Is Lifelong learning - A Utopian Ideal?

ANNUAL LECTURE BY CHRIS WOODHEAD HM CHIEF INSPECTOR OF SCHOOLS

Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday's Times would have you believe that I risk 'courting more controversy' in daring to talk about life long learning. Life long learning they say is 'a ministerial priority' and by implication therefore should be beyond discussion and inspectorial comment. This is nonsense. For two reasons: first, ministerial priorities ought, as I am sure ministers would wish, to be debated openly and publicly, and, second, because my aim is not in any sense to court controversy - it is simply to raise questions that need to be asked if the policy is to deliver the Government's justifiably ambitious aims.

Let me first expound on why I think life long learning an important initiative. I support absolutely 'the case', as David Blunkett put it in his recent North of England Conference speech, 'for change'. The Government has prioritised education and launched its campaign for life long learning for three reasons:

First, because education is the key to an economically prosperous future. If we are to succeed as a nation in an increasingly global economy, then we must ensure that more young people leave school equipped with the knowledge and skills the jobs of the future will demand. And not just young people: we must do more, much more than we have ever done in the past, to raise the skill levels of adults who are already in employment. Second, because to quote from the same speech, 'healthy cohesive societies depend on education because only through education can people gain the knowledge, learn the skills and develop the confidence to participate in the shaping of their communities'. And, third, education, as David puts it, 'is the great liberator'. I'd, in fact, go beyond his argument here. Education does, of course, give people 'more control over their lives, greater opportunity, a wider range of ways to use their leisure time'. But, the argument is, or ought to be, more fundamental. Our humanity depends upon our understanding and appreciation of the different ways in which human beings over the centuries have come to understand the world. The educational enterprise is important, ultimately, because it is a transaction between the generations in which the young are initiated into the knowledge and understanding they must possess if they are ever to participate in a civilised world.

We are, as the Government has recognised, a long way from having the education system we and our children need. As I made very clear in my Annual Report, we are seeing real progress, particularly with regard to the issue which is of fundamental importance to life long learning: the teaching of basic skills in primary schools. But more progress, as I am sure every headteacher in this room will accept, is needed, if the Government's vision is to be realised. In particular, and these are issues I'll pick up later this evening, we need to think about the curriculum 14-19, the transition to the world of work, and the role and contribution of FE and HE.

The reality at present is, as the Evening Standard headline of 12 January put it: '40 per cent fail basic skills test for supermarket jobs'. News like this simply endorses the bleak fact we already know from Sir Claus Moser's work: 7 million or more adults cannot cope with the demands of everyday life because they cannot read and write and have not mastered the rules of basic arithmetic.

Neither is it a matter solely of those who have not mastered the basic skills. Andy Green's and Hilary Steedman's analysis in a report published in 1997 of labour force data by skill level for five countries points to similar problems. Half the population in Germany and France in 1994 had intermediate level qualifications and between a quarter and a third had no or low qualifications. In the UK and the US the ratios are reversed with only one quarter in the UK and US at the intermediate levels and half the population in the low or no qualifications group.

But it is not, or should not be, a matter of statistics and economic arguments, 'The human and social costs borne by individuals, families, communities and society as a whole,' as David Blunkett has pointed out, 'are immeasurable'. The socially excluded 'feel themselves to be outside the "norms" of society, detached from political authority, influence and power and from the social responsibilities which go with this. Many people do not watch the news. They do not read the newspapers. They have no idea who their local councillor or MP is and little interest in finding out. Many do not vote. They lack any sense of society beyond the narrow confines of their own lives. This has important and dangerous implications for civil society. The more detached people become, the less likely it is that their voices will be heard and their needs represented at all. Disenfranchised in this way, they pose a challenge to the very heart of our democracy and its ability to represent and serve all sections of society'.

