see these tendencies develop in this country too, as educational leave emerges from its present nascent condition (Cath-
14
erine Goyder, Sabbaticals For All, nclc Publishing Society, 1977).
The ilo Convention refers to three types of educational leave: general, vocational and union education. The classification is useful as a working basis, but too much weight cannot be put on it, especially as far as the distinction between the first two types is concerned. In the United Kingdom at present, there is no general right to educational leave, except for some
300,000	union representatives under the Employment Protection Act. It exists, of course, but in piecemeal form and tends to be very much employer oriented and tightly job related. The immediate question, therefore, sends us back to the subject of power: if education leave develops, who is to control its content and organisation ?
legislation and negotiate on
A first point is that to make the granting of paid educational leave dependent on the education being job related is highly regressive. For it means that the narrower and more repetitive one’s job, the less chance one will have of being granted leave which could allow one to develop professionally or individually, whilst those whose jobs are varied and interesting will have access to a whole range of courses. Under strictly job related criteria, an assembly line worker, for example, has a very limited number of options, whilst a manager could justify studying such subjects as psychology, sociology, economics and so on. In other words, the divergent tendency referred to in chapter two will be reinforced.
Let us look briefly at two countries in which educational leave has developed substantially but in significantly different ways. France has attracted much attention, principally because she was first in the field with national legislation (in 1971). Credit is due for this, but the actual working of the law shows it to be less than ideal in its implementation of the paid leave concept. In the first place, it represents basically a system of vocational training, as the right to leave is
only accompanied by financial support if it is for an approved course, and these at present tightly job related; the approval is given by the bipartite comites d’entre-prise tout so far the unions have, for largely political reasons, been reluctant to fight hard to expand its scope. Secondly, the distribution has been regressive (though recently slightly less so): disproportionately more white collar and managerial employees benefit than blue collar workers ; more men than women, and more employees of big organisations than small (see table on page 17). There is, moreover, a certain cynicism about the quality of some of the training offered, much of which is provided by private institutions which sprang up in response to the obligation placed upon firms to spend a certain proportion (one per cent of their payroll) on training (if they fail to reach this level, they must pay the difference to the state).
In Italy, there is no national legislation. In 1973, the metal workers union reached a collective agreement with the employers, the formula for which has been adopted with various modifications by other unions. The agreement is for a total number of hours paid educational leave to be availaible over a three year period, calculated on the basis of the number of employees multiplied by 30. It is normally referred to as the “ 150 hours ” since that was the limit in the original contract for any single worker over three years, though in the case of the metal workers that has now been increased to 250 hours. A condition is that the worker devotes an equal amount of his own time to study.
Interestingly, therefore, it is a collective rather than an individual right, as the leave is available to the workers as a body and the unions have taken responsibility for its organisation (the courses themselves taking place in regular schools, which raises many other issues). It is also significant that the leave is generally devoted to the completion of basic education, which helps to explain why nearly 92 per cent of the students are unskilled or semi-skilled workers. Not so impressive from the equity point of view is the balance between the sexes, with only 15.3
15
PARTICIPATION IN 1976 UNDER THE 1971 FRENCH LAW ON EDUCATIONAL LEAVE % of active distribution of labour educational category force leave		
managerial /		
professional	7	15
technical workers	15	22
skilled workers	47	46
unskilled and semi-		
skilled workers	31	17
all	100	100
		% of
size		payroll
of firm		spent on
(number of		educational
employees)		leave
10-19		0.71
20-49		0.87
50-499		1.17
500-1,999		1.50
2,000 +		2.47
source: La Formation Professionelle		
Continue, Secretariat d’Etat		aupres du
Ministre du Travail, 1977.		
per cent of all participants being women. One example from Italy will suffice to illustrate the way in which the general/ vocational distinction is itself a matter for discussion. The hospital workers in Milan follow a curriculum which includes health issues and could therefore be construed as job related—-but their discussions on this topic centre round the concept of health and the fundamental causes of illness in a capitalist society, as well as trying to relate this to their work. This is not the type of education which an employer will readily accept as vocational.
It is not a question of choosing between two alternative sets of objectives for educational leave—general or vocational— but of seeing that if and when educa-cational leave is introduced on a substantial scale, the way in which it is organised and distributed reflects a fair balance between social, economic and individual requirements. This is above all an area where unions need to take an
active part in pursuing negotiations both to win the right to educational provision for their members and to establish appropriate machinery for supervising its implementation. In the United States, for example, 344 major collective bargaining agreements covering 2.4 million workers contained education and training clauses in 1969 ; moreover, there is in some cases specific provision for financial aid to workers on external courses unrelated to their job (in 60 out of 1,550 agreements in 1974). In an era of restraint for money wages, the introduction of paid leave is very much the type of improvement for working conditions which can be actively promoted.
