The world is undergoing a major transformation that requires new skills and qualifications, new ways for people to know about skills and qualifications, and new ways to acquire skills and qualifications. This toolkit is about skills and qualifications, and the benefits they provide for people in a changing environment. It focuses specifically on…

Adult education, learning and skills providers are familiar with the longstanding national challenge of poor adult basic skills, and many providers use their Adult Education Budget funding to offer English and math classes for adults. In recent years, there has been a focus on supporting unemployed adults to achieve the good literacy and numeracy…

This chapter explores the impact of Upskilling Pathways (UP), a developing European programme adopted by the European Council in 2016. UP targets all people over 25 who may be in employment, or unemployed, or economically inactive, but require uplifting in literacy, numeracy and digital skills. This is at a time when 73 million adults have low…

Drawing on stories from ten years of social purpose teacher education in the UK, this paper assumes that the future of further education is still unwritten. It illustrates complex and workable ideas via a theorised sketch of the fictional Bee Learning Programme, an imagined education setting of the future. The narrative that follows is designed to…

For more than 25 years, the Adult Participation in Learning Survey has provided a unique insight into adult learning across the UK. It adopts a deliberately broad definition of learning, reflecting the fact that learning is about so much more than formal courses and qualifications. The good news is that, after a decade of declines during the…

The quality of provision in the further education sector in the United Kingdom has long been contested. An ongoing issue in further education colleges has been the focus upon minimum competence in qualifications. Yet, there are examples of high standards in teaching and learning. Drawing on interview data with 24 WorldSkills Training Managers…

This study explores gender-related inequality in participation in Adult Education and Training (AET) in four countries with vastly different adult learning systems and support measures for women's AET. Our examination of the data from an original international survey conducted in 2022 has found that the participation of men and women clearly…

This evaluation report presents the findings from the project-level evaluation of the CareerTech Challenge, delivered between May 2020 and June 2021. The report examines how the design and delivery of evaluations were undertaken, the findings across process and outcome evaluations and key learning from capacity building support delivered by…

It is 25 years since the first adult participation in learning survey, and this one is published during Learning and Work Institute's centenary year. This year's survey shows that 44% of adults have taken part in learning in the last three years. That's an increase on the record lows found in 2019 and marks the first rise in participation since…

People invest £7.3 billion a year and £55 billion worth of time in learning. This is more than the Government and employers invest in learning and skills, but there are stark inequalities between groups. This report provides the most detailed snapshot seen of which groups of adults are investing in learning, and how much, and lays bare stark…

This book examines the development of British post-Second World War short-term residential adult education, through the lens of the Shropshire Adult Education College (1948-1976) and the tenure of Sir George Trevelyan as its first warden. Trevelyan is acknowledged as the godfather of new-age spiritualism in the UK and is credited with the…

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused one of the worst economic crises since the Great Depression. Although countries responded quickly to support displaced workers with assistance packages and funding for education and training, additional measures might be needed. Each country's economic recovery will most likely depend on how well its workforce is…

Both Jarvis and theories of Christian Religious Education (CRE) emphasise that learning develops the whole person, yet they differ in their understandings of how and why this is the case. Jarvis's experiential learning theory begins "from below" with experience, whereas many approaches of CRE begin with the end result: individuals…

This article explores a cross-disciplinary collaboration within English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision for adults born outside the United Kingdom (UK). By foregrounding collaborative practice between a language practitioner and an artist, we offer a practical experience of working beyond and besides language which offers both an…

In this paper, the authors seek to disentangle what they see as contradictory uses of the term "professionalisation" with reference to adult educator development and training (AEDT). They set out to distinguish "professionalisation" from "professionalism," and to identify the locus of control of AEDT in Germany, the…