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Project Overview
The programme is a response to the growing national consensus that the UK needs to
transform radically its thinking and practice in relation to education and training if it
is to survive as a major economic power with a high quality of life, political freedom and
social justice for its citizens. This programme seeks to harness the best ideas in the
social sciences to enable the UK to make steady progress towards becoming a learning
society. The aim of the programme is to examine the nature of what has been called a
learning society and to explore the ways in which it can contribute to the development of
knowledge and skill for employment and other areas of adult life. The Programme
focuses on post-compulsory education, training and continuing education in a wide variety of
contexts, both formal and informal.
The programme consists of 15 projects, involving over 50 researchers in teams
spread throughout the UK, and runs until March 2000, aiming by then to have
developed a number of visions of what a Learning Society in the UK could be
like. The co-funding provided by the Department of Education, Northern Ireland
is gratefully acknowledged.
Budget: £2.5 million
Strategy
As a result of the research funded by the Programme, it is hoped to provide better
answers than are currently available to the following strategic questions:
 | What are the main characteristics of a learning society? |
| What are the links between learning and economic success, between training and
competitiveness, and between education, innovation and wealth creation? |
| What economic, political and cultural factors are preventing or facilitating the
progress of the UK towards becoming a learning society and how can the impact of the
former be minimised and the impact of the latter be maximised? |
| What are the theoretical gaps in the understanding of the processes of learning and of
the complex inter-relationships between employment, training and education? |
| What is to be learned from the advances being made in this area by our partners in the
European Union and by the other leading industrial countries in America and the Far East? |
| What changes should be introduced to the current systems of post-compulsory education,
training and continuing education to respond to the challenges represented by a learning
society? |
| What national policies need to be adopted to speed the transition to a learning society? |
Project Objectives
| To treat the concept of the learning society as an issue for critical exploration: for
example, what are the criteria by which to judge whether the UK is a learning society ? |
| To develop the theoretical understanding of the processes of learning, the concept of
human capital formation and of relationships between employment, training and education |
| To maintain a policy focus, for example, by evaluating particular initiatives, by making
recommendations for economic, educational and social policy, by contributing to the
development of national policy in this area, and by exploring the relationship between
research and policy |
| To learn from two types of comparative study. First, the education and training systems
in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and in England and Wales are so different that they can be
usefully compared. Second, the Programme will compare some relevant developments in the UK
with advances in Europe and beyond. |
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