Trade unions, of course, are most directly concerned in the third ilo category—that of union education. The need for education for union representatives and officials at all levels is already substantial, and the accretion of further responsibilities, often in complex areas, means it will assume still greater importance. In Britain apart from the 100,000 safety representatives needed under the Health and Safety at Work regulations, there are some 300.000 workplace representatives,
120,000	branch officials and about 5,000 full time officials. For everyone to have a basic training, some 80,000 places are required each year (turnover being about 20 per cent), whereas the tuc estimate of current provision puts it at 40,000 (24,000 by the tuc itself, 16,000 by the unions)—about the same as that provided in Norway (35,000) with a population far smaller than the United Kingdom. With wage negotiations becoming even more technical on the one hand and the scope of bargaining issues broadening on the other, more and more competencies are demanded of these representatives and, whilst such skills may come as much from solid, practical acquaintance with the memberships and their problems as from formal training, the latter is undoubtedly a critical factor. Looking to the early 1980s, the tuc estimates a total need for 180,000 training places (General Council’s Report, tuc, 1977).
About £16 million a year of government money goes into management education;
16
£500,000 a year is the offer for union education. Individual unions and the tuc collectively spent some £1.2 million on training in 1974, compared with some £7 million spent by German unions out of subscriptions alone. Some individual unions (for example nalgo, gmwu) provide examples of good practice in terms of training effort, which the tuc could encourage others to emulate. But the most fruitful approach, especially in a time of severe economic constraint, may well be to use collective bargaining machinery to press for a general expansion of opportunities for educational leave which would allow the maximum use of existing plant and resources, rather than requiring the creation of costly new facilities.
It is not possible to give a detailed empirical picture of the state of play on educational leave, both for reasons of space and because in many cases the information is simply not available in systematic form. The study now being jointly carried out by the National Institute for Adult Education (niae) and sit should provide us with a much clearer picture and also more ideas on lines for future development. But there are two further points which should be made.
The first is that experience from abroad shows that the formal educational sector has on the whole responded very sluggishly to the emergence of paid educational leave. Institutions have continued to provide courses which are too long or inflexible and take insufficient account of the particular motivation and abilities of those entitled to the leave. This explains the growth in France and Germany, for instance, of private agencies some of which are perfectly respectable, others of which, by contrast, are simply making profits by filling the vacuum created by the inertia of the public sector. In most countries, at present, these institutions feed off the trend to professionalisation, but the field will spread as educational rights are extended to people who do not aspire to professional status. One could as a consequence speculate that the extemporised and short-sighted shufflings which followed the failure to anticipate student unrest in the 1960s may be
parallelled—albeit	in less dramatic
fashion—by a similar failure to anticipate the needs of a growing worker/student population. Of course many of our institutions have already shown themselves capable of a responsive and flexible approach ; it is a question of whether the sector as a whole—universities, polytechnics, colleges and schools— is capable of planning purposiveiy for a new clientele.
The second point is that the growth of educational leave must be seen in the context of educational opportunity in general. In the first place, if it is seen mainly as a benefit to be gained by strong unions for their members alone, there is a risk that it will accentuate inequalities, with workers in the secondary sector of the labour market being excluded. A broad approach is therefore required, which may be spearheaded by the negotiation by individual unions of educational leave as a fringe benefit, but which includes the eventual extension of the right to the working population as a whole. “ Through negotiation to legislation ” could be the most effective approach to adopt.
But the issue of equality must be taken further. As in other areas, those outside the labour market altogether are in no position to profit from benefits negotiated on behalf of the employed, and this applies particularly to women. In the interests of equity, therefore, the promotion of educational leave for those in employment should be complemented by the development of a system of educational entitlements for all, briefly discussed later on page 24. Only in this way can a more even distribution be achieved, both cross-sectionally and over time.
democracy at work and in the community___________________________
“A substantial training programme will be essential, to equip both employee and shareholder representatives to co-operate effectively at board level in the formulation of policy and the supervision of management. If insufficient attention is given to the establishment of a training programme, then the success of board
17
level representation itself, will, in our view, be endangered” (Report of the Bullock Committee of Inquiry on Industrial Democracy, op cit). The fate of the Buiiock Report recommendations are, at the time of writing, uncertain, but a plea is made for a minimum of £3 million to be devoted over three years specifically to the training of employee representatives and this figure is regarded by some as far too low—even more so if there is to be representation below board level. As the quotation above says, without training (for both sides) attempts to promote industrial democracy will be broken backed. A 1976 Fabian Tract spelt out the argument forcefully: “ There will also have to be a massive expansion of trade union education, training and research facilities. It will be partly a question of equipping employee directors for their new functions and seeing that they get the back-up services they require. Equally important, however, is the general educational effort that will be needed if the employees and their shop floor representatives are to understand the implications and advantages of the new democratic system and be in a position to question and control their boardroom representatives ” (Workers in the Boardroom, Fabian Society, 1976). The same holds true, perhaps in a less easily definable sense, for democratic participation in general.
For the average person an offer to “ open the company’s books ” may be appreciated as a formal gesture but is unlikely to mean very much in practical terms if there is no opportunity to acquire the skills necessary for interpreting the books—in fact the probable result will be frustration and disillusionment at the emptiness of the gesture. “Without the return of requisite technical knowledge to the mass of workers and the reshaping of the organisation of labour . . . balloting within factories and offices does not alter the fact that the workers remain as dependent as before upon “ experts ” and can only choose among them, or vote for alternatives presented by them ” (H. Braverman. “ Labour and Monopoly Capital ”, Monthly Review Press, 1974). Sharing power
means sharing information and sharing the capacity to use that information. Obviously, also, it goes much further than the accounts:	investment plans, man-
power programmes, market research and a host of other issues which demand a wide range of skills. In fact, the scope of those issues will itself be the subject of dabate and negotiation, as employers will inevitably attempt to limit it to those areas which do not seriously threaten their control.
