Older People and Lifelong Learning: Choices and Experiences

Policy issues The impetus for our study came, initially, from an examination of a range of major policy reports relevant to the development of lifelong learning in the UK (Kennedy, 1997; National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education, 1997; Fryer, 1997). Within all three documents, it was striking that a strong priority was accorded to vocational education and training in spite of some general rhetoric about the non-economic, personal and social benefits of lifelong learning (Tight, 1998). The Green Paper The Learning Age – a renaissance for a new Britain (DfEE, 1998) was also subsequently criticised for its emphasis on the economically active and its lack of any coherent philosophy of lifelong learning (Cole, 2000). In addition, although there was a brief mention of the supposed benefits of learning for older people within the White Paper Learning to Succeed (DfEE, 1999) which set out the Labour government’s plans for the re-organisation of post-16 education, it did appear that older people who are ‘post-work’ in the sense that they are no longer primarily involved in earning a living or with major responsibilities for raising a family were generally excluded from educational debate. They were largely marginalized in educational policy circles by emphasis on economic imperatives alongside continuing concerns about the financial support of an ageing population, which, although of major importance, tend to conceptualise later life as a social problem.