Memorandum 45
Submission from Campaign for Learning
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Campaign for Learning welcome and support
the governments commitment to lifelong learning but wish to express
concern at the implications of the proposed cuts to funding for
equivalent and lower qualifications. We would like to highlight
the importance of up-skilling those with low qualifications and
prospects and urge that funding is effectively directed towards
meeting the skills level required for Leitch. We do however wish
to highlight that learning is not just for the workplace and we
explore reasons why removing funding for ELQ may have wider impacts
on learners both in and out of the workforce.
THE CAMPAIGN
FOR LEARNING
The Campaign for Learning is a national lifelong
learning charity, set up 10 years ago by the Royal Society of
Arts to champion social inclusion and cohesion through learning.
Our mission is to stimulate a love of learning that will sustain
people for life. We are working for a society in which everyone
has the right to learn, everyone understands and values learning,
and everyone has chances to learn throughout their lives.
THE GOVERNMENT'S
ADULT LEARNING
AND SKILLS
AGENDA
The Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, committed
the Government recently to providing "not one chance but
second, third, fourth and lifelong chances" in a society
that places "the highest possible cultural value upon learning".
We at the Campaign for Learning strongly welcome and support this
commitment. The learning and skills field has seen a great deal
of change over the past two years, much of it welcome but some
appearing to run counter to the Prime Minister's stated commitment.
We are greatly encouraged, for example, to note the first ever
statutory learning entitlement for adults proposed in the current
Learning & Skills Bill, and after ten years' work in workplace
learning are pleased at the high profile the workplace has now
assumed as a context where adults can take their learning forward
in relevant, appropriate ways.
On the other hand, we were amongst the signatories
of the Open Letter Mr Brown received just over a year ago from
a list of organisations in the sector, urging him to avoid too
narrow an adoption of Lord Leitch's recommendations on skills.
Since then, however, we have continued to see a sharp refocusing
of funding into certain types and levels of qualifications delivered
in specific contexts only—primarily full Level Two qualifications
for people who do not already have these, delivered in the workplace.
While we welcome the extension of free provision for eligible
learners, the policy to focus funding here to the detriment of
much other provision appears to ignore the obvious question of
progression routes—how learners find their way into and
on from the courses. If the stepping stones into full Level Two
provision are dismantled because funding has gone elsewhere, there
will be ever fewer opportunities for learners to move upwards
into this provision from a position of lower levels of skill.
The logical extension of this is that the only learners available
to help meet Government targets will eventually be those who were
already close to the standard but had not obtained the formal
qualification—which meets the letter but not, we feel, the
spirit of the Government's upskilling agenda, and certainly will
not achieve the step change in actual skills levels required by
Leitch.
We are also concerned about other aspects of
the current Government's approach to adult learning & skills—for
example, that some of the most needy potential learners are those
outside the workplace who are excluded from Train to Gain provision,
into which the bulk of available funding is being poured. Similarly,
we are worried that making only full qualifications eligible for
funding may limit the chances for learners in need of the most
support to get the best out of the opportunities available to
them. A more flexible approach might bring dividends in encouraging
the least confident—who may be daunted by signing up for
a full qualification initially—to dip their toes into the
water.
From a social justice point of view, the Campaign,
as an organisation championing inclusion, supports the Government's
approach that the priority must be those individuals who do not
already have Level Two qualifications, but is concerned that at
times this will inevitably lead to perverse results—for
example, where traditional industries collapse and whole cohorts
of adults in particular areas need to reskill or watch their communities
die. Greater flexibility in the operation of the policy would
be our watchword, therefore, while supporting in general the Government's
principle that it is those who missed out on opportunities the
first time round who should be first in the queue when Government
funding is being made available for adults.