The challenge is, then, clear, as is the ambition of the Government's response. In, for example, his introduction to the speech from which I have just quoted, the Secretary of State says:

'Our vision is of nothing less than a new and stronger fabric for our society. Over the next five to ten years, we want all our young people to emerge from school with a sound basic education, committed to continuous learning and equipped with the personal skills they need to succeed as individuals and citizens. We want people of all ages engaged with learning. We want opportunity for all our people. We want people and communities once again proud of their self-determination. This is our vision: empowered and self-reliant individuals, strong families, self-sustaining communities - a nation equipped for the challenges and opportunities of the new millennium.'
This is a vision we can all, I imagine, endorse. It is, of course, to answer my self-imposed question a utopian ideal: a dream of the promised land. Deliberately and self-consciously so: it is intended to motivate and inspire. But the wings of rhetoric can carry us only so far: what are the dangers that need to be avoided if the Government's ambition to create a learning society is to be realised in what is, as we all know, a distinctly fallen world?

The first danger is that we must not forget, however bright the new millennial dawn, that the world cannot and will not be transformed. It can be made better, but man, sadly, is not a perfectible creature and the human condition is one in which sickness, poverty and, yes, ignorance will always afflict some among us. This may seem to be an argument that is as irrelevant as it is obvious - irrelevant because nobody (certainly not David Blunkett who has more experience than most of the day-to-day realities of life in disadvantaged communities) is seriously suggesting that a magic wand can be waved. The point of the rhetoric is, as I have just said, to raise our expectations of what is possible.

I do think, though, that a note of caution needs to be sounded. The vision must be grounded in a clear-headed understanding of the educational good. This, again, is a point to which I'll return. It must be articulated carefully and systematically in terms of a realistic programme of delivery. It must make sense to all those who we want to draw into the Learning Age. And, above all, perhaps, it must recognise what is possible for those who actually have to deliver. We ignored the latter in drawing up the National Curriculum and we must ensure that we don't repeat the mistake in our attempt to create the Learning Age.

We must also, I think, take care not to succumb to what, Anthony O'Hear has described recently as: 'the great rationalist lie'.

This is the belief (which runs through a good deal of the literature on Life-Long Learning) that the state should take increasing responsibility for the running of our lives because it is the state, and only the state, that is able to solve our problems. Experience has shown (you no doubt remember the Polish joke about a shortage of sand occurring on the Sahara shortly after the desert was nationalised) that the command economy does not work in the economic sphere. Some, of course, would argue that we now, in Europe at least, have a situation where state regulation has replaced state management. But that, thankfully, is another story. What interests me tonight is Anthony O'Hear's 'lie': the belief that need, poverty, ignorance and sickness would be liquidated if only the state had the courage and will to eliminate the prejudices of the ancien regime and deliver its own rationalist solutions and procedures. This is not a party political point. For better or for worse, Governments across the world, irrespective of their political persuasion, have bought into this scientific/cum-administrative perfectionism. In fact, the consequences strike me as both good and bad. We are better off, more secure than once we were. But the danger, as O'Hear reminds us de Toqueville pointed out long ago, is that our lives are taken over by the state to the point where we become increasingly infantilised.

These are deep and murky waters in which I would prefer not to paddle. Some immersion (I hope partial and brief) is, however, inescapable if the debate about life long learning is to amount to anything more than a narrow consideration of the technical detail of particular proposals.

Let's reflect, for example, on Alan Tuckett's admission that to his own surprise he has started to think about

'compulsory adult learning ? . In the information industries continuing learning is a necessary pre-condition to keeping a job, and your capacity to keep on learning may affect the job security of others. Learning is becoming compulsory. And if it is true for people in some sectors of industry, why not for people who might want to rejoin the labour force later?'
Like Frank Coffield, I detect in this statement 'the voice of moral authoritarianism, the belief that the state knows best,' and, possibly, as Coffield suggests, the 'mounting frustration of liberal educators who are confronted with the same, seemingly intractable statistics on low levels of participation in life long learning by certain groups.'

