This gives a unique flavour to community learning as friends, family and neighbours come together for a shared experience. Even at this neighbourhood level though, learners tell us in our impact survey that they mix with people they wouldn’t otherwise meet and that they make new friends.
Adult learning strengthens communities. This makes it very “on trend” in current policy discussions.
Led by the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods (ICON) and bolstered by the English Devolution & Community Empowerment Bill which has just entered Parliament, policy makers are asking big questions about how best to give local people more power.
Of course, these questions need to be asked because there are huge issues of inequality between regions and even postcodes.
ICON’s The Anatomy of Mission Critical Neighbourhoods identifies how around 1m people are living in “mission critical neighbourhoods” where they are much less likely to be in work, have fewer qualifications, where health outcomes are similar to those in developing nations and productivity is 40% lower than average.
While there are positive moves to address these issues, there are also current (and even developing) policies which compound rather than help the problem.
One example is the proposed 6% cut to the Adult Skills Fund. Tailored learning courses in local venues which build confidence and get people back into learning are the sorts of courses which are most at risk from cuts to skills budgets. This is being driven by national skills policy (which takes an increasingly narrow line focused only on employment outcomes) but it is being echoed by regional Mayoral authorities who are not using the flexibilities available to them to support a more inclusive approach to adult learning.
Here are our ideas for 5 policy developments, inspired by ICON’s Green Paper and the new Community Empowerment Bill which could help local adult learning:
- Implementing ICON’s idea for a National Neighbourhood Endowment – following the example of previous endowments such as Local Trust , this could be a source of funding for neighbourhood projects over many years. While a sizeable initial sum would be required to create it (perhaps £1bn), the return on investment of endowments in terms of economic and social outcomes can be immense. Adult education programmes focused on local needs could be one of the things funded via the endowment.
- Making more use of the Hyper-Local Need Measure (HLMN) – ICON have developed a means to identify which areas most need intervention, by combining data across a number of inter-related measures. These include health, crime and growth measures. This allows for a more rounded analysis of need and helps identify where more complex policy interventions are needed. Often interventions are “siloed”, for example only focusing on crime or health. The HLNM encourages neighbourhood level interventions which consider all of these issues at once.
From an adult education perspective we would welcome something like this because often the issues which learners face are equally complex. The barriers which prevent people from participating in learning could be better understood and addressed through this more nuanced approach.
- Encouraging all policy makers to “think neighbourhoods” – most crucially, the ICON Green Paper shows how national and regional funders and policy-makers should focus attention on neighbourhoods, targeting their interventions as locally as possible. We think this is important because the most vibrant adult learning happens at this neighbourhood level but it is often off the radar of policy makers and therefore easy to overlook – and cut.
At the same time as ICON’s Green Paper was published, the Government introduced a Bill into Parliament which speeds up devolution of budgets and powers in English regions. Many areas already have skills funding through the Mayoral Authorities and this new Bill helps to “complete the map” and define the new types of regional authorities who will have these devolved powers and budgets in the future (as well as expanding the powers of existing regional bodies).
There are a number of other proposals in the Bill which could be relevant to adult learning, including the introduction of Commissioners (discussed recently in FE Week).
Two other proposals stand out for us:
- Community Right to Buy – this gives community groups priority to buy community assets (such as shops, pubs and community centres) for local use. Could this help to increase the number of locally owned adult learning venues?
- Neighbourhood governance – the new Bill looks to introduce a new requirement on local authorities to strengthen governance at a neighbourhood level. Town and Parish councils will continue to exist but there will be new opportunities to move decision-making closer to residents. This could offer opportunities to raise the profile of vital local services, including adult education, and align them still closer to local needs. The WEA’s LAP members may be especially interested in this development.
So the latest developments around neighbourhood policy look promising but they only really offer a way forward if the overall national and regional adult education budget are protected. A 6% cut to budgets at this time could leave adult learners adrift from the opportunities which ICON’s recommendations and the Government’s Bill offer.