THE ELQ DEBATE
We find ourselves in a somewhat anomalous position,
therefore, when commenting on announcement by John Denham that,
from 2008-09, funding will be phased out for the majority of HE
students in England and Northern Ireland who are studying for
a qualification that is equivalent to, or lower than, a qualification
that they already hold. On the one hand, we do not agree that
HE is a special case—indeed, we would be in favour of much
more of the protected funding which now finds its way into HE
being made available in Further and Adult Education for the benefit
of those who did not have opportunities to gain anything approaching
HE entry qualifications. We support the principle of firstness
for qualifications to obtain funding support, with the reservations
mentioned above.
On the other hand, we would wish to see adults
who need to retrain to be supported, just as we would wish learners
from redundant industries to be helped to study for a second NVQ
Level Two. We support the principle of making more training and
qualifications available to those without skills as we believe
this to be an essential element of improving social inclusion.
However, to make such massive changes through proposed costs to
ELQ funding may be short sighted as the future economy will require
continuous skilling, upskilling and reskilling. It is a frequently-quoted
statistic that 70% of the 2020 workforce is already in the workforce
now, so we need to look closely at the learning and development
needs of these people over time. Taking away the ELQ provision
potentially removes a substantial amount of the flexibility required
to adapt our society to the demands of a knowledge economy in
future.
THE IMPACT
ON INSTITUTIONS
Moreover, other specific concerns about this
decision are worth considering further. The fact that 180 MP's
signed the early day motion might indicate that there is cause
for concern—although we would feel happier if these concerned
Members had expressed similar worries about the parallel issue
at FE level! Some institutions—particularly those which
have most championed the rights of everyone to study at HE level
and offered the greatest support and flexibility, such as Birkbeck
College of the University of London and the Open University—will
be disproportionately affected and may find themselves destabilised
as a result, with a knock-on effect not only on the learners who
may miss out on funding but on other learners too. FE institutions,
fresh from Leitch's recommendations that they should be awarded
degree-conferring powers but already reeling from the effects
of dramatic refocusing of lower-level funding, may reconsider
in the context of the likely demographic of their learners.
We are, however, more concerned about the impact
this decision may have on the individual learner, and crucially
on the positive entitlement to lifelong learning that so many
organisations have worked to create. This ruling will impact disproportionately
on adults studying part-time, many of whom may be working, have
caring responsibilities or be retired and on fixed budgets—all
factors which may limit their ability to take on increased fees.
For this reason we have taken a case study approach to submitting
our evidence below.
THE ROLE
OF EMPLOYERS
The Government's position is founded on the
belief that employers and individuals should be willing to contribute
financially to learning which benefits them, and the Campaign
broadly supports this position. We are aware that the Government
is working hard to convince employers—through everything
from the Skills Pledge promotion to Train to Gain TV advertising—that
they need to invest in skills. However, despite all our best efforts
in making the business case, we know from our own experience of
working in workplace learning over the years that the assumption
that employers will take financial responsibility for training
and re-skilling their workforce does not necessarily hold true.
Aside from the argument that many employees upskill because they
wish to change roles or leave an employer, much of our future
innovation and wealth will come from small to medium enterprises
(SMEs) who often struggle to find the funds to pay for their employees'
development. Our recent research for DIUS on the impact of ESOL
needs in the workplace indicated that few small employers see
the immediate benefits of paying for upskilling and those that
can may feel they are unable to do so due to cost limitations.
Given that employer funding for skills development is still voluntary,
this leaves the learner between "a rock and a hard place"
if their development is not subsidised. Even employed learners
on steady salaries may find it very difficult to afford the full
cost of an advanced programme without financial support from employer
or Government.
Case Study: The New Glass Ceiling
Lisa started her MBA in 2003. It took over four
years to complete at a cost to her of £10,000, all of which
she paid herself. "I work in the not for profit sector. My
employer cannot afford to subsidise my studies and my salary doesn't
compare with the earnings of senior managers and MBA graduates
in the business sector. I already have an MA so a second master's
degree would not be allowed under the ELQ rule. It seems a shame
that this will increase the costs of an MBA, denying other women
like me this opportunity and denying opportunities to develop
high-level managerial skills to the not for profit sector as a
whole".