The weakest conceptions of participation do not envisage an active role for most employees but focus more on improving communication flows and consequently make little provision for education ; on the other hand more ambitious approaches, which assign a more positive role to the workforce, must be accompanied by ideas on how to give workers the requisite skills in a number of areas. “ It should be recognised that many of these issues (recruitment, deployment, manning, speed of work) are ultimately based on prior decisions by management about production programming, workplace layout and the technology and design of plant and machinery—factors which are often taken as ‘ given ’ in the context of pay negotiations ” (Industrial Democracy, tuc, 1976). Whether the reference is to collective bargaining as such or to the broader field of industrial democracy, participation in those “ prior decisions ”•—an essential feature of power-sharing—has strong educational implications. The scope for education is extended still further if the economic and social role of the enterprise is considered as a legitimate and necessary issue for democratic discussion.
It. is not only a question of educating the worker on the shop floor. Evidence from Norway and Australia shows that schemes for greater democracy at work are particularly likely to be undermined by two categories of personnel who. see their authority as threatened:	supervisors/
foremen, and junior/middle managers. If these categories are not given similar opportunities to understand the scheme’s rationale and objectives, and to adapt to whatever changes are required of them,
18
its success may be jeopardised by their overt and covert refusal to co-operate.
Non commercial ventures have similar educational needs. Housing cooperatives, for example, may represent a useful medium of housing policy, and their advent requires practical skills and courses in management and accountancy.
On a more general note, active participation at whatever level is often a function of the aspirations of potential participants. Two factors must coincide for progress to be made: the opportunity for increased participation must exist, and the prospective participants must perceive themselves as capable of exploiting them. “ Within the home and within the community, subordinates ‘ know their place ’ because their self contained situation allows them only limited access to alternative conceptions of their ‘ place ’ from outside ” (Davidoff et al, “ Landscape with Figures: Home and Community in English Society,” The Rights and Wrongs of Women, Penguin Books, 1976). Women's horizons, as those of other groups, are limited by the social and economic role allocated to them which prevents them from aspiring to greater equality; risks of paternalism notwithstanding, education has a big part to play in enabling them to transcend those horizons and participate more actively at all levels of society. Conversely, men should be allowed to transcend their traditional roles and learn skills currently regarded as exclusively feminine.
Above all, perhaps greater democratisa-tion gives the educational sector the chance to reveal itself as a genuine service in the literal sense of the work, a sector which plays an essential part in helping other parts of society to change and improve, without claiming for itself a central role. Much of the community education currently taking place has very much this orientation, and its proponents readily acknowledge that education should serve as an agent for social change. Paradoxically, one could argue that education will increase its impact when its proponents look more for ways in which it can complement and influence
a whole range of other policies and trends. The status of “ necessary precondition ” for the proper functioning of a democracy is not an unworthy one.
4.	finance
There are two aspects of the financial question: the actual cost and the means by which a system of recurrent education can be financed. The former will depend on the degree to which governmental and other sources of funds are able to provide support for existing institutions and for innovations in education and training; targets must be set, but there is little point in trying to. specify here what the level should be. The fundamental point is that the overall cost of providing adult education and training can only be meaningfully estimated if it is set against the alternatives, and it was argued in chapter two that the prevailing background in the short and possibly the medium term is likely to be one of relatively high unemployment. Paying a person to study is in itself no more expensive than paying him to sit at home unemployed—and is likely to yield far greater returns, both economic and social.
Of course, there will be direct costs involved—teacher salaries, and building and equipment costs—but against these must be weighed the costs of inaction, of allowing people to remain without occupation, plant to lie idle and society to deprive itself of one means of preparing itself for the future. Even a static analysis shows that there are enormous sums being devoted to essentially negative maintenance costs. To switch a proportion of these costs into increased education and training would entail little extra net burden to the exchequer and would at the very least raise the chances of providing some sort of pay-off.
But the “ alternatives ” referred to immediately above are not only, or principally, the costs of unemployment. Difficult though it is to grasp conceptually, and impossible to quantify, the notion of negative costs must be confronted. What is the price we are paying now for inadequate investment and poorly thought-out policies over the last two decades? Financing recurrent education therefore means providing for those inside and outside the active labour force opportunities and support to take up study, some of which will be for purely personal development but much of which must be
part of a coherent strategy for providing jobs which meet individual aspirations and the criteria of social benefit. Some may have to form part of short term emergency measures, but their necessarily slightly disjointed nature should not prejudice the chances of implementing longer running and less piecemeal plans. There is an inbuilt tendency to avoid discussion of such projects as being too interventionist, but the current crisis furnishes an opportunity for opening up more of a debate on the criteria to be used for investing human and capital resources.
current finance : imbalanced and iSiogicaS_____________________________
On the second aspect—the means of financing—one can be much more specific, though here again there can be no question of suggesting an entirely new system. It is pre-eminently an area in which the lip service paid to the principle of lifelong learning can be put to the test, especially as regards direct aid to individuals: what sort of financial support is given to adults to take up study, as compared with that offered to young people? How discriminatory is the system of mandatory and discretionary awards? Is support distributed in such a way as to encourage the sorts of courses which adults find easiest to undertake?
