How to increase opportunities and remove barriers in adult education

Increasing social mobility and personal resilience

The way that we work is changing, and it’s changing fast.

We all share a collective desire to ensure that more working-age adults are prepared for this change and given the skills to become more resilient members of society.

More and more educators are adapting the way they deliver training and breaking down the barriers to education, which brings noticeable benefits for their business and, more importantly, to their learners.

“Inclusive education is not merely a way of integrating more learners into mainstream education, but rather an approach that can transform education systems in order to meet the needs and diversity of learners.”

Education can provide huge opportunities, and we can create learning environments where no one feels excluded from achieving success. Increasing inclusivity is part of a shared global vision for education – “UNESCO has been very clear in the past that it will only be possible to make the right to education a reality if inclusive education reaches out to all learners while respecting their diverse needs.”

The post-Covid recovery plan must take steps to increase social mobility for adults in education. By acknowledging and supporting the needs of growing numbers of working-age adults, we will see more people successfully retrain and gain life skills that go beyond their course.

What will this guide tell you?

This guide will explore our current understanding of adults in learning, focusing on how they think and learn, the difficulties they face, and how we can encourage them in learning.

We will look at some of the specific barriers to adults in education and how we can break down these barriers to provide opportunities to a wider cohort of adult learners.

With this knowledge, this guide will identify the practical changes that adult education providers can implement quickly to increase learner retention and achievement.

We want to highlight the importance of adult education to our economic recovery and wellbeing, and promote the benefits of making adult learning more accessible and inclusive for everyone.