EXEMPTIONS
There is a list of exemptions to the rule, which
perhaps indicates that there may be some complexity in enforcing
the idea of ELQ. However, there are some serious omissions to
the list of exemptions: perhaps the most crucial one being that
of Information Technology. Although the Leitch Review of Skills
does address the issue of reskilling rather than upskilling, its
primary focus is on preparing the workforce to be competitive
in the future. IT is an essential element of this progress and
more toward competitiveness. Skills in the IT industry move so
quickly that the subjects taught during a degree soon become obsolete.
Case Study: Specialist Experience Makes Qualifications
Obsolete
Andrew is currently unemployed. He was made
redundant when his company relocated, and having worked in a very
specialised IT field for over seven years found his more generic
IT skills irrelevant in finding a job. "Software advances
very quickly. My degree in Mathematics with Computing is pretty
much redundant. I finished in July 1998; looking back at the software
we used, we have had many versions of Windows since then! If you
only had experience in Windows 98 on your CV people would laugh
at you! Programming languages have all moved on since then too,
to be compatible with the operating systems. If you are not using
these regularly you will be left behind".
WORKPLACE RETURNEES
We are concerned with the impact that this will
have on adults—and these still tend to be mainly women—returning
to the workplace after a period of time bringing up a family,
or those returning to work after time as a carer for a disabled
relative. Like Andrew, they may find that the qualifications they
did are now out of date and they have missed opportunities to
develop in the workplace. Not only may they need to reskill at
the same level but also they may need to re- enter education at
a lower level in order to prepare themselves for a new qualification.
We are concerned that the ELQ ruling may thus have the perverse
result of working against equality of opportunity in this context,
just as it is already doing in Further and Adult Education.
LEARNING FOR
LIFE
A fundamental issue the Government needs to
consider is whether it believes adult learning is valuable for
itself, or for the other benefits it confers—in health,
citizenship, community development and cohesion, for example,—or
whether it holds that a Government's exclusive focus should be
the economic benefits of learning. The ELQ rule will mean that
older people who already have a degree cannot study for another
in their retirement unless they are well-off enough to pay the
whole cost themselves, even though there is an increasing body
of evidence to suggest learning in later life is a significant
part of well-being. Research demonstrates the benefits of an active
mind and engagement with other people in extending civic involvement,
preserving physical and mental health and staving off a variety
of ills from depression to Alzheimer's. Quite apart from the implications
of this for quality of life, even on a purely economic analysis,
therefore, we might wish to consider in joined-up fashion the
savings to the health and citizenship budgets potentially generated
by a slightly higher level of investment in education. Again,
we would stress that this principle applies equally at Further
and Adult Education level.
INVESTMENT IN
LEARNING AND
SKILLS
Finally, without wishing to appear unduly cynical,
we would hope to see clear evidence that, if this proposal does
go ahead, the whole of the £100 million the Government is
expecting to save through this measure is reinvested directly
in adult learning, and in particular in ensuring that chances
for lifelong learning are extended to the most vulnerable and
excluded learners. While we do have concerns about the impact
of these proposals at HE level, it is at pre-University level
that much damage has already been done by an excessively narrow
focus on skills, to the exclusion of ineligible learners and of
support into and on from such provision.
We greatly welcome John Denham's new consultation
on informal learning, and are delighted to be a key partner in
this. Informal routes into learning are often the ones preferred
by the most vulnerable learners who will require the most support
to progress on to full qualification-based courses, but too often
funding for these has suffered in favour of formal, easy to quantify
qualification courses. We hope this new development indicates
willingness on the part of Government to reconsider and look more
flexibly at funding and support for adult learning to ensure that
all benefit. If it is wise, the Government should honour Gordon
Brown's commitment and commit its funds in ways that use the power
of learning as a force for health, regeneration and social justice
as well as for economic transformation.
January 2008
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