Poor adult education 'making Scots dour'

Published on Saturday 4 July 2009 19:54

SCOTLAND is suffering from growing unhappiness because of a lack of education opportunities for adults, a senior academic has claimed.

Professor John Field, an education expert at Stirling University, has written a report on lifelong learning and claims the lack of opportunity to learn may be the reason why Britain rarely comes top in international studies on quality of life.

He says his research found the only opportunities to learn for the over-25s were restricted to narrow skills-for-work programmes which did little to improve well-being.

He blamed government's "obsession" with economic indicators when measuring success, even though rising incomes appear to have little influence on happiness.

The report emerged after the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) earlier this year advised colleges to ditch traditional night classes in favour of using funding for courses that would help the economy in the recession.

Professor Field's study 'Well-being, Happiness and Lifelong Learning' was commissioned by the independent inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning (IFLL), sponsored by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE).

He said: "Learning is important to a range of well-being indicators. Yet as a nation we tend to think of learning as something best done by the young. Educationally, ageism begins at 25."

The study claims learning can have many positive impacts on health and well- being of people of all ages, and suggests it may even have a greater effect than health promotion campaigns.

Professor Field added: "By European standards, Britain is a land of sharp inequalities – of wealth, health and learning.

"Last year, Britain came bang in the middle in a European Social Survey study of life satisfaction, sandwiched between the Slovenians and Belgians, but well below the Danes and Finns."

A spokesman for the SFC said it was up to individual colleges to make the decision as to where to spend their cash.