Learning potential
Adult Learners' Week comes at a time when the subject is gaining a higher profile, not least in museums and galleries. Julie Nightingale reports
Informal learning for adults has always been part of the work of museums, so it seems patronising to suggest that they should pay more attention to it - a bit like telling the BBC that it would be a fine thing if they broadcast more of those nice TV programmes they produce.
But adult education, which will be in the spotlight during this month's Adult Learners' Week (17-23 May), is growing in significance to government for a variety of reasons (see box).
So could the sector do more to ensure that its role as an adult learning provider is more widely valued by policymakers and funders? What scope is there for museums to contribute to adult skills agendas, such as literacy and numeracy, English as a second language and parenting? And, given everything else museums do, is any of this desirable?
Essex Havard, regional development officer for the Welsh National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE Dysgu Cymru) has a background in museums. He believes that adult learning providers and museums are both missing valuable opportunities to work together - and to tap into funding - largely through ignorance of what each other is about. Havard says proper research is vital.
"We don't know what contribution museums are making as there has not been a baseline survey," he says. "A lot of work has been done on their contribution to schools, but it's a more complex picture with adults. There's no national curriculum for adult learning, so museums react within their resources or their interests."
Havard would like to see the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's (MLA) Inspiring Learning For All (ILFA) framework, which recognises informal learning outcomes, mapped to the Recognition and Recording of Progress and Achievement (RARPA), the adult learning equivalent.
This would enable museums and adult learning providers to see where they overlap. "[At the moment], adult learning doesn't know about ILFA and museums don't know about RARPA," Havard says, "so how are they to evaluate things?"
Jenny Duke, regional learning officer for MLA East of England, agrees that there is a gap in basic understanding between some in the adult learning sector and museums.
In her region, many museums are working with adults through family learning programmes and there is scope for the development of specifically adult provision if the right links could be made.
Cambridge University's Sedgwick Museum, for example, has a highly successful family learning programme, but has also formed a partnership with the City of Norwich College to provide an enrichment programme for young adults on a childcare course.
It introduces students to the museum and brings in some family learning techniques, such as how to use objects to play games with children. It is informal and doesn't contribute to the students' course assessment, but it taps into a new audience for the museum and contributes to adult skills development, all at no extra cost to the Sedgwick, bar the existing staff.
East of England MLA recently commissioned a report from NIACE examining how family learning tutors perceive museums. The results were disappointing.
"They often want to know why museums can't be like libraries and not charge for services," Duke says. "They don't realise that museums are non-statutory. They have no idea where museums sit."
The real problems are not with tutors on the ground but at management level, she says. "Even though museums in the region think that they are contributing a lot to family learning, museums aren't necessarily involved in consultation at county level or plugged into the right networks. But unless we have that understanding [of what museums offer] at a strategic level, then it's not going to go very far."
In England, there's a development on the horizon that might alter the picture. In January this year John Denham, secretary of state at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, announced Shaping the Way Ahead, a consultation on informal adult learning (Museums Journal February 2008, p6).
It highlights how learning for adults is no longer tied to a classroom, but can be channelled through a museum, TV programme, the internet or by people getting together in a book group. The question is how can these different forms of learning contribute to the nation's need for a more skilled workforce and bring about "a new vision of adult learning for the 21st century".
Natasha Innocent, senior policy adviser on learning for MLA nationally, is urging mu-seums to get involved in the consultation, which ends on 15 May, and to promote the distinctive contribution they make to support adult learning.
"I think [the sector's] default position is that anything to do with adult learning is our sector, but that's not terribly helpful. I don't think it's true and I think it doesn't help us to develop partnerships because it's just not specific enough."
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), has a well-established adult education programme, including Inspired by…, its annual art competition for adult learners.
It has responded to Shaping the Way Ahead by stressing the intrinsic value of informal learning in museums and the wider potential. Among other things, informal learning appeals to people who want no part of exams, says the V&A's director of learning, David Anderson.
"People who take part in our [adult education] programmes don't want to go into an accredited framework," he says. "We would lose a large part of our audience if we did that.
"Informal learning is a foundation for a lot of successful formal education, so it deserves to be valued more by the sector than perhaps it is and it complements the areas which government funds, that is, skills."
Anderson also thinks mapping what museums contribute to adult learning would be desirable. But encouraging museums to go further down the route of providing skills training is a different matter. "There's a genuine issue of how the work is to be funded once you go outside the area of informal learning," he says.
Money is always an issue. Probably the bigger question is how tying informal adult learning to skills development will sit with other local authority, trust or hub targets. John Denham's consultation could produce a strategy that will give museums an explicit role in delivering the adult skills agenda. But without that, those museums not already doing it will have little incentive to get on board.
Julie Nightingale is a freelance journalist.
