BRITAIN’S economy is suffering because it relies too much on the talents of the privileged classes instead of developing the potential of the less well-off, according to new research.

Despite the Government’s overtures about social inclusion, it continues to preside over a country in which “affluence leads to learning” rather than the other way round, according to the Learning and Skills Development Agency.

What separates us from our overseas competitors is a “learning divide between social classes,” according to the report, by researchers Sue Taylor and Helen Cameron.

The report, Attracting new learners; international evidence and practice, says the situation has left many businesses operating below their full capacity.

“Arguably, in the UK, we have tolerated or adjusted to low skill levels, particularly in numeracy,” says the report. “An important consequence is that business and industry operate below optimum productivity levels.”

Class-ridden Britain is also accused of tending to look down its nose at other countries rather than learning from their experiences.

Compared with other countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, we appear “less interested to learn from international experience and to engage in joint debate about how to solve problems”. This, says the report, “gives the impression of complacency”.

Only Greece, one of the poorest countries in the European Union, has fewer 17-year-olds in education than Britain, which has the world’s fourth-largest economy. Despite this, Britain manages to achieve one of the highest university participation rates in the world.

Britain also spends less per student than most of the larger OECD countries and it fails those people who are returning to the classroom, having failed first time round.

The report says we remain a society in which, as Helena Kennedy , author of a report into widening access in FE, put it in 1997: “If at first you don’t succeed, you don’t succeed.”

The report claims Britain’s problems are due to a lack of investment, and a reluctance to encourage or even coerce employers to get more involved in workplace learning.

The education and training establishment is accused of excessive navel-gazing. It says the system has become bogged down in “abstract and negative” education-speak which typecasts adults into neatly defined groups such as “hard-to-reach”, “the disaffected” and “the bottom 20 per cent”.

“We appear more comfortable debating the participation problem with fellow professionals than connecting with people whom we seek to support,” it says. “Unless initiatives are influenced by potential participants, they are unlikely to achieve long-term impact or cultural change.”

Chris Hughes, chief executive of the LSDA, said: “Policy-makers and learning providers need to stop viewing the people as the problem and, instead, find out what motivates adults to learn.

“What we need now are imagination, creativity and an understanding of how to motivate adults to take part in learning as a route to improving their life chances.

“One approach is to strengthen informal learning, community-based and work-based, which fits into the lifestyles of learners.”