Levelling Up Adult Community Education
What Does the Data Tell Us?
Recommendations for Government, Local Government and Adult Community Education Providers
This report, commissioned by Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL) reviews what has been articulated in recently published reviews on ACE and provides a detailed examination of the unpublished Individualised Learner Record base data collected by the Education and Skills Funding Agency.
The report sets out the priority themes for adult education and describes the adult community education landscape in England, including student demographics, highlights delivery shortfalls and geographical hotspots and establishes the level of investment required to ensure the levelling up agenda improves the lives of adults with low and intermediate skills.
The project has also provided a tool for ACE services/centres and colleges to benchmark themselves and support their own local levelling-up agendas and suggests how adult
community education could support the acceleration of the post-Covid-19 recovery plan.
The report concludes with a set of policy recommendations for government, Mayoral Combined Authorities and ACE providers.
Levelling Up ACE.
Report available here.
Supporting/background documentation
The Reach and Scope of ACE Provision
The data within this report underpins the FETL report. It is sourced from the Individualised Learner Record (ILR) which records publicly funded learning in England. The data covers learning undertaken during the academic years between 2016/17 and 2018/19. In addition, the report includes part-year data for 2019/20 covering learning up to April 2020. The data was supplied by the Department for Education using the Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service and was analysed by RCU. The full report “The Reach and Scope of ACE Provision” can be found here.
Proposed Underpinning Financial Strategy
A summary resource plan is included within the FETL publication and the full technical plan is available to download here.
Adult Community Education - Supporting place and people: Characteristics of success
This monograph, produced by HOLEX and commissioned by the Further Education Trust for Leadership (FETL), highlights the impactful practice of successful adult
community education (ACE) services in raising standards and sustaining high performance in their local neighbourhoods. The review built on
the concepts of ‘place-making and supporting residents’.
The full monograph is available here.
Learning for Life: the role of adult community education in developing thriving local communities - A handbook for councillors
This handbook for councillors, produced by the Local Government Association in Autumn 2020, focuses on the direct and indirect impact of adult community education (ACE). It aims to help councillors effectively plan, promote and scrutinise their local ACE service so that it is relevant, robust, efficient, responsive and ambitious.
New benchmarking tool for ACE providers
This project has provided a tool for ACE providers to benchmark themselves and support their own local levelling-up agendas. Contact HOLEX for more information on how to access this service.
Key findings
Through this work we have been able to:
• pinpoint the 10,000 places from which adult education is delivered,
• determine where in England there is little adult education offered,
• report on where there is a delivery imbalance,
• demonstrate that the public pound does go to learners from the most deprived areas of England,
• detail the initial impact of Covid-19 on adult education learners
• identify the need for a new annual injection of £5.2 billion to fund a basic and intermediate skills levelling-up plan.