Choice is important to everyone, for one's identity as well as one's material satisfaction. Everyone has choices, but even the head of state's choices are constrained. In recent years choice has risen up the political agenda in the UK. It has become a key component of the drive to reform public services such as health and education. The…

The Prisoners' Education Trust is working on a "learner voice" initiative that seeks to involve learners more in the development of prison education, helping them to express their views and helping providers to respond to them. Evaluation is an issue of increasing importance, for charities as well as public funders. Everyone agrees it's important,…

Adult Learners' Week has whirled round again, but the author has been looking backwards. An invitation to speak at an event to mark the retirement of Richard Bolsin as General Secretary of the Workers' Educational Association prompted him at last to get hold of Jonathan Rose's "Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes." Rose's concern is…

One effect of the recession has been substantially to alter the position of part-time workers in the economy. As a result, part-time jobs now make up over a quarter (27 per cent) of the total numbers working. Everyone knows that women work part-time far more commonly than men. How far this is a matter of "choice" is a real political as well as…

Lifelong learning has a crucial role in enabling individuals to handle key transition points in their lives, but what can education do to prepare them for the final, inevitable transition. Some of the educational contribution to managing the final transition is very broad, a matter of general enlightenment. But there are some more specific…

The splintering of the public domain makes the development of a coherent lifelong learning system less likely. But while people might want to resist plans to dissolve the boundaries between the public, private and voluntary sectors, debate about the relationship between professionals and volunteers in adult education suggests those boundaries…

As the riots in England demonstrated this summer, lack of empathy is a key factor in explaining people's readiness to commit crimes. How one acquires empathy is a major challenge to one's learning. Adult education has historically provided the spaces where people can both reassert and develop their particular collective identity and also learn…

People live in curious political times when it can be hard to match ideology to party. The outstanding example is in penal policy. Kenneth Clarke announces his Conservative determination to reduce numbers in prison, and to develop alternatives to locking people up. Labour denounces this as soft on crime. Is this how people expect things to line…

With an election looming and big cuts to public spending on the way, policy proposals that involve spending large sums of new money are unlikely to be well received by politicians. So what questions for candidates might adult educators have in their pockets and put to prospective parliamentarians as they join the throng in the local school? The…

Toxic mortgages are one of the causes of the current economic crisis. Where did they come from--apart from those spectacularly down-at-heel areas of American cities where loans for housing are peddled on a day-rate basis? One driver was the demutualisation of building societies, on the basis that, as banks, they would have access to the capital…

"Learning Through Life," the main report from the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning, is the culmination of a two-year process of consultation, analysis and reflection. The report sets out bold proposals which go well beyond the boundaries of adult education and training. Several key weaknesses in the current system were identified and…

"Higher Ambitions: The future of universities in a knowledge economy" has its own higher ambitions. It is a broad-ranging document, covering access to HE; research and innovation; student expectations and experience; university-business links; and community engagement. It is billed as a framework document, one which should structure thinking about…

A decade after the National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning (NAGCELL) report, "The Learning Age", born in the first flush of the New Labour Government, the task of providing and securing an overall strategic framework for lifelong learning remains as large as ever. NIACE is the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong…

The main goal of the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning is to provide a "strategic framework" for the future. In this article, the author considers the key components that will make up the framework. These are: (1) a statement of vision and values; (2) a stock-take of the current position; (3) an "investment rationale"; (4) some…

Innovation, Universities and Skills. The new title of the department offers much food for thought. The title is indeed an intriguing and important one. Bringing the idea of innovation right to the fore is, to use an overworked term, challenging. Pinning down what innovation means is not at all easy. There are three different lines of argument. The…