YOUR report on the Association of Teachers and Lecturers’ survey (FE Focus, October 15) misses the point of a lifelong learning strategy. The survey merely confirms that which we know - we have a mountain to climb. The point is how best to tackle it.
It is not just the cash injections which Peter Smith calls for which are required, but a change of mind set among those who seek to make a contribution to lifelong learning for a majority of people.
Ensuring that “courses are accessible to everybody” is not just a matter of college enrolment. It is about finding ways to be with those we target in such a way that we might learn ourselves, as tutors and organisers, how and what people learn already. If the ATL wants to see how this is being developed it could not do better than to investigate the projects now being financed by the Department for Education and Employment through the Adult and Community Learning Fund.
Enrolment is the problem - not the solution. The solution may be in our engagement with students - and what we might learn from that engagement. Clearly part of our own professional lifelong learning.
David Browning
Weaver’s Cottage
Tosson Mill
Rothbury, Northumberland