The blunt answer is as follows: “In most oecd countries at present, methods of financing education are ill adapted to a system of life long or recurrent education, since students in traditional, full time education are usually more heavily subsidised than adults undertaking part time education or retraining, and financial aid for students is usually provided at levels and terms which presuppose that they are young, with no dependants. Thus, adults who did not have the same opportunities for higher education as today’s youth may be discouraged from undertaking education or training later in their lives ” (M. Woodhall, op cit).
The point which is rarely brought up is that the present weighting of expenditure is a function of the monolithic
20
system in operation when it was devised, does not reflect current needs and is not immutable. As the House of Commons Expenditure Committee remarked in its Third Report: “ Is it socially just that, when only just over 10 per cent of young people are able to enjoy full time higher education at all, more than one quarter of the public expenditure on universities should be devoted to the postgraduate education of a small minority, little more than 2 per cent of the age group ? . . . It could be argued on grounds of social justice that, if the small minority enjoying postgraduate education is to be subsidised, then much more money should be spent on the education of the great majority in this age group ” (Postgraduate Education, volume 1, hmso 1975). Even granted that the expenditure on postgraduate education is mostly on institutional and infrastructural costs and the money is not seen by the postgraduate himself, the redistributional thrust of the argument is undeniable.
In short, our system of financial support is overwhelmingly geared to students pursuing the orthodox pattern of full time end-on studies for as long as possible. The bias of educational financing in favour of prolonged initial education begins immediately at the end of compulsory schooling, since the dependence of head teachers’ salaries on the size of their school’s sixth form provides an inbuilt incentive 'to encourage pupils to stay on. Admittedly, the financing of education and training for the 16-19 age group is wholly anomalous, with students sitting side by side on the same course receiving very different benefits ranging from -the £18 mandatory allowance for msc schemes to no support at all for the majority of further education students. In this respect there is a positive incentive to leave full time education, and there is certainly a strong case for putting the whole financing of this sector on a more logical and equitable footing. But those who dismount early from the educational train have the most difficulty in getting back on; “ stop-overs ” (to change travelling metaphors) are not catered for. And those who make, absolutely consciously, what might seem to
be a most sensible and mature decision at the end of secondary school—to defer their further education until they are clearer about its purpose—are actually penalised. The minimum age of 25 years as the qualification for mature student status demolishes any notions of “planning deferment”, as very few school leavers will choose to wait that many years. Reduction of the age limit to 20 or 21 could begin to give serious effect to a remodelling of the system away from its present heavy concentration on an unbroken spell o.f education.
Differential entitlement to grants can militate against a flexible system of recurrent education provision. In general, aid to full time students in higher education is more generous than that accorded to part timers or those in informal education, and as a Labour Party Study Group observed in 1973, “part -time students are still far from receiving .the priority they deserve ” (Higher and Further Education, The Labour Party, 1973). In certain cases, moreover, grants are not available for shorter courses and prospective students are obliged to apply for longer courses in order ,to. qualify for support: for example, someone wishing to study modern languages in order to attain a two year linguistic secretarial qualification may be forced to enrol on a fully fledged four year degree course. One conclusion of a ten country survey on student aid gives the simple verdict that “governments are fairly slow to adapt aid systems to the needs of adults and part time students ” (jReview of Student Support Schemes in Selected oecd Countries, oecd, 1976).
The withdrawal of student entitlement to supplementary and unemployment benefits penalises above all those who have worked before entering higher education and hardly squares with the widely accepted notion that many students would gain from a period of work experience before proceeding to further education. Only a few local education authorities enable people to attend part time courses without losing their entitlement to supplementary benefit and that is conditional on their remaining available for employ-
2.1
ment. It is anyway unsatisfactory for benefits to have to be used in this way and a coherent aid policy should guarantee support for those who decide to defer their further education, or to mix it with part time employment.
The questions which need to be asked, therefore, are of the following sort: what is the right balance of support for students in different sectors (postgraduate and undergraduate, university and polytechnic, higher and further education, etc) ? Given the private returns to the individual, what proportion of the cost should he or she be asked to bear, and how should this vary in the light of his or her family and occupational situation ? Places already cost different amounts— sciences, for example, being much more expensive than social sciences; to what extent should the individual be insulated from those cost differentials ? The point is not, in the first instance, to provide specific answers to these questions, but by posting them to clarify the criteria ¦on which resources are allocated and subsidies accorded.