I am not at all sure (I was going to say 'looking around me', but I won't risk it) that there is necessarily a connection between high educational achievement and a happy, fulfilled existence or even, for that matter, effective performance in the work place! I know that I would be worried if a genuine concern to widen the social base of participation were to turn opportunities to learn into impositions to be obeyed. If individuals are ignorant and slothful and are happy in their ignorance and sloth, then, if we are talking about their leisure time, I can only say so be it.

The Government has to tread a very fine line. Encouragement is one thing, pressure another. Take the report in The Guardian last week about the attitudes of the over 85 year olds to learning. Malcolm Wicks was understandably commenting enthusiastically on the 107 year old whose life had certainly been very long and who was still learning, but I have to say that also I have some sympathy with the 25% of 85+ year olds who said they had done enough learning in their lives, and, speaking as a clapped out 53 year old, the 22% who said simply that they were too old. Some non-learners even confessed to liking to spend time with their grandchildren.

Shame on them! This is a trivial example. The fundamental point is, though, deeply serious and I very much hope we can discuss it later.

What is life long learning realistically going to achieve and against what timetable? To what extent does the total cultural transformation that the dream of the learning age encapsulates depend on us finding solutions to the myriad of social problems that afflict us? Do we want the state to involve itself in our individual decisions as to what we learn and how we play? How do we secure proper individual responsibility and fully involve private charity and initiative? How should the Government position itself with regard to these admittedly very difficult issues? How, in implementing these new initiatives, do we avoid the risk of adding to the mass of petty, benign and enervating regulation that, as again de Tocqueville predicted, has too often in recent decades been the main legacy of state intervention?

You may well feel that this is a long enough list of questions to be getting on with. There are two further possible dangers, however, that need discussion. The first, which is that our vision of life long learning has become too exclusively economic, can be dismissed pretty quickly. Critics like Frank Coffield argue that 'education is no longer viewed as a means of individual and social emancipation, but as either 'investment' or 'consumption', as having 'inputs' and 'outputs', stocks which 'depreciate' as well as 'appreciate', and is measured 'by rates of return'. He refers, perhaps tongue in cheek to 'the morbid anxieties of German sociologists from the 'unreconstructed left' who fear that life long learning is 'being used to socialise workers to the escalating demands of employers'. I find this a trifle far-fetched. And, while I accept that life long learning may be attractive to some politicians because, as Coffield puts it, it 'converts deep seated economic problems into short-lived educational initiatives,' I do not see much evidence that our Government is thinking in this cynical way. David Blunkett has, after all, spoken often and powerfully enough about the individual and social purposes of learning. In fact, of course, the economic and social justifications cohere: we have to reduce the unemployment statistics if we are to achieve a more just and cohesive society. While, therefore, as I've already said, classic liberal educational values need to inform everything that is done, I do not myself think that we have a situation where the moral purposes of education have been reduced by a sinister and calculating Government to economic and financial imperatives.

I am more worried about the influence fashionable and, I think, worrying ideas about the nature of learning might exert on the development of Government thinking. I refer here to the widespread tendency to see teaching and learning as separate activities (when, of course, they are elements of a single reciprocal process), and, worse, to eulogise learning and denigrate teaching. I remember, years ago being interviewed for a teaching job at what was then a vaguely progressive comprehensive school. 'What's the more important' I was asked, 'the process or the product?' To my eternal shame, for even in those days I knew there was something pathetic in the knee-jerk reference to Mr Gradgrind every time the issue of knowledge raised its distinctly untrendy head, I played the game. 'Oh, process,' I replied, casually, dismissively, as if anyone worth their educational salt could possibly believe that we should do anything other than teach children how to learn or, in that variation on the same theme, how to think.

