Healthy minds make for a more healthy society, at every age

Published on Sunday 8 November 2009 21:41

THREE of the major challenges facing Scotland are these: an ageing population; a very patchy picture on health; and low productivity.

Learning Through Life, the main report from the Inquiry into the Future for Lifelong Learning (IFLL), addresses how lifelong learning might contribute to tackling these issues across the UK.

Scotland is ageing. Over the last ten years the number of 45-59-year-olds increased by 14 per cent, those between 60 and 75 by 10 per cent and those over 75 by 13 per cent – while the number of children under 16 dropped by 9 per cent. This is a dramatic shift in the balance of the population. Gloom or rejoicing? In Scotland, life expectancy is increasing faster than healthy life expectancy, especially for men. In other words, people are living longer, but the added years are not necessarily ones of good cheer.

Secondly, there is a strong link between education and health. The higher up the qualifications ladder you are as an individual, the better your health is likely to be. Generally, better educated societies are healthier ones too, but this doesn't seem to apply to Scotland as a whole. Scotland has a population which is relatively highly qualified, compared to England but also to other OECD countries. Yet this doesn't put it up the international league table on health. So education has a role to play in improving health but it is not a panacea.

The fact that the Scottish population overall is relatively well educated should be good for the economy, as well as for personal development and the quality of Scottish culture. But high qualification levels do not translate into high productivity, where Scotland is well down the international table. The popular rhetoric, which has it that boosting skill levels translates directly into economic achievement, is simplistic. There is no easy read-across from education to high performance in the economy.

To meet these challenges we need a radically different set of learning opportunities across the lifecourse, in Scotland as in the rest of the UK. This applies to learning in the workplace, the community and the home. In all of these, opportunities to learn need to be integrated into the rhythms of people's lives.

It is ludicrous that the "economically active" population is still considered to stop at ages 59 for women and 64 for men. The gender division is particularly outmoded and should be put to sleep quickly. It makes no sense to exclude from the officially economically active the 30 thousand men and 70 thousand women who already do paid work beyond state pension age. Access to training drops sharply from age 50 onwards. We propose that people will need access to work-related as well as personal learning opportunities through to age 75, as working lives inevitably lengthen.

As for health, learning helps people instrumentally, to look after themselves. All societies need people to be more capable of managing their own health, positively and proactively. It also improves their health indirectly. Taking part in adult education has a proven positive effect on mental wellbeing. It puts people more in control of their own lives. This is why health is one of the core capabilities in the proposal we make for a citizens curriculum. (The others are digital, financial and civic capability.)

As Patrick Geddes said, "by living we learn"; but we need the imagination to turn experience into learning, across our lengthening lifecourses.

&#149 Tom Schuller, director of the inquiry into the future for lifelong learning, will be speaking today at Scotland's Futures Forum at the Scottish Parliament.