alternative machinery and
educational entitlement
Moving on from individual aid, one can make only brief reference to different possible sources of finance, other than general revenues. A payroll tax, such as operates in France (1 per cent), and partly in Sweden (0.25 per cent), is an obvious candidate, but has certain disadvantages: it penalises labour-intensive industries, is subject to. economic fluctuations and can be regressive in its overall effect, since it taxes labour rather than wealth incomes. A collective funding system for training, going beyond the levy / grant system of the 1964 Industrial Training Act, was proposed in the 1976 msc document. Training for Vital Skills (1976), and it is interesting to note haw tfie responses were divided: overall support for collective funding was 28 per cent, but support from educationalists and those in training and personnel was almost 50 per cent; conversely, overall opposition was 46 per cent, but amongst employers it reached 65 per cent. As the
msc analysis of the responses judiciously observed:	“This indicates a marked
division between those who would be immediately concerned with the scheme and its costs, and those who can pertinently take a more detached view.” The nuts and bolts of the particular system proposed in the msc document may be open to question, but the principle 'behind collective funding remains sound: to ensure a steadier flow of finance for training and to maintain a higher regular level by pooling the costs, reducing the loss suffered by firms who do their own training only to see other firms “ poach ” their skilled labour. A detached view might indeed take more account of the overall costs and benefits to society.
In the longer _ term, it is not too far fetched to envisage a system of educational insurance analogous to health insurance. In Norway, indeed, some of the funds for adult education and training are derived from such a system, with employers contributing two, thirds, employees one third and the proceeds (about £4 million in 1974) being equally divided. Progress towards such an insurance system could be more rapidly made within individual enterprises, with the use of resulting funds being a matter for negotiation between unions and management. In Japan, the funding of educational leave is an integral part of taxation measures which also cover unemployment benefit and expenditure on worker welfare measures such as the construction of holiday hostels.
One concrete proposition, which could be relatively rapidly implemented, is the imposition of a tax on profits above a certain level, the proceeds to be frozen in a fund which would onfy be unblocked during an economic downturn. This is analogous to the Swedish investment tax, except that it would be used for financing education rather than investment. The argument that this is yet another tax on non-existent profits has no force, since it would only be levied on profits which exceeded a certain level. It would smooth out the irregularities of current training finance by countering the natural tendency of individual firms to
22
retrench on retraining in bad times, which naturally leaves them ill-prepared for the upturn. Part of the funds thus frozen could be returned to firms in the downturn, part retained and matched by central contributions, to be used for more general training.
It will have been noted that these examples refer to the industrial training sector, whereas the instances of student aid referred to. the educational sector, and this is symptomatic of the cleavage between the two sectors. The issue of co-ordination will be taken up in the next chapter, but it is already apparent that optimal use of the available funds depends on greater permeability between hitherto discrete fields. It is unlikely that a wholly unified system of joint financing is practicable or even desirable, but there are clearly certain areas in which a more flexible use of resources is necessary. The spread of educational leave may provide a testing ground for such co-operation: if universities, polytechnics and colleges are to extend the services they currently offer to those on leave, appropriate machinery will have to be developed to allow them access to the available funds.
Reverting to a longer term perspective, it is time to start a discussion on the implications for our educational financing system of a serious application of the principle of recurrent education. In the United States much work is being done on educational entitlements, the notion of endowing each individual at the end of his secondary education with a certain capital to be spent on education at the times and places of his choice. The work often involves intimidating actuarial calculations and may be more relevant to the American educational system, but the approach is a courageous one, especially as the relative importance of manpower programmes is not ignored. Many pertinent questions are raised: should support be channelled primarily to individuals or institutions ? Should it vary according to the cost of the programme, and if so. how are priorities to be established ? To what extent should family circumstances be taken into
account ? How can the displacement of private expenditure be minimised ? However, any such entitlements are likely to form only part of the general financing system, which will comprise a mixture of different types of subsidy and aid. An eentitlement system may turn out to be a better way of achieving equity in educational financing than either a loan or a graduate tax system.
In conclusion, one point should be reiterated:	the	current distribution of
educational funds is largely the result of the historical evolution of the educational system. Ironically, its most massive injections came just when the educational structures themselves were beginning to change, but the funds continued to pour through the same channels in favour of tne same age groups and social classes. The funds are now not so plentiful, but this in itself should stimulate rather than discourage debate on whether the existing methods and weighting of their distribution are consistent with our stated goals and priorities.
5.	co-ordination with the labour market
One of the major thrusts of the case for recurrent education is the need to coordinate education and labour market policies. As Raymond Williams has said, a propos of general cultural policies: “What chance is there of any coherent grasp of the problems, let alone any coherent policy, when responsibility is spread between the Home Office, the Department of the Environment and the Department of Education and Science? ” (“Television and the Mandarins”, New Society, 31 March 1977). One can support the criticism of the fragmentation of responsibilities without necessarily accepting the implication that this should be concentrated exclusively in one department.
Co-ordination is something almost everyone supports but virtually no one sees as his responsibility. It is, moreover, a slogan which brings nods of assent only so long as it is left imprecise. For serious attempts at co-ordination are not simply a matter of communicating one’s intentions, but involve some measure of agreement on objectives and on the means for their achievement, and the path to that agreement may be highly conflictual.