Twenty five years on nothing much, sadly, seems to change. Take the Autumn edition of Learning to Live, the magazine published by the Campaign for Learning. 'Teaching thinking', Michael Barber tells us, 'is not an alternative to the standards agenda, but a way of taking it forward.' Of course, it is not. It never has been. Bad teachers might have dictated their notes and there are probably one or two who still do. But good teachers have always taught their pupils how to think. What were the causes of the English Civil War? Was Lear 'a man more sinned against than sinning?' Discussion of such issues dominated my and no doubt your, sixth form days. We need, moreover, to be very clear as to what exactly we mean when we refer to thinking skills. If we are talking about scrutinising the validity of relevant evidence and marshalling it into a coherent whole, ensuring that the argument flows logically from its premises to its conclusion, then fine. But, here again, there is nothing new. And nobody, I very much hope is seriously arguing that thinking can be taught as a set of discrete skills in a knowledge vacuum.

My reaction to the new theology of learning is similar. 'Learning is a subject' Professor MacBeath tells us in the same edition of the Campaign's newsletter, 'about which we have probably learnt more in the past decade and a half than in the previous 2000 years.' So what exactly have we learnt? I peruse the diagram that these quotes accompany and I discover: that we must motivate students, that feedback is a good thing, that room temperature and fresh air are worth thinking about, as are noise levels. I quite agree, but is this really what MacBeath means? Are these the radical discoveries of the last decade? I look further across the page and see, inevitably, a reference to Howard Gardiner's multiple intelligences. The pedagogic implications? Well, Camborne School History Department has given its students various strategies to exploit their particular intelligences and learning preferences.

interpersonal intelligence: working with a friend to explain their learning to each other.
intrapersonal intelligence: having conversations inside their head about what they were trying to learn.
>Visual-spatial: creating pictures and memory maps and putting pictures and key words around their bedrooms.
>Linguistic: using mnemonics and rhymes, and making tapes of themselves reading the things they need to learn.
Mathematical-Logical: using diagrams, lists, memory maps and spider diagrams.
Physical: making things, such as charts, pictures or games, and doing things with the information they are trying to learn.
Musical: using music to aid concentration and relaxation.
Naturalist: consciously making natural-world connections and applications for their learning.
Don't misunderstand me. This is all good enough stuff. My point is again that there's nothing really new. It does not amount to a radical transformation of existing practice. It does not justify the hype. It certainly does not justify Bill Lucas', the Director of the Campaign for Learning, confident assertion that 'Learning to learn will be the skill for the next century. Those individuals and organisations which have it will be the ones who thrive.'

I agree, Bill, that stagnation is a bad thing. But what is the skill of learning to learn? Is it a good idea even to talk about learning as a 'skill', or, even, more accurately a set of skills? Of course it helps, if you want to learn something new, to be able to use an index and a library, to find your way around the internet, to take notes succinctly, and so on. These are certainly skills, though, once again there's nothing here that is remotely new. They used in my day as a teacher to be called study skills. But in addition to these skills (and, I believe, much more important) there is the question of self-confidence and motivation: the whole attitudinal dimension, which, obviously enough, raises the issue of teaching and the crucial responsibility of the teacher to stimulate and inspire, to sustain and encourage.

The problem we have here is that the conventional wisdom would have it that teaching is bad, learning good. We don't like to talk much about teachers any more. We prefer to think in terms of coaches, mentors, learning facilitators. I support the use of mentors to provide better, more coherent pastoral support and advice. This, however, is a very specific role. I'm talking here about the interaction between the student and whoever it is, whatever we call him or her, who has responsibility for the student learning something that he otherwise would not know and what worries me is that any discussion these days of teaching or knowledge inevitably, it seems, prompts a disparaging reference to the 'transmission' of 'fact', and clich?d talk of the 'passive' learners bored out of their minds by the tedium of didactic instruction they are forced to endure.

A good example of what I mean is the title of a talk John Abbott, President of the 21st Century Learning Initiative, gave at a recent headteachers' conference entitled 'Do we want our children to grow up as battery hens or free range chickens?' He associated, of course, the traditional classroom with battery chicken farms and waxed lyrical about the need for change: 'The education of youngsters wise enough, energetic enough and good humoured enough to deal with the dangers they will face needs real free range chickens - battery hens flunk it the moment their cages, their comfort zones are breached. What the world of the future is going to need are confident, proud, strutting chickens that explore every nook and cranny of the farmyard and are afraid of nothing'.

