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A ‘seamless’ system (Bathmaker et al., 2008), that integrates further and higher education under one umbrella, and brings together vocational, professional and academic education and training, is a central idea in current debates about possible futures for tertiary education in England.

But there is also a pressing need to develop structures that support and extend lifelong learning across all dimensions of society. In this blog post, I argue for a tertiary system to embrace an expansive definition of adult lifelong learning, that includes learning for life, not just for working life.

‘The tertiary education system should embrace an expansive definition of adult lifelong learning, that includes learning for life, not just for working life.’

Whereas policy thinking tends to focus on reskilling and upskilling for employability and employment (OECD, 2024), it is crucial that we enable people to have the capacities to negotiate their lives in the widest possible sense, so that they may flourish during ever more rapid change.

This includes, for example, the capacities to engage critically with the bombardment of information that faces us daily, to become responsible digital citizens, to negotiate health services, to manage not just working lives but life outside work, and .

‘Aspiration is not about correcting apparent defects in people’s mindsets. It is about creating the conditions and cultures that make learning a realisable possibility.’

across countries including the UK has found that nearly half of adults not only do not participate, but also do not want to participate, in education or training.

A major task for an expansive tertiary education system therefore is to create cultures that encourage people to aspire to take up opportunities to learn. Aspiration here is not about correcting apparent defects in people’s mindsets. It is about creating the conditions and cultures that make learning a realisable possibility. A second task is to make learning worthwhile, enabling people to make productive use of informal as well as non-formal and formal learning to enhance their lives, including, but going beyond, reskilling and upskilling for employment.

Two key features of a tertiary education system can help to create a capacity to aspire (Appadurai, 2004; Gale & Parker, 2015) and encourage lifelong learning across all dimensions of society.

1. Demonstrate national commitment and support for the wide diversity of spaces and places that encourage and enable learning

Learning opportunities occur in many more places than formal education institutions. Parks, libraries, community centres, sports centres, workplaces, trade unions, online environments, media and broadcasting: these are all examples of places where adults encounter opportunities to learn. Strong national and regional policy commitment and support for these diverse spaces and places as environments for learning makes a significant difference to their development and sustainability (see Broek, 2024).

2. Make information, advice and guidance accessible and informative

Adults are not all in an equal position to navigate and make decisions about learning opportunities, particularly those who have had negative experiences of learning in the past. They are unlikely to use ‘cold’, formal information, set out online or in brochures and leaflets. To make information accessible means going out to where adults are, building relationships with them and exploring opportunities that are relevant to them – turning ‘cold’ information into ‘hot’ knowledge (Slack et al., 2012). It is here that partnership-working across different organisations involved in adult learning has the potential to create outreach guidance activities that are trusted by prospective learners – starting from their perspective, rather than from policymaker and provider imperatives.

Alongside learner-focused outreach work, there needs to be up-to-date information on learning opportunities. The development of a comprehensive mapping of adult education and training courses brought together online, with the use of information technology and artificial intelligence to stay up-to-date, could ensure that those involved in guidance and outreach, as well as potential learners, have access to wide-ranging and relevant information.

The development and introduction of the makes vividly clear that the current policy priority is on improving the lives of ‘hard-working people’, targeting incentives towards those of working age in order to achieve ‘sustained economic growth’. Given the wider context of England’s ageing (and post-work) population, the need to navigate the complexities of daily life in a post-industrial world of climate change and increasing political instabilities and uncertainties, there is a pressing need for an expansive understanding of learning as part of a tertiary education system, with structures that support and extend lifelong learning across all dimensions of society.

References

Appadurai, A. (2004). The capacity to aspire: Culture and the terms of recognition. In V. Rao & M. Walton (Eds.), Culture and public action (pp. 59–84). Stanford University Press.

Bathmaker, A. M., Brooks, G., Parry, G., & Smith, D. (2008). Dual-sector further and higher education: Policies, organisations and students in transition, Research Papers in Education, 23, 2, 125–137.

Broek, S., Kuijpers, M. A. C. T., Semeijn, J. H., & van der Linden, J. (2024). Conditions for successful adult learning systems at local level: Creating a conducive socio-spatial environment for adults to engage in learning. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 43(2–3), 200–223.

Gale, T., & Parker, S. (2015). To aspire: A systematic reflection on understanding aspirations in higher education. Australian Educational Researcher,Ìý42, 139–153.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD]. (2024). Quality matters: Strengthening the quality assurance of adult education and training.

Slack, K., Mangan, J., Hughes, A., & Davies, P. (2012). ‘Hot’, ‘cold’ and ‘warm’ information and higher education decision-making. British Journal of Sociology of Education,Ìý35(2), 204–223.