The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill isn’t specifically about education. It deals with the powers of local leaders and local communities. It potentially heralds a new era for lifelong learning because local leaders hold the purse strings and it offers them the chance to reset how they use their funding. Meanwhile, new powers for local people means that communities will have the opportunity to shape services specifically to meet their needs.
In many parts of England, Elected Mayors already have control of the skills budgets. The WEA has contracts with nearly all of the current Mayoral authorities.
The new Bill gives existing Mayors and Leaders the opportunity to take on more powers.
Secondly, the Bill gives those parts of the country which do not currently have devolved powers the chance to acquire them more quickly.
Very soon, nearly all funding for lifelong learning will come directly from these types of Authorities. They will be known as Strategic Authorities (acknowledging that not all of them will have Mayors).
Central Government will retain strategic oversight but it will not fund adult education & skills organisations directly in the vast majority of the country.
New powers and more flexibility
Among the new powers for existing Mayors will be the ability to use budgets in more flexible ways. At the moment, most devolved funds are earmarked strictly for skills or transport or housing. Once the Bill becomes law, Mayors may be given the powers to use their budgets without these restrictions, combining funding for projects and programmes which cover more than one heading. Some Mayors already have this power (in Greater Manchester and West Midlands).
This potentially means more flexibility for funding for lifelong learning. The ability to consider how lifelong learning might sit alongside housing services or economic development, for example, could give Strategic Authorities the means to embed learning in broader programmes.
Mayors could go further still.
At present, nearly all lifelong learning funding goes towards courses which support people into work. These courses are vital and the WEA is proud to deliver many of them. But budgets could also be used to support other outcomes, such as improving health & wellbeing or strengthening community connections.
Tailored Learning
Strategic Authorities already have some scope to fund what is known as Tailored Learning – courses which support health & wellbeing or which strengthen community connections. Often these are arts, craft or personal development courses.
Not so long ago, the WEA and others were delivering just these sort of courses in considerable numbers across England. Ironically, as funding has shifted from central government towards the Strategic Authorities, the funding for these sorts of courses has been reduced – in some areas to nothing.
This is partly because the guidance from central government is to prioritise courses for work and partly because most Mayors choose to go along with this.
We have long made the case for the huge impact of Tailored Learning courses, how they take burden away from local health services, support learners to make new friends and be more confident in themselves, and how they provide essential everyday skills such as literacy, numeracy and digital skills.
The message is not cutting ice with the decision makers. Despite warm words for the WEA and community adult education, the Skills Minister has said that she expects all funding to lead to work outcomes. Tailored Learning remains in the guidance but in an increasingly constrained and reduced way. Strategic authorities generally follow suit.
The end result of this is a 6% cut in funding which largely hits Tailored Learning courses. Thousands of learners across the country no longer able to find the courses they have enjoyed and even relied on. Tutors losing work as their specialist subjects lose their funding. Decades of community based practice swept away along with all of the partnerships and venues which linked to it.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Strategic Authorities could use their new and growing powers to reset lifelong learning. They could stretch the guidance already available to them to insist that local communities benefit from courses for work AND courses for wellbeing & connection. They could embed lifelong learning in their economic regeneration and community building programmes. They could push back to central Government to be more imaginative on the scope of lifelong learning and to fund it accordingly.
Making the most of the Bill
The Bill has other innovations which could strengthen this further. Mayors will be able to appoint Commissioners – strategic policy leads for key portfolios, including skills. Those Commissioners could be lifelong learning champions in the broadest sense, creating a culture of learning (not only work-related skills) that benefits everyone the Authority serves.
The Bill also creates opportunities for local communities to take ownership of underused local buildings. These could become lifelong learning hubs, fully accessible and literally on the neighbourhood doorstep.
Finally, the Bill looks to strengthen governance at neighbourhood level. Those at Westminster and Whitehall seem not to recognise the power of community-based lifelong learning but those who have been organising and benefiting from it for decades know its true value. Mayors and Strategic Authority Leaders will be more likely to listen to local people when they demand services which bring their communities together, give them hope and confidence and support them to thrive.
Lifewide and Lifelong
The debate today will cover the broad principles of the Bill, offering MPs a chance to offer their support or opposition to the main proposals. Many MPs will reflect on what the Bill can offer for their own constituents, whether shifting the balance of power will give them more opportunities and improve their quality of life.
It’s unlikely that lifelong learning will get mentioned in today’s debate but as the Bill progresses and is looked at in more detail in coming weeks, there will be opportunities to brief MPs (and Peers) on the wider implications. Further down the line, of course, it will be the Mayors and Strategic Authority Leaders who have the real opportunity to reset their local priorities and in particular to reset lifelong learning. With new and enhanced powers they could truly bring adult learning within reach but only if they are prepared to break away from the confines of current policy. Lifelong learning should be for everyone and should bring a huge range of benefits – life-wide as well as lifelong.
It's time for local people to have the power to shape the learning that works best for them.