Not even, I suppose, at Christmas - though it is turkeys, I suppose that face the real festive threat. It is not, in any case, an analogy I myself would have used. We must, if life long learning is to achieve anything, ensure that teaching remains central and that discrete subject specific knowledge and skills are taught. This is as true of work-based learning and the adult education class as it is of the sixth form or university seminar. We must question the rhetoric that assails us from all sides. The Campaign for Learning has I read over the weekend 'embarked on a mission to connect schools to the life long learning revolution and create brain friendly environments fit for the Knowledge Age.' A 'mission'? 'the life long learning revolution'? 'brain friendly environments'? 'the Knowledge Age'? If thinking involves anything it is the ability to resist the clich? and the sound bite and the hype and the rhetoric. I labour the point because in developing our concept of life long learning we must above all else have a clear vision of what we mean by learning. We are some way at present from that clarity.

These are general considerations. I'd like now to discuss the particular policy issues that need to be addressed if we are to enhance the educational opportunities open to an individual as he/she moves through life.

I welcome the emphasis the Government is putting on the pre-school years and want simply to say here that it is vital that all children have access to the challenge and intellectual stimulation that has for too long been available only to those whose parents are prepared to pay. Nobody wants children to be forced to undertake tasks they are not ready to tackle, but, I for one, believe that many children can achieve much more than they currently are and that teaching and learning in the early years must lead clearly and systematically towards the demands of the Key Stage 1 curriculum. The importance of the literacy and numeracy strategies is, similarly, obvious. These initiatives are working and, looking to the future, we have the prospect of a system of life long learning which builds upon the progress students have made during their school years rather than, as is the case for so many at present, one that tries at huge public and personal cost to teach what should have been taught ten, twenty, thirty years before. If I had to identify one single initiative which is likely to result in the economically competitive and socially just society which the Government seeks to create it is the drive to improve standards in basic skills in primary schools.

That said, what happens in secondary schools is obviously of enormous significance in laying the foundations for continued education and training. Here, too, the key issues and priorities for action are pretty clear. We need, as I said in the Annual Report which we published earlier this month, to do more to raise the standard of teaching and therefore pupil achievement in Key Stage 3, and, above all else, to continue to re-think the nature of the curriculum we offer students at Key Stage 4.

The reaction when I raised this latter issue in October at the HMC conference, using plumbing as one example of an activity which could motivate pupils who were not going to make much further progress in the traditional academic curriculum was predictable. John Dunford announced that I was being elitist and divisive, and that I should not be thinking these wicked sheep and goat thoughts. One or two plumbers wrote to me in disgust at the fact that they believed I had underestimated the post-doctoral challenges they faced in their day to day work and, to put it politely, insulted their intelligence. One said that he hoped my pipes burst in the middle of the night. His wish, incidentally, was partially met: sitting in the kitchen thinking about this talk over half term I noticed an ominous pool of water spreading towards me from the dishwasher. If I'd been on my own I'd have certainly drowned. A friend who has a great deal more practical intelligence than I'm ever likely to possess was, however, on hand to rod the pipes and, literally, bale me out. The experience almost convinced me that there might be something in Gardiner's theory of intelligences, but it did not, I am sorry to say, motivate me to enrol on my nearest plumbing course.

In suggesting that we have to be realistic in our assessment of the aptitudes and aspirations of fourteen year olds, I am not for one moment wanting to play down the value of the knowledge and skills which non-academic courses can, and I believe must, develop. All students will, of course, need to continue some 'academic' study - English and mathematics at the very least. But, 'what is the point' as Lawrence put it, 'of dragging a lad who has no capacity for academic learning or understanding through the processes of education? ? What do you produce in him, in the end? A profound contempt for education and for all educated people.' If we give such students a course of study which connects with their interests, in which they can succeed so that their self-esteem is bolstered, and which leads on to further education and training, we have given them the chance of a job and a decent life.

