David Hughes, CEO at the Association of Colleges, sets out why a well-funded, high-quality adult education system is beneficial to society and the economy.
Turn up at a primary school in Wolverhampton on a Tuesday morning and unsurprisingly you’ll see children learning something new, developing their skills and growing in confidence. What you’ll also see, probably more surprisingly, is a group of parents doing the same.
That’s because for the past eight years, the City of Wolverhampton College has been providing a wide range of courses including English, maths, Paediatric First Aid, Emergency First Aid, Preparation for Work, and ESOL Everyday Skills to parents in their children’s schools.
It’s a simple, but highly effective idea: teach adults in an accessible space they trust. The impact has been transformational: in the last 18 months alone, more than 85 parents have engaged with these programmes, with many choosing to enrol in multiple courses, and a significant number progressing onto accredited adult learning at the main college campuses.
If you travel up to Royal Liverpool University Hospital, and speak to cleaning staff there, you’ll hear a similar story of opportunities realised. Dozens across the trust now hold formal qualifications and the specific technical knowledge in essential areas like infection control and sustainable cleaning practices, thanks to a bespoke Level 1 cleaning and hygiene programme developed by a partnership between Hugh Baird College and the hospital.
The impacts are profound, with all participants reporting a significant increase in professional confidence and skill, and many progressing onto Level 2 apprenticeships, with the ambition of becoming team leaders and supervisors. For others, the course has provided the foundational skills and confidence to pursue future roles as healthcare assistants.
Today, as we kick off Colleges Week 2026, we’re celebrating adult education provision across the country. At AoC, we talk a lot about the importance of education at all ages, throughout life. We believe that every adult should be able to access opportunities to learn and develop – and last year, we launched a new campaign, Adult Learning Pays, to raise awareness and help develop a widespread culture of lifelong learning.
There are lots of research studies that show the impact of adult learning, but often, it’s the real-life examples, like the ones I’ve shared above, that really hit home. Both case studies show that education leads to personal agency. And when you have agency, you have confidence and more opportunities. In life and in work. The world opens up as a place to explore, enjoy and contribute to and successful learning leads to more learning and growing.
That link between success in learning and the confidence and interest in learning more speaks to our innate curiosity and ability to learn. Our education systems have, for too long, been designed as if learning finishes when you leave school or college or university as a teenager or in your early 20s. That was never optimal, but in a world of rapid advancements in technology and AI and the transition to net-zero, with the world facing demographic and climate challenges, we all need to make learning part of our lives, throughout our lives.
For some, gaining access to learning is easy enough; you submit a request to your employer, you apply for a new job, you take the opportunity to learn from your colleagues. But for others, those who may be out of work, or in low-paid, low-skill jobs, finding that route to learning can be really tricky. Research tells us time and time again that it’s those who are furthest from the labour market and from areas of higher deprivation who are the least likely to participate in adult learning.
And it’s harder now than ever. Research from the Learning and Work Institute in 2025 found that adult participation in FE has plummeted to levels not seen since the aftermath of the Second World War. This is because public funding cuts have led to a huge reduction in the opportunities and courses adults can access. According to the IFS, the funding for adult skills and apprenticeships in 2024-25 was 23% below 2009-10 levels.
There are, of course, great things happening all over the country with adults benefitting from publicly-funded learning and in-work training. The examples I shared above are just the tip of the iceberg, and there’s the rub. We know how much impact adult learning can have, and yet millions of learning opportunities that existed 20 years ago no longer exist. Colleges have been forced to reduce numbers and cut outreach into communities where learning could benefit so many people. At the same time, employers overall are investing less in training their staff than they used to.
It’s a bleak picture and that’s why we launched our Adult Learning Pays campaign, and why we support Learning and Work Institute’s Get the Nation Learning campaign.
A well-funded, high-quality adult education system is not a cost, but an investment; an investment with returns to the government in terms of social cohesion, helping people secure good jobs and supporting economic growth. An investment with returns for employers who see higher staff loyalty and retention and better productivity and business success. Adult learning really does pay – for us all.
