The new NHS 10-year plan is ambitious on prevention and on shifting services to community level. But where is the investment in adult learning crucial to achieve this?
We know adult learning supports people with their health & wellbeing providing essential information on topics like nutrition, exercise and managing mental health. Studies show the actual process of learning is beneficial of itself. Our learners tell us that courses change their lives – and the data proves it. The WEA’s impact report last month revealed that almost half – 47 per cent – of adult-education learners with a long-term physical or mental health condition saw their course as a means of managing the side effects of their condition.
Almost three-quarters of the 1,690 learners questioned said adult education had helped them to reduce or manage stress. Eighty-four per cent of those with pre-existing mental-health conditions said that taking an adult-learning course had improved their wellbeing.
And 35 per cent of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged learners said they had made fewer visits to health services since beginning an adult-education course.
Signposting to adult education courses is already established in social prescribing, where GPs suggest non-clinical approaches to help patients manage their conditions (especially around mental health). And most adult education is hyper-local. It is already based in community venues with learners travelling no more than a mile or two to their courses. Making it perfectly aligned to deliver the closer to home goal of the NHS plan.
However, cuts to adult education budgets are forcing a reduction in what’s available. And with funding devolved across mayoral combined authorities and local authorities access to tailored learning, whether socially prescribed by your GP or not, is a postcode lottery which as ever usually negatively impacts the most disadvantaged. And as the most recent ONS data reconfirmed, people living in the most deprived areas have significantly lower healthy life expectancy.
We would love to be part of the solution to the UK’s health crisis by providing more tailored learning and social prescribing courses to support wellbeing. Courses that help to deal with life’s challenges, from healthy cooking on a budget to building confidence and resilience, to debt management and financial literacy. We think they should sit side by side in learning centres, connecting communities and responding direct to local needs. But it’s not a priority for local and national funding.
Just a few weeks ago, skills minister Baroness Jacqui Smith told MPs in the final session of the education committee’s inquiry into FE and skills that reduced adult education funding has been focused on providers that can deliver “the biggest bang for the smaller amount of buck that I’m afraid there has to be for adult skills funding”.
The current government continues to fail to recognise the true depth and breadth of adult education. It is compounding the chronic underfunding of post-19 learning with a 6 per cent cut to the adult skills fund and missing the opportunity for cross-cutting solutions across multiple government agendas; specifically, the reduction of NHS waiting lists. The reality of this short-sighted and neglectful position will result in the closure of courses that support people’s mental health and wellbeing, increasing the likelihood of them requiring more NHS support. It’s an own goal. There are ways and means to avoid it, but the government urgently needs a more joined up approach.
Increasing investment in more provision through the health budget, coupled with reversing the planned 6 per cent cut to adult education in the education budget, would help the new NHS Plan achieve its goals. So why isn’t the government connecting the dots?
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