Adult learners in Wales: Trajectories and technologies

Patterns of lifelong participation in adult education and training in Wales are distinctive within the UK. Participation, qualification and economic activity tend to be lower than for the other geographic regions of the UK, and remain systematically structured by age, sex and social class. A problem facing practitioners and policy-makers attempting to increase participation rates in Wales is the very low population density and accompanying problems of travel to institutions. Wales is therefore a prime site for testing the notion of 'anytime, anyplace, anywhere' inherent in virtual participation. The results presented in this paper show that, so far, technology has simply replicated existing societal divisions. Of a random sample of 1000 households from a 2002 survey, no one in Wales reported ever using the UK's University for Industry/learndirect, for example. Using life-like logistic regression analysis of patterns of participation in post-compulsory learning, the paper shows that many of the determinants of adult learning are social and economic. Access to, and use of information and communication technology (ICT), are not good predictors of participation in learning. Rather, access to ICT is an outcome of the same socio-economic determinants as participation itself. Perhaps the money spent on high-profile initiatives such as the University for Industry would be better spent on more traditional forms of adult learning, whether involving technology or not.