The way forward is not in my view to try to talk up the vocational. We are not going to change deep seated prejudices in favour of an academic education for all through a PR campaign. Neither is it to claim that the academic and the vocational are the same thing. We must recognise that different kinds of courses are needed to meet the needs of different kinds of student and then ensure that the vocational course is intelligible to potential students, rigorous and enjoyable in its demands, focused on practical issues, and, above all, worth having in the sense that it leads to further training and/or employment.

There is one further point that I want to make on education and training 14-19.

It is that we would do well to reflect on our national tendency as educationalists to try to persuade every sixteen year old to stay in full time education training. I welcome the agreement that the Government has reached with the CBI that training should be made available to all sixteen year olds who go straight in to a job. I welcome, too, the Secretary of State's recent announcement that he is considering how apprenticeship opportunities can be guaranteed for all 16-18 year olds. This excellent development reverses, however, twenty years or so of hostility to the whole notion of apprenticeship. A Research Paper commissioned by the Skills Task Force, for example notes that:

'Even as late as 1990 local officials of the MSC opposed apprenticeship training as irrelevant for the emerging world of work. This was very much contrary to the cognitive maps that many employers adhered to at that time. For them, particularly those in traditional manufacturing industry, apprenticeships remained an important element for skills' development. Indeed, during the 1980s the paper industry, for example created a production apprenticeship to mirror the existing craft apprenticeships for maintenance works in the industry. This paralleled developments in the steel industry, both in Britain and in Germany. However, these negative beliefs about the decreasing relevance of apprenticeships filtered widely into the educational system and the careers service during the 1980s and 1990s. Unsurprisingly, once apprenticeships experienced a dramatic renaissance as a result of the 1993 Competitiveness Initiative, they encountered considerable scepticism from many individuals and organisations. This had been partly fuelled by the previous dominant set of training beliefs espoused by, amongst others, the MSC itself.'
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More still needs to be done to hit these beliefs on the head. I am optimistic, however, that re-thinking of the Key Stage 4 curriculum, the new focus on apprenticeships, and hopefully, the development of vocational qualifications that really do mean something in the world of work and are genuinely attractive therefore to prospective students should do much to help keep many more young people in education and training than is currently the case.

The role then of FE becomes, as the Government has argued, critical. This recognition is long overdue, and, in passing, can I say how delighted I am that HMI are once again to have the opportunity to contribute to raising standards in the sector. Our absence from the field for some years means that I am not in a position to add much to current discussion, but I do want to endorse Helena Kennedy's statement that: 'FE is the vital engine not only of economic renewal but of social cohesion.' By and large, that engine, as my colleague Jim Donaldson's last Annual Report made clear, has run well in recent years. The focus now, quite rightly, is on raising standards and widening student participation.

It is clear from Jim's inspections that a relatively small number of colleges are not performing satisfactorily. 'Most worryingly', he writes, 'ten of the colleges inspected in 1998-99 accounted for over 70% of the overall unsatisfactory provision.' This is clearly unacceptable. All post-16 students have a right to high quality provision irrespective of where they might live, and, as in the school sector, the Government is right to demand immediate improvement. More generally, like Jim, I worry about the fact that the average student absence rate in the lessons seen by inspectors was 22%, that 6 to 7% of teaching is judged each year to be poor, and that we have withdrawal rates of over 30% on some courses. I worry, too, that management in one in nine colleges is judged unsatisfactory and I note with interest, given the debate about the relative virtues of self evaluation and external inspection, that in 40% of cases there is a gap between the grades awarded by the college and inspection judgements. I agree entirely, as you would expect from what I have just been saying, with Jim's arguments that teaching must be improved. Future inspection will, in order to ensure all students have access to the teaching of the highest possible quality, pay particular attention to this central dimension of a college's work.

