The latest CALL Bulletin is out now.  You can download it by clicking the link below, please circulate it to your collegues and supporters and spread the word.

Download CALL Bulletin 4 - November 2008 (.doc, 440kb)

Local CALL activists have arranged an evening campaign meeting in Hackney on Thursday 27 November.

Speakers include: Jeremy Corbyn, MP Islington North; Paul Mackney, Associate Director of NIACE, Hatice Guden, Hackney Refugee Cultural Association; Sean Vernell, NEC UCU.

The meeting is at the Refugee Workers Cultural Association, 2nd Floor, 3-19 Victorian Grove, Hackney, N16 8EN (google map) on Thursday 27 November at 7.00pm.

For full details please download the events leaflet (pdf, 684kb).

In a new regular item, each fortnight the CALL website will feature the story of one one individual’s experience of adult learning and how it has changed their life.

This week we feature Vikki Annetts from Barnsley:

I started my learning journey as an adult on the WEA Helping in Schools course. This inspired me to continue with my learning and from that course I attended Northern College on an access diploma and Dearne Valley Business School on a BA Hons Business Administration course. This has had a huge impact on my life. Whilst I was doing the Helping in Schools course I was also claiming Incapacity benefit and had not worked for a number of years due to injuries and post natal depression. This course gave me a zest for life. I met new friends and suddenly felt I had a purpose in life other than a mum. Read the rest of this entry »

The following is a transcript from a number of questions asked in parliament regarding adult education:

PMQs 5 November 2008 - Gordon Brown on adult education

Q2. [233008] Mr. John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con): The Prime Minister knows that since 1997 opportunities to learn and skill in the workplace, in communities and in further education colleges have been restricted. He looks surprised, but Government figures show that numbers in FE colleges alone fell by 20 per cent. last year, and the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education says that 1.5 million places have been lost in adult education since 2005. Why has he so savagely cut adult education, when, given that Brown’s bust means that more people will need to reskill and retrain, it is vital that we provide those opportunities? Read the rest of this entry »

CALL is happy to announce that date has been set for our mass lobby of Parliament. The date is Wednesday 25 February 2009 and we are in the early stages of planning a full day of campaigning and lobbying activity, inside and outside of Westminster.

Please put this date in your diary now and start planning how you can build locally for the lobby.  More details will be posted on this site in the near future.

The Institute of Education’s post-14 network is hosting a conference on the 27 November in London focused on the question “What is happening for adults”?

This conference will take a critical look at the present context of Adult Education. It will pick up on the very real concerns about the state of Learning for Adults that has led to the establishment of the Campaign Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL). Drawing upon expert speakers from across the field of Adult Education, the conference will debate the concerns of practitioners and, hopefully, add impetus to the CALL campaign.

Key issues to be addressed are:

• the status of informal learning options at 19+
• progression possibilities
• employment market interactions
• institutional and funding structures
• skills accounts
• the adult careers service

Speakers include: Mick Fletcher, Prof. R Fryer CBE, Paul Grainger, Paul Mackney, Dan Taubman, Ceri Williams and Tom Wilson

For more details, please check the full programme (pdf, 170kb) and the conference’s flyer (doc, 1mb).

To book a place at the conference please download the booking form (doc, 196kb) and return it to the address on the form.

Have you had a great experience of adult education? Has life-long learning changed your life? Have you been effected by cuts or changes to the provision in your area?

CALL is collecting case studies to demonstrate the positive change that lifelong learning can make.  We can build the media profile of the campaign and ensure that its impact extends beyond the specialist education press and into the mainstream media, but only if we have your story to tell.

If you have an story to tell please click the link below and complete the short questionnaire, it should take no more than 10 minutes.

Complete the CALL case study questionnaire.

In this week’s TES FE Focus John Denham, Minister for Innovation, Universities and Skills, responded to Paul Mackney’s comment  on adult education:

I share Paul Mackney’s passion for learning (FE Focus, October 17). I believe learning should change people’s lives and that the more you learn, the more that you and your family benefit.

There are indeed many people who need our help so that they can learn and get the benefits education brings. But to claim FE and adult education have been pillaged is simply not true.

The budget for FE has gone up by almost 50 per cent. By 2010, we will spend nearly Pounds 5 billion on adult education and skills each year - the most any government has spent.

We have re-prioritised learning in two important ways - first for those adults that need it most and second by providing more valuable courses. In the last five years, we have taught 2.25 million adults to read and write.

The CALL secretariat has written an open letter in response to the Minister for Innovation, Universities and Skills, John Denham MP’s invitation to meet with the campaign’s supporters:

Dear Sir/Madam,

The CALL campaign is heartened to read John Denham’s recognition of the value of what he describes as, “learning that you do largely for its intrinsic value”, as exemplified through the Government’s Informal Adult Learning Consultation. (Forces gather against Labour on adult learning 21/10/08).

The five founders of the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL) have already jointly taken up his offer to meet with ministers, and are confident that many of the campaign’s 60 supporting organisations will do the same.

The CALL campaign was established to reverse the loss of 1.4m adult learning places across a broad spectrum of courses: not just those deemed as ‘leisure pursuits’ but also those clearly related to employment prospects.

Learning and Skills Council statistics bear out CALL’s belief that hundreds of thousands of places have been lost from vocational college courses as funding has been transferred to the ever-expanding, employer-led Train to Gain programme.

For example, the biggest loss of learners to date has been in Health, Public Services and Care courses (477,000), with ICT (394,000) and Preparation for Life and Work (248,000) taking second and third places.

The group most affected has been skilled manual workers whose participation in learning fell by 7% in a single year.

Train to Gain has recorded a multi-million underspend and with Britain on the brink of recession, CALL is concerned this may rise as companies rationalise and training becomes an early casualty. (We recognise the new announcement of increased flexibility for small businesses may help).

Yet ironically, as demand for retraining from the growing numbers of unemployed will rise, the very courses they will turn to appear to be being eroded.

Beth Walker, NUS Vice President for Further Education
Paul Mackney, NIACE Associate Director (FE)
Christina McAnea, UNISON Head of Education
Barry Lovejoy, National Head of Further Education, University and College Union
Richard Bolsin, General Secretary of the Workers’ Educational Association
Founders of the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL)

The University of Westminster is hosting a workshop on the 27th of November focussing on the roel of trade unions in vocational education and looking how the Government’s emphasis on employer-led system has impacted on it. 

Over the past decades employee and trade union involvement in vocational education and training (VET) has been steadily reduced, and even marginalized. Instead, priority has been given to employer demand to which the supply of training provision has - in an often crude fashion - been matched. Increasingly this approach is called into question. As employers have become more and more specialized and ownership separated from management of a company, it is difficult to identify who the employer is, let alone to identify employers’ long term skill requirements.

For more details, including registration information, please click “more”.

Read the rest of this entry »