In some cases, it is simply a matter of removing anomalies, such as Circular 68/45, which by making handicapped young people the exclusive responsibility of the Department of Education and Science (des) impedes the msc from devoting any of its resources to their training. A review of such rigid divisions of responsibility would help to uncover and eliminate similar examples. But a more systematic approach is needed.
national and local leveSs
At the level of governmental departments, the most obvious protagonists are the des and the Department of Employment through the msc. Take the Skill -centre programme, in 1979; 74 centres will have been opened over a seven year period, at a cost of £113.8 million in capital alone, yet the planning of their placement and function was executed without reference to local and central
education authorities. The result has inevitably been duplication of resources and, perhaps even more importantly, antagonism between sectors. A step in the right direction has already been taken with the formation early in 1977 of a National Consultative Group for Training and Further Education. But it remains to be seen how sharp the Group’s teeth will be and its effectiveness depends on how early in the policy making process it can make its views known; there will be little room for manoeuvre if it is basically a forum for the exposition from the various representatives of views already formulated by their respective bodies. The same is true for the Advisory Council for Adult and Continuing Education (acace). The composition of the Council is now known; its impact will depend on how much it can build on a modest initial base.
However, there is also a strong case for strengthening links with other departments, in particular with the Department of Industry in view of its responsibility for investment and similarly with the National Enterprise Board. Decisions on employment creation and such package proposals as the Environment Secretary’s £1,000 million inner cities initiative should take account of the educational profile of the available labour force and the educational capacity of the area involved. Fruitful collaboration with voluntary bodies such as the wea also comes under this heading.
Is this too ambitious? Would it merely lead to a proliferation of interdepartmental committees ? Such questions prompt two considerations. The first is that wherever one starts in the policy making web, the thread, if followed to its limit, passes through virtually all other sectors, and it is therefore important to set realistic boundaries on the possibilities for co-ordination. The second is that coordination does not simply, or even primarily, take place at national level, and in fact it seems that it is practically most effective at local level. This implies the creation of machinery at local or regional level, which will bring together educational and labour market auth-
24
orities, employers and unions, representatives from the educational and training institutions, community educators and other people drawn from local groups—the exact mix will obviously be determined 'by local factors.
Moreover, even the term “ local ” can be highly ambiguous. As Youthaid have argued, labour markets, industrial structures and employment opportunities can alter radically in relatively short distances. It is not only from one part of the country to another that changes occur, but often from one part of a conurbation, or county or city, that the problem changes. This can result in massive diversities of employment and union interests and of fe provision, which makes effective co-ordination difficult. The diversity of agencies and interests can be reduced by localising as far as possible; the corollary of this, however, is that excessive layers of administration can only fee avoided by greater use of discretionary funding. In other words, local groups should, as far as possible, be entrusted with financial and other decision making powers. Obviously there must be accountability but great discretion should bring better value for money. Autonomy so far has been largely correlated with status—it is time to give the non-prestigious educational sectors a fair share.
This reveals a major problem, which is that decisions -are often not taken at levels in the different sectors. Thus a local education authority’s powers of decision may not be matched by its local labour market counterpart which is more closely subjected to decisions taken at central level.
other aspects
Co-ordination is not, however, achieved merely by establishing appropriate administrative machinery. It depends on a variety of more or less informal factors, such as personal co-operativeness and ability to comprehend alternative points of view. Discussion is needed of how best policy makers and practitioners can
acquire a broader understanding of how things work outside their particular experience and field without aiming at an unrealistic degree of general knowledge. Exchange of personnel and imaginative in-service training schemes would be a start in this direction.
It is not only between sectors that coordination is necessary. The aim of a recurrent education approach is to distribute learning opportunities more evenly over the individual’s life cycle and this means modifying the dominant tendency for young people to enter straight into further education and higher education if they gain access. As already mentioned the deferment of such study is often to be welcomed, but only if those who make that choice are later given special benefits not available to those who continue straight on. Otherwise the whole operation may become only a covert reintroduction of increased selection, with entirely predictable consequences for the social distribution of educational opportunity.
This treatment seems to be based on a narrowly technical conception of coordination. It should be clear, however, from the earlier arguments concerning participation and power that the formulation of coherent policy in this domain is not to be thought of as a neutral exercise consigned to “ experts ”, but should itself be the product of active collaboration between administrators, practitioners and clients.
Finally, there are policies ancillary to recurrent education whose relevance falls under the heading of co-ordination and which should be briefly mentioned. The spread of flexible working hours would in many cases make an important contribution to education being genuinely available, by allowing working people to adjust their own schedules. The same is true for job sharing schemes, though these are as yet rare. For women in particular (until sex roles undergo greater change) the provision of adequate child care facilities is an essential precondition for them to be able to envisage taking up study again.
6.	conclusions
Advocates of a recurrent education approach are sometimes reproached for proposing wildly unrealistic blueprints for a wholly new system, or alternatively for using inflated language to announce their rediscovery of the wheel. In some cases, such criticisms are justified, as happens whenever a new slogan enters the vocabulary o.f educational discourse.
At all events, learning opportunities, both vocational and non vocational, will be available to adults in increasing numbers, whether or not the principle of recurrent education is adopted as a planning strategy ; the question is what form these opportunities will take, how they will be distributed, and what relation they will have to current provision. This conclusion points briefly to some dangers which are present if the principle is given too facile an acceptance and its various forms of implementation uncritically accepted.
