A UK-IRELAND INVESTIGATION INTO THE STATISTICAL EVIDENCE-BASE UNDERPINNING ADULT LEARNING AND EDUCATION POLICY-MAKING

该项目的出发点是，在过去15年中，成人学习和教育的参与率大幅下降。这引起了经济、商业、教育和更广泛的社会政策领域的许多利益攸关方的严重关切。除了在更大范围内促进经济和社会效益外，研究还证明了学习在健康和福祉领域的个人利益。在联合王国，威尔士、苏格兰和北方爱尔兰的权力下放行政部门负责教育和培训，并制定自己的政策，以满足本国的经济和社会需求;在英格兰，成人学习在某些领域已作为地区政府“解决方案”的一部分下放。这个项目从观察开始：A。在联合王国的四个国家中，关于ALE的数据通常不可用，特别是自从下放权力的国家决定不参加即将到来的经合组织成人竞争力国际评估计划（PIAAC）以来;B.对ALE数据的现有分析往往过于描述性，不参与分析一段时间内的趋势，不同的数据来源对参与的衡量方式不同;研究比较了欧洲各国ALE方法的差异，并倾向于将英国视为一个实体。知识库中缺乏对英国本土国家ALE数据和政策方法进行比较的综合研究。本项目的主要目标是（1）调查英国和爱尔兰四个国家当前ALE统计证据库的一致性（缺乏）（已纳入一个现有的ALE工作组），（2）为了更好地了解过去25年来反对经济、社会和政治变革的参与率下降的情况，（3）调查英国权力下放政府之间ALE话语的趋同性和差异性，特别关注循证决策的作用。这将通过三个相互关联的工作包来促进：工作包1，审查在联合王国开展的调查，以调查概念、测量方法和结果的可靠性;工作包2，通过分析学习和工作研究所的成人参与学习调查的数据，对成人参与学习和教育的长期趋势进行统计分析;和WP 3，通过借鉴本土比较，来解读发达国家的ALE话语。调查结果将分发给学术界和非学术界的受众，以产生影响，并促进采用循证决策。

This project starts from the observation that participation rates in Adult Learning and Education (ALE) have significantly declined over the past 15 years. This has caused significant concern to many stakeholders in the areas of economy, business, education and wider social policies. Apart from facilitating economic and societal benefits at a larger scale, research has also demonstrated individual benefits of learning in the areas of health and wellbeing. Within the UK, devolved administrations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are in charge of education and training and design their own policies in finding answers to their own countries' economic and societal needs; within England, adult learning has in some areas been devolved as part of regional government 'settlements'. This project starts from the observation that:A. Data on ALE are not routinely available in the four countries of the UK, especially not since devolved countries have decided not to participate in the upcoming OECD's Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC);B. Existing analyses of ALE data tend to be overly descriptive and do not engage with analysing trends over time and different data sources treat the measurement of participation differently;C. Studies have compared difference in ALE approaches across countries in Europe and tend to treat the UK as one entity. A comprehensive study comparing ALE data and policy approaches across the home nations of the UK is lacking from the knowledge base.The main ambitions of this project are (1) to investigate the (lack of) consistency of the current statistical evidence base on ALE across the four countries of the UK and Ireland (which is included in an already existing ALE working group), (2) to better understand the decline in participation against economic, societal and political changes in the past 25 years, (3) to investigate convergence and divergence of ALE discourses between the devolved administrations of the UK with a specific focus on the role of evidence-based policy making. This will be facilitated through three interconnected work packages: WP1 on the review of surveys carried out in the UK to investigate concepts, measurements and reliability of results; WP2 to engage in statistical analyses on participation in adult learning and education trends over time through analyses of data from the Learning & Work Institute's Adult Participation in Learning (APiL) survey; and WP3 to unpack ALE discourses in the devolved nations through drawing on home comparisons. Findings will be disseminated to academic and non-academic audiences to generate impact and to stimulate the uptake of evidence-based policy-making.