The Social Determinants of Adult Participation in Education and Training

The social determinants of adult participation in education and training:

a framework for analysis

by Stephen Gorard, Ralph Fevre, John Furlong and Gareth Rees

Address for correspondence

Stephen Gorard

School Of Education

21 Senghennydd Road

University Of Wales

Cardiff CF2 4YG

Tel. 0222 874000 ext. 5113

Fax 0222 874160

ABSTRACT

This paper is an early report of progress in one of the projects funded by the ESRC as part of the Learning Society Programme. The project is a regional study in industrial South Wales of the determinants of participation and non-participation in post-compulsory education and training, with special reference to processes of change in the patterns of these determinants over time and to variations between geographical areas. The study combines contextual analysis of secondary data about education and training providers with a regional study of several generations of families in South Wales via survey, semi-structured interviews and taped oral histories.

1. BACKGROUND - THE LEARNING SOCIETY HAS DEEP ROOTS

Although there is always a danger of romanticising the past, there are accounts of a long-standing tradition in Wales of support for adult training and education (Istance and Rees 1994). This tradition of respect for education in Wales may stem from a culture based upon non-conformity and economic poverty (Gittins Report 1967). Before the era of compulsory universal education there was a long history of Sunday schools, voluntary societies and schools based on ironworks, collieries, and tinplate works paid for by benevolent employers (Evans 1971), philanthropists and the workers themselves (Nash et al. 1995).

For example, the Oakdale Workmen's Institute and Library was founded in 1917, financed by a loan from the Tredegar Iron and Coal Co. and repaid by miners over decades (Nash et al. 1995). It consisted of a library, reading room, committee room, and concert hall. It was used for concerts, Eisteddfodau, political meetings, lectures, entertainment, clubs and societies. Similarly in Neath there was a "deep hunger for learning amongst the people" (Eaton 1987 p. 153). The first library there opened in 1834 by the Philosophical and Antiquarian Society. The Mechanics Institute was founded in Neath in 1843, with Alfred Wallace as one of the teachers, and free weekly classes were held for miners. There were well attended lectures in library, and thriving WEA classes, university extra-mural groups and local debating societies by 1920. After 1919 the Miners Welfare Fund paid a penny for every ton of coal raised in Britain, and this money was used to help improve or increase the 'Stutes. By 1939 South Wales had at least 135 despite the depression (Nash et al. 1995). Ironically the peak use of the libraries was during the depression of the 1920s, when local drama clubs in Port Talbot also thrived, with the YMCA producing actors such as Burton, and later Hopkins. By 1951, the Miners' Institute at Tredegar had a well-used library of 23000+ books, and an elaborate programme of evening classes and cultural events (Istance and Rees 1994). The situation was similar in the whole coalfield (Francis 1976). Institute members worked mainly in nationalised industries such as coal steel and rail in which both initial and continuing training were provided for all. These organisations had an internal labour market leading to supervisory and managerial posts. Also in the 1950s, up to 50% of children attended grammar schools, while 40% of the students at the University of Wales were from working class backgrounds (Jones 1982).

If a true "Learning Society" should have opportunities for lifelong learning, formal education for all ages, and support and recognition of informal education and self-directed study (Husen in Antikainen et al. 1996), then in South Wales, some aspects of a learning society may already have been in place in the early twentieth century. Obviously this applied chiefly to men, but womens' groups used the facilities as well, but were simply not allowed to be part of the organisation (Nash et al. 1995). The tradition of adult education among working-class men was strong. They received initial education, plus job-related training in relatively stable occupations, and wider educational and developmental opportunities via the Institutes and workers Halls. These programmes were enriching and practical, with a cultural as well as a career progress emphasis. The socialisation and training that such men received through work may have been as important to them as staying on at school has been for later generations. In 1944 the nationalisation of the three major local industries - steel, coal and rail - was part of the same package as the Education Act, with which it has a neat congruence. The socialisation in the colliery or steelworks was as much part of the educational climate in the post-war settlement as the free schooling of children. Now the industry infrastructure has changed and the training provision with it. The Institutes have closed. Oakdale is a museum, and levels of participation in training and educational attainment in South Wales today are low. More recent generations may not have the opportunities that their fathers did (Rees and Rees 1980).

