Re your editorial on post-16 education (21 October), six months before Labour was swept to power, I wrote in to encourage an incoming government to “create a system of lifelong adult education in what RH Tawney called ‘a broad and generous, humane and liberal spirit’” (Letters, 29 January 2024). Sadly, Labour’s white paper on post-16 education and skills does nothing of the kind.
Its focus is entirely on skills for employment. Post-16 education must be “employer focused”, yet this – the mantra of decades past – has been a highway to failure. The proportion of adults in further education is now at its lowest since the 1940s. The decline began in the 1990s, when meeting the needs of employers – rather than on all-round provision for life – became the obsession. After the Treasury’s 2006 Leitch review called for further “strengthening employer voice” in the system, participation went into freefall.
