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Skills and the knowledgeable society

The economic and social health of a community, region or country are inextricably linked.  My concern is that by focussing on skills and the knowledge economy, we could be neglecting the knowledgeable society…

Everyone knows the knowledge economy equation:  

Workplace skills + qualifications = world-class workforce + global economic competitiveness.  

The knowledgeable society equation is slightly different:

General skills + support = improved life chances + social participation and cohesion.  

This breakdown may be simplistic, but it’s also important, because the latter is often the foundation for the former.  Soft outcomes can and do build into hard skills, and are often the best or only way for many people to begin their learning journey.  Unless we value and promote the knowledgeable society, the growth of the knowledge economy will be curtailed.  Like any equation, there needs to be balance, and if we really want skills provision to add up to economic success we must take social or soft impacts more seriously.  

Many in the skills sector can see the logic of plumbing over pilates.  We can also agree there are limited public resources, and these should be prioritised for the people who need them most.  But with cuts in recreational and non-accredited programmes, it’s not just cross-stitch and line-dancing that have been struck-off the funding list.  There’s little doubt some very valuable informal learning has also been lost along the way, and often happens only where the third sector beg or borrow to deliver it despite government cut backs.  Indeed, a new survey from NIACE this week shows a drop in the number of adults involved in learning or planning to learn in the future, and it’s sharpest for those in lower socio-economic groups.  

Fortunately, the delicate balance between the knowledge economy, knowledgeable society and recreational learning is being re-assessed by the Department for Innovation Universities and Skills, who earlier this year launched a consultation on informal learning.  

In his foreword, Secretary of State John Denham explains:  “All forms of good adult learning are valuable.  Whether vocational, or simply for personal enlightenment and fulfilment, adult learning contributes immeasurably to the well-being and health of our society.  …  The emphasis the Government has rightly given to adult vocational education has led some to suggest that informal adult education is not valued.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  This consultation document starts a discussion that will lead to a new vision for informal adult learning for the 21st century.”

The outlook for the knowledgeable society then, is hopeful.  This is particularly relevant for UK online centres, working in what one centre manager described to me as the space between what learners want to learn and what funders want to fund.  In order to be effective they have to respond to individual requirements, but in order to exist it they must also conform to funding regulations.  

UK online centres target people who can’t, won’t or don’t want to be involved with formal education.  Some have had poor experiences of education or of the establishment in general, and reject intervention.  Others will have more pressing challenges in their lives than learning or even working – for instance homelessness or housing problems, drug misuse, domestic violence, physical or mental health issues.  Most would not want to walk into a college or expose skills gaps in front of a class, and most would not want the pressure of a fixed time, date or curriculum.  

While learning may not be an immediate priority for everyone, it can be a route to solutions or at least choices, and a route to the support people need to make them.  At its very beginnings, informal learning can begin as information-seeking, often about something very specific – bidding online for a council house perhaps, or wanting to find out how to email in order to stay in touch with friends and relatives.  Very often, ICT is a hook which attracts people, not least because it’s changed how information is delivered.  No longer is it imparted from an authority figure, it’s now out there and open for all to find for themselves.  From using the computers and the internet it’s a short step to learning other ICT skills, improving literacy, numeracy and moving on to other areas of interest or other more formal learning activities.  And this isn't something that just the informed middle classes are taking up, this is an offer successful for people from all sections of society.

Most UK online centres encourage peer to peer learning and group work, gradually introducing volunteering, leadership opportunities and organisational responsibilities.  Casual volunteering often becomes more structured and even develops into paid volunteering, offering people a safe environment for work experience and working skills.  

The key, according to UK online centres, is not just in what you deliver but in how you deliver it - being flexible enough to respond to people’s needs and interests, and taking learning out to communities.  For my money, informal learning is the true home of personalised learning, and it can deliver the ultimate user journey expressed in the diagram below:  

Informal learning:
Delivering the ‘ultimate user journey’

I think it’s tempting for us to think about informal learning merely as an engagement tool for hard to reach audiences.  Out they pop at one end ready to go on to a college or formal learning course, and into the knowledge economy cycle.  In fact it’s a much longer and more complex process.  Good informal learning provision involves establishing long-term relationships with people, addressing their problems holistically, slowly building their social skills, confidence and self-esteem, and encouraging them to find their own routes of progression. 

While there is undoubted value in this kind of provision, and in creating frameworks where soft skills can build up into an informal education, it’s still unclear who should pay for it.  The social and health aspects of what good informal learning can achieve are currently not recognised as learning, and not funded by either the DIUS or the Department of Health.  Local adult skills funding differs from area to area, committee to committee, and bidding for pots of money becomes a full time job for informal learning providers.  That’s diverting already tight resources away from learning for the smaller voluntary and community sector organisations who do much of this work, and becomes even more difficult when successful projects are unable to bid for the same pot twice in a row. 

The stability of this sort of informal learning is of constant concern.  Because it requires long-term relationships with communities and other local agencies, short-term fits and starts of funding mean expectations can’t be met and progress is lost.  The process of re-establishing presence and trust can set programmes back by months. 

Part of the problem, of course, is how to measure informal learning.  If you’re not evidencing progression in structured modules, counting up linear milestones or delivering qualifications, evaluation becomes complicated.  And if you can’t quantify it, how do you know it’s taking pace or that it’s worth paying for?  We need to establish a value for more general skills and ‘informal’ learning, and provide new ways of proving it is building into something employers, communities and the country as a whole can benefit from. 

Getting to grips with the nuances of working and investing in the knowledgeable society is certainly difficult.  It’s like being in a different dimension where everything we’re used to in the skills world is turned on its head – learning timescales, cause and effect relationships, the value, weight and mass of subjects, qualifications, and systems of measurement. 

For me, that space between what learners want to learn and what funders want to fund is all about informal learning, and it’s the final frontier in the development of skills development.  I see the Informal Learning Consultation as an opportunity for us to open up debate and I’d encourage anyone out there with thoughts, experiences or opinions to take part in the consultation before its close in mid June.  It’s our chance to shape solutions, and shape the future of knowledge in the UK so it drives not just the economy but our society too. 

Helen Milner

Managing Director

UK online centres