The purpose of this introduction is to suggest that a learning society is not simply a desirable future objective, or an ideal towards which we progress in a smooth fashion. Nor, as evidenced by the library loans during the depression, is it necessarily related to the economic position of the country. If it is a social and cultural phenomenon and not simply a normative concept of inclusiveness or product, then understanding the Learning Society may involve a better understanding of what has gone before. This is made more complex because the determinants of historical patterns of participation in education and training - family, industry, availability - are likely to be subject to geographically specific variations. In this way, the Learning Society can be seen as being based on real, rather than ideal, institutions and the social connections within and between them. Developments in education and training may be non-linear and retrograde in some respects for particular groups. Thus insights might be gained from an analysis of the way in which contemporary patterns of participation have emerged from previous ones, and these could also give a clue to the future. Looking at changes in patterns of participation over time may identify the determinants of those changes and therefore of participation itself. Rather than a synchronic snap-shot this study therefore requires in-depth analysis of a single area allowing both time and place to play a full part in the analysis. This can be achieved by introducing into the analysis a systematic consideration of the impact of regional social and economic development. Although location is clearly an important factor (Massey 1994), it has not previously been emphasised in most studies of education and training and may thus become a confounding or omitted variable. Understanding the determinants would also be useful to help improve policies of training, especially with regard to the gap between national policies and implementation in the local context. Why are levels of qualification and participation in South Wales currently so low from such a promising beginning? What can be done about it?

Patterns of participation vary between parts of Britain, and even between local areas (NACETT 1994). A local training and education culture, based on regional provision and employment patterns may have a residue in the past (Rees and Rees 1980). These may be the outcome of processes distinctive to the regions. Changes in industrial structure and employment, although linked to national and wider developments are differently experienced in local labour markets (Ashton et al. 1990). For example, collieries throughout the UK closed partly as a result of changes in international energy markets, but the effect in Ebbw Vale and the Rhondda is clearly different in terms of both employment and training to England, or even Cardiff. The influence of locality may be mediated by family-based factors leading to further systematic variation in patterns within localities. Similarly there are well-established links between participation in education, and by implication later training, and personal characteristics, for example sex, age, marital status, ethnic background, prior education, and occupation (Maguire et al. 1993), but these are also affected by location. The significance of ones' sex is partly determined by whether local opportunities are currently for mining, electronic assembly or services. The local provision of training and its quality affects the pattern (Evans 1990). For example, the national policy of incorporating FE colleges has had different effects in the Rhondda valleys and Cardiff (Rees and Thomas 1994).

2. METHODOLOGY AND THE SOURCES OF DATA

The purpose of the project is to examine peoples' patterns of participation in POCET, with particular emphasis on the types of learning relevant to labour markets in a regional context. Although there are indications and definitions from previous work, this particular subset of post-compulsory education and training (POCET) will not be rigidly defined in advance and will be grounded in the data to a large extent. Primary data is being collected about training provision from local education and training suppliers, individual training histories from a large-scale survey of a stratified sample of residents and their children, attitudinal data from follow-up semi-structured interviews, and older perspectives on training from taped oral testimonies. The project will make use of the South Wales Coalfield Archive at the University of Wales, Swansea which is a unique source of written and taped material, including records of institutions such as trades unions, miners' institutes, the Workers Educational Association, and the Co-operative Society, plus 600 oral histories by the miners themselves going back as far as the 1890s.

Further analysis of secondary data is used to create a contextual background for the study, of the UK and the specific focus regions, for the present and the recent past as far as possible. Sources include government statistics on educational performance and examinations, the Labour Market Surveys, NACETT, and national training organisations. More specifically, regional data is provided by sources such as the Higher and Further Education Funding Councils, the Training and Enterprise Councils, and surveys by the Welsh Office. Data from previous Censuses will be accessed via NOMIS to provide the level of detail required at district level. The social histories of the focus areas have also been useful in creating the background for analysis.