Perhaps we are now at the end of the rhetorical stage. Few people are interested in ringing proclamations of the value of lifelong learning—they want action. The first danger is therefore that we shall see in a number of areas intermittent spurts of development in response to sporadic moments of political pressure. Provision along these lines is likely to be lacking in coherence and, except in isolated instances, will represent an expansion of what already exists rather than meeting the needs of those who find little to interest them in current provision.
In particular (and this is the second risk) an expansion of existing provision would accentuate inequalities rather than reducing them — the phenomenon of “ second creaming ”, whereby an increase in services principally benefits those who only just failed to profit from what already existed, and leaves those further down the heap relatively worse off. This has two implications.
First, improvement is necessary in the way resources are channelled to the groups most in need, making sure that it is indeed they who benefit from the specific provision. This means accepting
that the establishment of priorities by definition excludes certain groups, perhaps even ones whose claims deserve sympathy. Secondly, recognition is needed of the dependence of educational policies for redressing inequality on contemporaneous measures in other areas, a point dealt with in chapter two. It is simply a recipe for disillusionment and frustration to provide opportunities for workers to acquire new skills if at the end there is no demand, or for communities and individuals to articulate their needs if there is no possibility of satisfying them.
The third danger is that proliferation of recurrent education schemes will lead to the growth of an exploitative educational industry. A parallel was drawn between the present state of educational leave and the initial stages of introducing ordinary paid holidays; one has only to look at the holiday industry to have an idea of the potential commercial interest in the growth of recurrent education. Several countries have already experienced the mushrooming of profit oriented firms eager to benefit from increased public expenditure or from regulations which oblige companies to spend a certain amount on training. There is room for entrepreneurial initiative, and many would argue that small scale, private undertakings can be more responsive than the necessarily rather constricted national system. But any such undertakings need to be rigorously scrutinised.
An example is the production of reading materials for the literacy campaign. Clearly it would have been absurdly wasteful to set up an entirely independent system and co-operation with already established publishers was therefore called for. Equally clearly, however, the fact that public money was now available (albeit a very limited quantity) did not mean that inappropriate or low quality publications should be accepted. What happened in many cases, therefore, was that the free market mechanism was replaced by joint discussions in which the literacy agencies explained their needs and guidelines were elaborated for the supply of appropriate material.
26
If the public educational system proves itself capable of responding quickly enough to the stimulation and expression of new needs, well and good. But there may well be a case for establishing a strong body, with a remit covering both public and private sectors, to monitor and control the quality and value of education services. It should not merely have the passive role of refusing the public imprimatur to institutions of inadequate quality, but it should act as an authoritative disseminator of information and judge of performance. To do this, it would probably have to be based in the des but draw on a wide range of existing expertise, such as is to be found in the niae, sit, and other bodies who are regularly in contact with the field.
Perhaps acace will prove able to assume this function, which would help it to acquire a sharper profile. But in any case, the earlier such a body is set up, with a broad remit, the more chance there will be of achieving diversity without confusion.
There is, finally, a danger which can only be described in broadly ideological terms. The arguments for more recurrent education, and for a bridging of the gap between conventional conceptions of education and training, could be exploited to justify the imposition of a narrowly vocational character on the provision, best captured by the transliteration of the French term “ re-cyclage ”. The image conjured up is one of individuals emerging reprocessed and smoothly rounded to fit into the production system. It is an exaggerated picture, but it serves to remind us once again that the definition of the structure and content of recurrent education will reflect the relative power of various interests pulling in different directions. Once one has passed the stage of broad statements of general principle, the accommodation of these interests within a pluralist democracy is not likely to be achieved without friction.
The time will never be ripe for a sweeping introduction of a recurrent education system. It is a question of pressing ahead
on several fronts, with constant reference to the principle of a better distribution of education resources. The fact that such a statement may appear banal merely reflects how cynical we may have become towards the possibility of paying more than lip service tot an accepted idea. Only some of the measures proposed under the rubric of -recurrent education are in themselves new; the point is to see them in relation to each other, and to try to organise them into a coherent and adaptable system. Maybe in the 1950s and 1960s too much faith was placed in education as the solution to social problems, especially as economic development tended to be seen as autonomous and self-justifying. There is no justification for swinging to the opposite extreme ; the most important lesson to be learnt is education’s interdependence with other policies, and hence that much more attention should be paid to the factors which determine its success in furthering both individual and collective development.
7.	resume of main points
The style of this pamphlet has been necessarily elliptical in attempting to cover the numerous issues which fall under the rubric of recurrent education. A summary of such a broad field runs the dual risk of degenerating into vagueness or being unduly selective and unbalanced. Below, nevertheless, are the key points around which future discussion might profitably centre.
general_____________________________________
Making education available over the individual’s lifetime has been a longstanding objective. Demographic demand, and above all employment trends now reinforce the original arguments. Whilst there are severe overall resource constraints, there is now more room for manoeuvre in achieving a better belance between youth and adult education. Efforts to reform and improve initial schooling must, nevertheless, be maintained.
