Today’s Education in the Media blog looks at adult education and the home learning environment.
Adult Education
Today, Tuesday 29 January, the Social Mobility Commission has published research about adult education and training. This has been covered by the Financial Times.
We were allocated £1.5 billion for the Adult Education Budget p to 2020. This funding supports adults to build their skills for work, an apprenticeship, or further learning.
There is also £100 million in new funding for the National Retraining Scheme, which will help to develop and test initial elements of the Scheme to target groups.
A Department for Education spokesperson said:
It is vital that we continue to build the skilled workforce that businesses and the country needs to ensure we can compete across the world and adult education is a vital part of this. Last year the proportion of 19 year olds that hold a Level 2 qualification in both maths and English was the highest on record.
The Department has been allocated £1.5 billion for the Adult Education Budget for each year up to 2020 and the Chancellor announced the £100m new funding for the National Retraining Scheme in the 2018 Budget to help adults retrain and upskill.
In 2018/19 academic year we are supporting adults that are in work but on low incomes to access training through a one-year pilot scheme, and also helping employers invest in high-quality apprenticeships, to offer more people an alternative route into work.
Go Explore
Yesterday, BBC CBeebies released a new app called Go Explore. The app is designed to help young children develop their communication skills.
The release of this app sets a great precedent, and is a positive example of how screen time can be used constructively to help children in their development.
This release of this app comes ahead of the roundtable being hosted by the department today on the Home Learning Environment and helping young children to develop reading, speech and language skills
Education Secretary Damian Hinds said:
It’s fantastic to see the BBC thinking of creative ways, like Go Explore, to make sure that young children have those vital skills they need to be happy and confident at school.
We’ve made a pledge to halve the proportion of children leaving reception without the right communication, language and literacy skills in the next ten years, and the best chance we have of doing this is by engaging with businesses, charities and the public sector workforce. We have already brought together a wide range of organisations at our Home Learning Environment summit last year and we’ve launched £18m of projects to support young children, but we know more needs to be done.
That’s why it’s brilliant to see this app, which will provide further support to families up and down the country past the investments we’re making in improving these skills. I hope more organisations follow the BBC’s example!
Read more about our Home Learning Environment investment here.