The key point for me on widening access is, to quote the Kennedy report, that: 'Attracting and keeping those for whom learning is a daunting experience is hard work and financially unrewarding. The effort and resources required to support such students on courses receives insufficient recognition in the current funding system.' Indeed, and the Government has already made it clear that it wants to tackle this problem, from the point of view of both the institution and the individual student. It cannot, again to quote Kennedy, be right to spend two thirds of the post-school education budget on universities when three quarters of the five million post-16 learners in England attend FE institutions. That said, I would counsel, from my experience in the schools' sector, against any move that undermined the autonomy of individual colleges. There are, of course, some careful judgements to be made. We certainly need to take a strategic overview, both of the pattern of institutional provision area by area and of the nature of the contribution each institution is making to the meeting of local needs. It is important, as the Government recognises, that the new approach avoids the danger of endless meetings and unnecessary bureaucracy. I am a great believer in an approach which specifies the job to be done, devolves the resources and the management responsibility to the institution, and then holds that institution accountable for its performance against the agreed objectives.

Finally, a couple of thoughts prompted by the Secretary of State's recent speech at the University of Greenwich, on, as he put it, HE in the 21st century.

We have talked for years about how higher education must be opened up to working class students. We have made precious little progress. Sixty two percent of university students come, Helena Kennedy reminds us, from social classes 1 and 2. One percent come from social class 5. It is a statistic we need to keep at the front of our minds as we work to translate the vision of a socially just society into reality.

In the long run, of course, the solution lies in the schools. The task is to ensure that bright children who in the past have been failed by the system realise their potential. Easier, of course, said than done, but there is no alternative. That said, there will always be a need to help those who have, for whatever reason, failed earlier in their lives, to re-connect, and this is another vital contribution that FE colleges can make and are making.

I have said before, and I will say it again, the imperative to widen access is one thing, the argument that the sector should be expanded another. The key to intelligent expansion is, as David put it at Greenwich, 'greater diversification'. His argument was that 'our historic skills deficit lies in people with intermediate skills' and that we have therefore to develop new higher education opportunities at this level, orientated strongly to the employability skills, specialist knowledge and broad understanding needed in the new economy.' The new two year Foundation Degree ought to go a long way to meeting this need. It ought also to ensure that we avoid the pitfall I have commented on before: the danger that we see expanded numbers in HE as an end in itself. The new students must be working on qualifications that will lead to employment and contribute therefore to our national economic good. It is also, I think, vital (and this links back to the debate about widening access) that each and every student who embarks on these courses (or indeed any other HE course) has a reasonable chance of completing the qualification successfully. At the end of last year HEFCE revealed that nearly one in five students are dropping out of university without gaining a degree. This, obviously enough, is no good - no good for the individual or the taxpayer.

It would be bad, too, and this is why the idea of diversification is so important, if we were to lose the traditional ideal of the university (or some universities at least) as a place apart in which, to quote Oakeshott, the undergraduate has:

'the opportunity of education in conversation with his teachers, his fellows and himself, and where he is not encouraged to confuse education with training for a profession, with learning the tricks of a trade, with preparation for future particular service in society or with the acquisition of a kind of moral and intellectual activity to see him through life.'
Our universities will no doubt, as David Blunkett said, have to respond to the 'top down influences of globalisation and the new technologies' and 'the bottom up imperatives of serving the local labour market, innovation with local companies, and providing professional development courses that stimulate economic and intellectual growth.'

But the world of higher education ought, if it is to make a properly varied response to the diverse needs of its potential students, contain a wide variety of institutions. Some will be more into 'globalisation' than others. Some will choose to forge the closest possible links with their local labour market. Others, however, will continue to believe that in Oakeshott's phrase ''the peculiar virtue'' of a university lies in it being a place apart in which the young can engage in ''conversation' with men and women who are engaged in the pursuit of learning. For that conversation and their scholarship are both, I believe, essential to our civilisation.

And that is the thought with which I'll end. Our lives, thankfully, are very different one from another. Our abilities and aspirations are different. There can, therefore, be no one model of life long learning. The autonomy of different educational institutions must be protected and the richness of their individual contributions cherished. Life long learning, whatever else it becomes, must be a broad church.