The focus regions were chosen to reflect the diversity of Industrial South Wales but only three sites were used to allow detailed analysis of the regional context. The three regions represent the heart of the depressed coalfield, the rapidly expanding towns at the southern edge of coalfield, and large urban populations with a history of manufacturing with steel and tinplate. Using sampling units such as colleges, companies, or unemployment registers to help administer a survey would leave out those not participating in work, education, or training. These people are more difficult to contact which may be partly why the research emphasis is frequently on participants, especially those in work. In contrast, this study uses a stratified "random" sample of residents drawn from the electoral register with a quota check. The nine electoral divisions used were selected to reflect the diversity of social conditions within each research site. All respondents are in the age range 35 to 65, and so of working age, often with a child who has left or just completed compulsory schooling. The stories of these families therefore take up the baton from the oral histories at around 1945 which is when the oldest respondents were leaving compulsory education, and they continue up to the present day with children in the age range 15 to 45. Half of the 1,000 respondents are of each gender. In summary, the sampling strategy used in this study is a three stage process of selecting research sites in three different TEC areas to represent industrial South Wales, of selecting three wards to represent each site, and finally of selecting households within those wards. This obtains a complex sample having many of the characteristics of a good random sample representing the range of educational opportunities and histories in the region, while remaining focused enough to investigate the local determinants of participation in each site.

The survey was completed face-to-face with trained interviewers, and the instrument asked for social demographic, training and education, and simplified careers data as well as the simplified curricula vitae of the respondents' parents, siblings, partners and children. In this way data was collected on four generations in total. Although the data is taken at a snapshot, by being in the form of structured histories some of the advantages of a longitudinal study are obtained without the attendant attrition of cases.

Finally, 150 targeted and purposive interviews will be held with a subset of the respondents, some of whom loosely represent the range of circumstance identified in the survey, but including others who are of interest to issues of theoretical concern in the project. The focus is on attitudinal and experiential data to complement the survey, rather than repeat the collection of detailed life histories.

Patterns of participation (PPET) will be a major "dependent" variable for the survey, measured in several ways including: the type of activity, qualification route, length of time, numbers of participants, and the learning experience stories emerging from the narratives. The data will be derived from the past working training histories of the participants. These will be used to define a set of characteristic training trajectories, or typologies of individual careers of participation and non-participation in education and training, in a similar style to the pathways devised earlier for trajectories within compulsory education (Halsey et al. 1980) and post-school transition (Roberts and Parsell 1988, Banks et al. 1992, Dolton et al. 1994). However, these trajectories will cover a much longer time span than those mentioned, and an age range from 16 to 64 years, and are therefore likely to be more diverse and more complex. Since they will therefore be defined in a broad sense, there will no need to collect extremely detailed data about every day of training that an individual has undertaken. Since the study will, of necessity, be retrospective this emphasis on the "broad sweep" also obviates the methodological problems of assessing the validity and accuracy of detailed recall data.

Analysis of the typologies by period and location as well as by gender, class, and occupation will be a key part of the study. There will be a cohort analysis to examine changes over time, and identify period, age, cohort effects on participation. The effects of family background and the relationship between typologies within families will also be assessed. The types of derived training trajectories may exhibit different patterns by class, gender, age, and ethnicity, and especially location, with regard to local social and economic factors mediating the wider changes taking place during the period of study. Apart from these personal characteristics of the participants, other notionally "independent" variables for the study will include the supply of education and training at the time of the critical moments in each trajectory, in terms of structures of opportunity, educational provision, local labour markets, and state policy. For example, both being in a job, as opposed to not participating in the labour market, and the type of job are likely to affect the patterns of participation in training.. The demand for training may be mediated by the social constructions of POCET for the individuals. Their participation may reflect their past experience as much as their current position and opportunities. There will also be current determinants which are clearly unrelated to labour markets, such as the arrival of a child, or the illness of a partner. Sociology of education has traditionally considered educational reproduction as a social effect, but some more recent work has been focused on the role of the family, particularly as a site of intergenerational conflict over secondary schooling (Fitz et al. 1993, Gorard 1996). This study hopes to help move that change of focus to POCET.

As well as looking at variations over this time, another thread running through the study is that of the role of the community (place relations), looking at factors particular to the region as a whole, and to the three diverse study areas (e.g. depressed urban, resurgent urban, and ex-mining village). In summary, the outcome measure will be a set of PPETs, related to demographic variables, structures of opportunity, learner identities, past experience, period effects in terms of peer groups and place/community. The patterns themselves will be tentatively defined as both statistical constructs, via non-parametric associations and as qualitatively derived categories. They will be confirmed by bivariate analysis in terms of the independent variables, and further confirmed, illustrated and modified by the stories at interview. It is also likely that the interviews will generate new models and ideas to feed back into the analysis of the survey data.