Government spending is declining, yet the need for jobs and training is higher than ever. The current supply of quality apprenticeships is clearly not sufficient to meet demand and that was highlighted this year when British Telecom received 24,000 applications for only 221 places on its apprenticeship programme. The main obstacle to increasing…

Access to English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) courses is crucial for society, social cohesion and the economy. In 2006 it was estimated that 600,000 people in London alone had an ESOL need. In some parts of the country, as many as 50 per cent of adults have Entry-level ESOL needs. ESOL is no longer an issue only for urban areas. People…

Two years ago John Denham launched a consultation into the future of informal adult learning. He was taken aback by the volume and quality of the responses he received. Those responses helped to generate last year's White Paper, "The Learning Revolution," which six government departments supported. Since the launch of "The Learning Revolution,"…

One of the big ideas of recent policy interventions has been that of developing social capital in communities to help regenerate them. This is welcome because it involves a widening of concerns from the narrow focus on human capital underpinning much lifelong learning policy discourse. However, there are doubts about the meaning of social capital…

This article presents 2007 report on the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) survey on adult participation in learning. With overall participation among the poorest groups stuck at less than half that experienced by the upper and middle classes, the survey suggests the need to ask if the balance of public investment in adult…