The Museums Association's adult learning conference, All Grown Up, is on 5 June in London.
www.museumsassociation.org/events/grownup
www.adultlearningconsultation.org.uk
But adult education, which will be in the spotlight during this month's Adult Learners' Week (17-23 May), is growing in significance to government for a variety of reasons (see box).
So could the sector do more to ensure that its role as an adult learning provider is more widely valued by policymakers and funders? What scope is there for museums to contribute to adult skills agendas, such as literacy and numeracy, English as a second language and parenting? And, given everything else museums do, is any of this desirable?
Essex Havard, regional development officer for the Welsh National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE Dysgu Cymru) has a background in museums. He believes that adult learning providers and museums are both missing valuable opportunities to work together - and to tap into funding - largely through ignorance of what each other is about. Havard says proper research is vital.
"We don't know what contribution museums are making as there has not been a baseline survey," he says. "A lot of work has been done on their contribution to schools, but it's a more complex picture with adults. There's no national curriculum for adult learning, so museums react within their resources or their interests."
Havard would like to see the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's (MLA) Inspiring Learning For All (ILFA) framework, which recognises informal learning outcomes, mapped to the Recognition and Recording of Progress and Achievement (RARPA), the adult learning equivalent.
This would enable museums and adult learning providers to see where they overlap. "[At the moment], adult learning doesn't know about ILFA and museums don't know about RARPA," Havard says, "so how are they to evaluate things?"
Jenny Duke, regional learning officer for MLA East of England, agrees that there is a gap in basic understanding between some in the adult learning sector and museums.
In her region, many museums are working with adults through family learning programmes and there is scope for the development of specifically adult provision if the right links could be made.
Cambridge University's Sedgwick Museum, for example, has a highly successful family learning programme, but has also formed a partnership with the City of Norwich College to provide an enrichment programme for young adults on a childcare course.
It introduces students to the museum and brings in some family learning techniques, such as how to use objects to play games with children. It is informal and doesn't contribute to the students' course assessment, but it taps into a new audience for the museum and contributes to adult skills development, all at no extra cost to the Sedgwick, bar the existing staff.
East of England MLA recently commissioned a report from NIACE examining how family learning tutors perceive museums. The results were disappointing.
"They often want to know why museums can't be like libraries and not charge for services," Duke says. "They don't realise that museums are non-statutory. They have no idea where museums sit."
The real problems are not with tutors on the ground but at management level, she says. "Even though museums in the region think that they are contributing a lot to family learning, museums aren't necessarily involved in consultation at county level or plugged into the right networks. But unless we have that understanding [of what museums offer] at a strategic level, then it's not going to go very far."
In England, there's a development on the horizon that might alter the picture. In January this year John Denham, secretary of state at the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, announced Shaping the Way Ahead, a consultation on informal adult learning (Museums Journal February 2008, p6).
It highlights how learning for adults is no longer tied to a classroom, but can be channelled through a museum, TV programme, the internet or by people getting together in a book group. The question is how can these different forms of learning contribute to the nation's need for a more skilled workforce and bring about "a new vision of adult learning for the 21st century".
Natasha Innocent, senior policy adviser on learning for MLA nationally, is urging mu-seums to get involved in the consultation, which ends on 15 May, and to promote the distinctive contribution they make to support adult learning.
"I think [the sector's] default position is that anything to do with adult learning is our sector, but that's not terribly helpful. I don't think it's true and I think it doesn't help us to develop partnerships because it's just not specific enough."
The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A), has a well-established adult education programme, including Inspired by…, its annual art competition for adult learners.
It has responded to Shaping the Way Ahead by stressing the intrinsic value of informal learning in museums and the wider potential. Among other things, informal learning appeals to people who want no part of exams, says the V&A's director of learning, David Anderson.
"People who take part in our [adult education] programmes don't want to go into an accredited framework," he says. "We would lose a large part of our audience if we did that.
"Informal learning is a foundation for a lot of successful formal education, so it deserves to be valued more by the sector than perhaps it is and it complements the areas which government funds, that is, skills."
Anderson also thinks mapping what museums contribute to adult learning would be desirable. But encouraging museums to go further down the route of providing skills training is a different matter. "There's a genuine issue of how the work is to be funded once you go outside the area of informal learning," he says.
Money is always an issue. Probably the bigger question is how tying informal adult learning to skills development will sit with other local authority, trust or hub targets. John Denham's consultation could produce a strategy that will give museums an explicit role in delivering the adult skills agenda. But without that, those museums not already doing it will have little incentive to get on board.
Julie Nightingale is a freelance journalist.
