Congratulations to the Open University on its first forty years. Never mind all the cheap jibes about late night hangover TV with scientists with no dress sense and wobbly props. The OU was a great idea, and brought higher education for mature students within the remit of the many and not the few – spot the borrowed line there.

The great irony  is that the very party which legislated for the OU – Labour – have done so much over the last decade to squeeze the adult education sector. They withdrew public funding for learning for learning’s sake – as they would describe it – in favour of supposedly ‘useful’ learning. Instead, they have been busy promoting something called IAL – that’s Informal Adult Learning (and not funded by the taxpayer). A white paper came out earlier this year called The Learning Revolution which was full of ideas, but not over much about what government would actually do.

Adult education is a fascinating topic and a personal priority of mine for Blackpool. In an area like this, people need to be able to access education at all levels well after the age of 18, since so many may have missed opportunities earlier in life. This will range from basic literacy and numeracy skills to post-grad study in astrophysics. But it shouldn’t just be about class-based learning. Learning takes place wherever people gather together who are interested in a topic – from an allotment society to a flower-arranging society.  It’s a policy area in its infancy, really, in terms of considered thinking, and gets nowhere near the attention schools do.

Over the coming weeks, I’m going to be investigating the formal and informal adult education sectors in Blackpool and Cleveleys. Watch this space. If you’ve got any thoughts, though, then let me know.