News: Telephone and Writing Skills
Government conducts adult training consultation
16 January 2008
The government is considering various measures to help with adult learning in the future.
A consultation is to be spearheaded by working groups comprised of organisations from broadcasting and new technologies, government departments, families and the voluntary sector.
They include the BBC, BSkyB, Microsoft, the TUC, English Heritage and the Family Learning Network.
The aim is "to formulate new proposals to further expand learning and ensure that people have more control over the format and availability of course", a spokesman revealed, and one solution could be the introduction of 'virtual' vouchers to allow adults to fund informal learning.
"Some courses are still taught in a classroom at a fixed time - an approach that would have been clearly recognised 100 years ago," said John Denham, the Innovation, Universities and Skills secretary.
"But adult learning may be as easily stimulated by a TV programme that prompts a trip to a local museum, or an internet search that leads to a group of like-minded learners.
"Most strikingly, much of the innovation in this sector in the early 21st century has been driven and achieved by learners themselves: people adapting new technologies, not relying on support from local or national government to organise activities, but seeking out fellow enthusiasts through online communities and other channels besides."