A coherent approach to the distribution of education requires much closer cooperation between the various parties, especially the education and labour market authorities. This is particularly true for two reasons. First, learning opportunities for most people arise from their work environment (including housework). Secondly, overall costs and benefits to society can only be assessed if employment trends are taken into account, in terms of the utilisation of human potential and output of goods and services.
Recurrent education is not, however, to be seen as merely responding to economic demands. At heart, it is a means of maximising the individual’s power to participate in the life of the community. This means allowing people to increase their social and professional competence; but educational provision to this end must be accompanied by other measures, so that these people are able to exercise that competence, at home, at work and in the community at large. These measures involve decisions on the distribution and volume of employment, on the
quality of work and community life and on the structure of authority at various levels. Recurrent education is concerned with the contribution education can make to allowing people to understand and influence these changes.
specific
The responsibility of the education ser-vice begins before the student starts a course and should include an active approach to the articulation of needs. This means improved information and counselling services, plus the involvement of people who in their regular occupation are well placed to help potential students define and identify their educational needs. Social service employees, personnel managers and union representatives, librarians and health visitors are groups of people who should be encouraged and enabled to develop diagnostic and counselling skills.
Admission policies to educational courses at all levels should be revised to make access easier for mature students. In particular, pressure should be exercised on institutions of higher education to recruit a certain minimum proportion of adults with work experience but lacking formal qualifications. Quotas of 10 per cent including 5 per cent for the unqualified, are suggested. This should not be regarded as essentially a compensatory measure, but as a way of tapping abilities which have 'been ignored.
Introductory courses to help adults pick up the learning habit again should be developed so that they become a regular feature of educational provision. Modular courses should be supported. This will involve consultation both between the two sides of the binary system in higher education, and between representatives of the formal educational system and the labour market authorities at all levels. The aim should be to maximise transferability without sacrificing internal curricular coherence.
The British signature to the ilo Convention on paid educational leave should
28
be given practical effect. Trade unions can take immediate action in pressing for educational leave as part of improved working conditions, especially in a period of restraint on money wages. Progress can be piecemeal but rapid, with broader legislation an eventual target. The content of the courses should be a matter for discussion between employers, unions and the providers of the educational services. Specific attention should be paid to the equitable distribution of this benefit, both within individual companies and between different occupational categories. Adequate information should be compiled from the outset to allow progress to be monitored.
The growing impetus towards various forms of community action, worker participation and industrial democracy has a dual effect. It must be accompanied by adequate education and training, often in new fields, but it also generates demand for wider learning opportunities as people come to realise 'their own potential. Any moves in this area should, therefore, include quantitative and qualitative assessment of the educational needs entailed and the further consequencies of greater participation for the demand for education. “ The role of recurrent education in the birth of social and industrial democracy may be as important as that of compulsory elementary education in the creation of political democracy ” (The Times Higher Education Supplement, 15 April, 1977).
A detailed analysis should be made of the way in which present modes of student aid encourage or binder patterns of recurrent education. Much higher priority should be given to those who do not follow the prevalent pattern of full time further or higher education after school, but choose instead to return as mature students to part time or short courses. Longer term schemes to allow a “ deferred right ” to education should be elaborated.
Other ways of raising revenue for education and training should be investigated and developed, including the levy/grant approach, a freeze fund on excess profits
to be used counter-cyclically, and an educational insurance system.
Concrete mechanisms for improving coordination should be worked out at national and local levels and should include representatives from the various government departments and agencies, employers, unions, educational institutions and local interests. The experience of existing Local Development Councils should be disseminated and the possibility of their general establishment urgently considered. Decision making powers should be delegated as far as possible to the genuinely local level, on condition of there being adequate guarantees that resources made available by Central Government should be used for their specified purposes. Attention should be paid not only to administrative and informational aspects but also to the way existing power structures do or do not allow proper co-ordination.
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education through life
This pamphlet argues that educational resources are at present iilogically and inequitably concentrated on the initial years of the individual's life and on those who are already relatively privileged. It sets out an alternative approach, a comprehensive strategy for the provision of education and training opportunities at running intervals throughout people's lives, in alternation with work and other activities.
The case for expanding education and training of all kinds is reinforced by the current employment crisis, and educational policy can no longer ignore labour market trends, including changes in working hours and moves towards greater worker participation. Stress is laid on the need to devise effective ways of coordinating education with manpower and other social policies at national and local level.
Tom Schuller points to the obligation on policy makers actively to help people articulate latent demand for recurrent education; to the importance of a coherent information and counselling service; to the validity of experience as a qualification for further study; and to the need for flexible provision, for example of modular courses, to make recurrent education genuinely available. Promising developments in the UK and abroad are singled out with particular attention being paid to the prospects for paid educational leave, and the author underlines the challenge this poses to the existing educational system.
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The Young Fabian Group exists to give socialists not over 30 years of age an opportunity to carry out research, discussion and propaganda. It aims to help its members publish the results of their research, and so make a more effective contribution to the work of the Labour movement. It therefore welcomes all those who have a thoughtful and radical approach to political matters.
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