At the Lifelong Education Institute’s annual lecture, Andy Haldane set out a compelling reason to take lifelong learning seriously: longer lives will require longer working lives, and longer working lives will require repeated opportunities to learn.
The familiar sequence of education, employment and retirement is becoming less suited to the lives people will lead. Learning and earning will increasingly overlap, as people change jobs, update their skills or move into different occupations. Technological change adds further urgency. Whatever AI ultimately means for employment numbers, it will change the work people do and the capabilities they need.
Haldane’s argument was that longevity can bring an economic dividend, provided people remain healthy and equipped to participate. Education systems, employers and public policy must adapt to make that possible.
The APPG on Further Education and Lifelong Learning’s new report, Skills for life, work and place, offers a welcome contribution to that task. It makes the case for adult education as essential infrastructure, supporting economic opportunity alongside health, confidence and community life.
Its central proposal – a funded learning guarantee from entry level to Level 3 – deserves particular attention. It could provide the foundation for a more coherent lifelong learning system. But turning that ambition into a meaningful entitlement will require considerably more policy development.
A Guarantee People can use
The report describes a system constrained by declining investment, fragmented programmes and restrictive eligibility rules. Among providers responding to its inquiry, more than half reported often or very often turning learners away because of funding rules or eligibility constraints.
For adults, these difficulties sit alongside the practical demands of work and family life. A funded course is of limited use if someone cannot afford transport, arrange childcare or participate without putting their benefits at risk. The report rightly connects its proposed guarantee with maintenance support, clearer welfare rules and better careers advice.
It also identifies an important gap in the Lifelong Learning Entitlement. Greater flexibility in higher-level education is welcome, but many adults need support well before Level 4 becomes a realistic next step. A lifelong learning system must connect those starting points with opportunities for further progression.
The proposed guarantee could help establish that connection. Yet its meaning remains unclear. Would it fund only a first qualification, or allow someone to retrain at a level they have already achieved? Would it cover short courses and individual units? Would entitlement mean access to an available course, or a responsibility to ensure suitable provision exists?
These questions determine how much the guarantee would change people’s lives.
From a Guarantee to a National Skills Account
One way to develop the proposal would be through a national skills account, giving every adult a clear basic entitlement to skills funding and a portable record of recognised learning.
Such an account could help people understand what support they can access, what they have already achieved and how their next step contributes towards a qualification or career goal. It could accommodate smaller units of learning that adults can undertake alongside employment and caring responsibilities.
Haldane’s lecture made a related case for a digital learning passport capturing both substantial qualifications and smaller achievements. Bringing that record together with an accessible funding entitlement could make lifelong learning easier to navigate.
However, recording learning is only part of the task. Providers and awarding bodies must recognise those achievements and allow them to count towards further study. A collection of digital certificates has limited value if learners must repeat what they already know whenever they change institution.
The APPG report supports portable entitlement and modular learning but does not fully develop the arrangements needed to connect them. A national skills account would therefore build on its recommendations rather than simply implement an existing blueprint.
National Rights, Local Opportunities
Mayoral Strategic Authorities could play a central role in making this approach work. A national guarantee would establish the basic offer available across England. MSAs could build on it through additional funding, local partnerships and pathways responding to their economies and communities.
Colleges, universities, employers and community providers could then develop connected routes from essential skills into technical and higher learning.
But the relationship between national entitlement and local discretion needs careful design. People move between places and travel across boundaries to study and work. Their basic entitlement and recognised achievements should travel with them. Equivalent access must also be secured in areas outside mayoral arrangements.
The report establishes the principle of national commitment with local flexibility. It leaves important questions about funding responsibilities, accountability and cross-boundary access unresolved.
The Next Step is Delivery
Much of the report’s diagnosis is familiar. Earlier parliamentary work has already called for stable funding, simpler programmes and greater individual control through learning accounts. The report’s contribution is to renew those arguments around a national guarantee and a stronger local role.
Its principal limitation is the distance between that ambition and a deliverable programme. There is no costed guarantee, clear implementation timetable or sufficiently developed response to the shortages of specialist teachers and facilities that the inquiry itself identifies. Several recommendations commission further reviews where firmer choices will eventually be necessary.
Employer responsibility also needs greater attention. Adults cannot continually update their skills if employers provide neither time nor investment. Longer working lives require changes in workplace practice alongside changes in education funding. The report provides a useful platform for reform. The opportunity now is to define a funded entitlement, connect it with recognised and portable learning, and give local partnerships the capacity to deliver it. Haldane’s lecture explained why through-life learning is becoming indispensable. The challenge is to ensure that adults can actually access it.
By Mark Morrin, Principal Research Consultant at the Lifelong Education Institute