The Politics of Lifelong Education

The news that Derbyshire County Council is going to close five centres as part of a 25% cut to its Adult education budget (“Sudden closures hit Derbyshire adult education centres”, Josh Mellor, FE Week, 29^th Aug 2025) is a continuation of the inexorable decline in adult learning caused by repeated government cuts to its budget since 2010. The fact that this cut is being pushed through by a Reform-led local authority is a striking political twist.

Over the previous couple of years we’ve explored the economic, social and health case for lifelong education, highlighting its importance for economic growth and human wellbeing in an era when working lives are getting longer. But what about the political case for lifelong learning? What exactly is the political impact of failing to embrace a lifelong learning culture? The evidence is mounting that, apart from anything else, the steep fall in adult participation in education since 2010 is a major factor in the rise of UKIP and its successor, the Reform party.

The table below illustrates the striking correlation between the decline in adult learning and the rise of UKIP/Reform electoral popularity. While the percentage of adults engaged in learning has halved between 2009 and today (“Learning the Lessons”, Learning & Work Institute, May 2025), the performance of first UKIP, now Reform, in votes and opinion polls has shot up. We all know that correlation isn’t causation, but there is surely a link between these trends.

	2009	2025
Adults in Education	15%	7.5%
UKIP/Reform in Opinion Polls	3%	28%

A recent profile of Reform voters – “Decoding Populism: Who Are Reform’s UK Voters?” (Faster Horses, Aug 2025), found that 46% had left school at age 16 or younger, and only 22% had continued in education beyond the age of 21. This, along with the tendency of Reform voters to be older adults, is one of the party’s key features, and part of a phenomenon observed in the Brexit referendum, in which 68% of those with a degree voted Remain, while 70% of those educated only to GCSE level or below voted Leave. It’s now almost impossible to make careers progress and improve your earnings unless you are able to get better qualifications, so the poorly educated have become the materially poor, and their voting choices are an attempt to find a way of reversing this.

In a fascinating piece of research which accompanied the “Decoding Populism” report - “Uncovering Britain’s Epidemic of Discontent: An Ethnographic Exploration” – a sample of “populist-leaning” voters were interviewed in depth to reveal the attitudes behind their voting intentions. Anger over immigration stands out as the “lightning rod” for the accumulated frustrations of this section of society, but the frustrations themselves are the entirely predictable result of radically reducing adult access to opportunities. Only 17% feel they are better off than they thought they’d be when they started adult life, and 69% don’t feel valued by society. 62% are struggling financially, and only 26% think they’ll be better off in the future – 38% think they’ll be worse off. Depressingly, only 18% believe that today’s young people will have a better life than their parents.

The argument is persuasive. Restricting access to adult education chokes off the route to career success for those who don’t do well at school. Being excluded from opportunity contributes significantly to the feelings of anger and resentment shown by Reform-leaning voters. The longer this goes on, the higher the likelihood that the politics of protest that fuels Reform and similar populist political parties will become even stronger and more divisive.

From this perspective lifelong education becomes an essential strategy for avoiding social and political fragmentation. Reviving access to good quality education and training for working adults becomes an urgent priority, not a “nice-to-have”. But the only policy move in this direction – the launch next year of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement – although very welcome, is highly unlikely to have much impact on those interviewed by Faster Horses, who are almost certain to be loan-averse and may well be miles away from having entry qualifications for higher education.

We urgently need a vision of lifelong learning and the will to take decisive action to reverse the decline in adult education. That’s why the Lifelong Education Institute is an enthusiastic supporter of the “Get The Nation Learning” campaign launched earlier this year by the Learning & Work Institute – for details, go to https://getthenationlearning.org.uk.

To reach the kind of adults most in need, effective action needs to have three key features. Firstly, it needs to be career-focused, aiming to get people into selected jobs with prospects, not just jobs, with a strong element of careers advice and guidance. Secondly, it needs to provide financial incentives, putting educational spending power directly in the pockets of individuals, through the sort of voucher systems already used in many other countries. Thirdly, it needs to be hyper-local, using national and regional funding to mobilise a coalition of community-based neighbourhood organisations including charities, churches, and voluntary associations, as well as employers and training providers. A look at policies implemented by countries across the world affords many examples of the kind of initiatives which are successful.

A culture of lifelong learning can be created and must be created if we are to restore the link between effort and reward to those who feel ignored and downtrodden. It’s not just our economy and society that needs this, it’s a political imperative too.