The Museums Association's adult learning conference, All Grown Up, is on 5 June in London.
www.museumsassociation.org/events/grownup
www.adultlearningconsultation.org.uk
Adult education at a glance
Adult education has risen up the government priority list in recent years for a number of reasons:
Job skills
The 2006 Leitch report into the country's future skills needs predicted that by 2020, the number of jobs that require no qualifications will have dwindled to 600,000 (it's currently about 3.6 million). The report said the UK would need more trained and skilled people to compete in the global marketplace.
Literacy and numeracy
Concern about a lack of literacy and numeracy skills is another issue. According to the Literacy Trust, 16 per cent of adults in England can be described as "functionally illiterate".
Incapacity benefit
The government's recently announced plans to get some of the 2.6 million on incapacity benefit back into work will mean a big increase in demand for training to enable people to refresh out of-date skills or acquire new ones.
Parenting skills
The government is training 3,000 parenting practitioners by 2009 to tutor parents in how to raise their children. Ageing population By 2020, it's estimated that more than a quarter of the UK population will be over 60. An ageing population needs to be kept active mentally, as well as physically.
In Touch in Manchester
Adult literacy skills are at the heart of In Touch, a training programme for adult volunteers funded by the Manchester Museum in partnership with the Imperial War Museum North.
The scheme targets people who have opted out of education or who, having left school years ago and seldom worked since, find their skills need updating. Recruitment is via Jobcentre Plus and organisations for disabled people. A number of the volunteers are also asylum seekers or refugees.
The programme runs for six hours a week for 10 weeks. Volunteers get to handle objects, learn about collections policies, help curators and go behind the scenes into museum stores.
Formal literacy tuition is by a lecturer from a local FE college, but it is also implicit in every aspect of the museum training side, says Adele Finley, volunteer coordinator at the Manchester Museum.
"The literacy tuition is completely separate from the curatorial side, but it is still embedded all the way through the activities. They might do a plenary or group work explaining what they have seen in the museum or write something to explain it. Linked to the museum work in this way means the literacy work is not just an exercise.
"The museum is in a really powerful position because it's an environment unlike anywhere some of the participants have been," she adds. "Two-thirds of the volunteers say they hated school and would not go to a literacy class in a community centre or college." Volunteers who pass their assessment receive a certificate in adult literacy at one of three levels.
The scheme's combination of training, work experience and skills renewal is generating a lot of interest from policymakers in the region and is a contender in the 2008 Adult Learners' Week Awards, with the winner to be announced later this month.
Adult Learners' Week, May 17-23 2008. See www.niace.org.uk/ALW/2008
Adult education has risen up the government priority list in recent years for a number of reasons:
Job skills
The 2006 Leitch report into the country's future skills needs predicted that by 2020, the number of jobs that require no qualifications will have dwindled to 600,000 (it's currently about 3.6 million). The report said the UK would need more trained and skilled people to compete in the global marketplace.
Literacy and numeracy
Concern about a lack of literacy and numeracy skills is another issue. According to the Literacy Trust, 16 per cent of adults in England can be described as "functionally illiterate".
Incapacity benefit
The government's recently announced plans to get some of the 2.6 million on incapacity benefit back into work will mean a big increase in demand for training to enable people to refresh out of-date skills or acquire new ones.
Parenting skills
The government is training 3,000 parenting practitioners by 2009 to tutor parents in how to raise their children. Ageing population By 2020, it's estimated that more than a quarter of the UK population will be over 60. An ageing population needs to be kept active mentally, as well as physically.
In Touch in Manchester
Adult literacy skills are at the heart of In Touch, a training programme for adult volunteers funded by the Manchester Museum in partnership with the Imperial War Museum North.
The scheme targets people who have opted out of education or who, having left school years ago and seldom worked since, find their skills need updating. Recruitment is via Jobcentre Plus and organisations for disabled people. A number of the volunteers are also asylum seekers or refugees.
The programme runs for six hours a week for 10 weeks. Volunteers get to handle objects, learn about collections policies, help curators and go behind the scenes into museum stores.
Formal literacy tuition is by a lecturer from a local FE college, but it is also implicit in every aspect of the museum training side, says Adele Finley, volunteer coordinator at the Manchester Museum.
"The literacy tuition is completely separate from the curatorial side, but it is still embedded all the way through the activities. They might do a plenary or group work explaining what they have seen in the museum or write something to explain it. Linked to the museum work in this way means the literacy work is not just an exercise.
"The museum is in a really powerful position because it's an environment unlike anywhere some of the participants have been," she adds. "Two-thirds of the volunteers say they hated school and would not go to a literacy class in a community centre or college." Volunteers who pass their assessment receive a certificate in adult literacy at one of three levels.
The scheme's combination of training, work experience and skills renewal is generating a lot of interest from policymakers in the region and is a contender in the 2008 Adult Learners' Week Awards, with the winner to be announced later this month.
Adult Learners' Week, May 17-23 2008. See www.niace.org.uk/ALW/2008