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A Green Paper, "Support and aspiration: A new approach to special educational needs and disability," was published by the Department for Education in March 2011. The Green Paper, styled as a response to the frustrations of children and young people, their families, and the professionals who work with them, sets out the government's commitment to reforming the current system for identifying, assessing, and supporting children and young people aged up to 25 who are disabled or have special educational needs (SEN). The Green Paper gives welcome attention to the often difficult move from child to adult services for young people with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, citing poor planning of support and the lack of choice and opportunities of appropriate further education provision to prepare young people for life and work, as part of the problem. In this article, the author reviews the reforms and their likely impact on further education, and reflects on progress so far in taking them forward.

"Higher Ambitions: The future of universities in a knowledge economy" has its own higher ambitions. It is a broad-ranging document, covering access to HE; research and innovation; student expectations and experience; university-business links; and community engagement. It is billed as a framework document, one which should structure thinking about the sector for the foreseeable future. "Higher Ambitions," the Government's new framework for higher education, puts welcome stress on more flexible forms of provision, and looks forward to the abolition of the distinction between full-time and part-time study. But the author argues that there is little recognition of demographic change or of what universities can do for older learners. The author contends that the essential issue on which subsequent resource choices and further policy pronouncements should be judged, is whether this framework will indeed mark the shift to more diverse modes which it promises.

With the new government, the implications for learning policy are not yet clear. On the positive side, the new Minister for Further Education, Lifelong Learning and Skills, John Hayes attended both NIACE's policy conference and the Campaign for Learning's Learning at Work Day debate and expressed his support for adult learning and the work that is done in this area. As an organisation that has always championed learning in the workplace, Campaign for Learning was pleased to see workplace learning prioritised under the last government, but was dismayed at the concomitant massive reductions in adult learning opportunities elsewhere. The organisation argued that subsidising training for large companies--training most of them would have offered anyway--was wasteful, and the new government has taken the same view. The author, Chief Executive of the Campaign for Learning, stresses that education spending underpins social and economic progress. It's vital that ministers recognise it as a solution to creating a fairer and more inclusive society in tough economic times, and not just another cost. Campaign for Learning will continue to commend all their proposals to the new government as a way of developing and expanding learning opportunities that will create a stronger, wealthier and more vibrant society.

The government is consulting the sector on a new skills strategy and a simplified funding system for further education (FE). Some of the leading players were asked what they made of the government's vision and what they would like to see in the strategy. Brendan Barber warns that spending cuts will undermine many of the positive proposals in the government's skills strategy. Lynne Sedgmore says colleges have a key role to play in creating a genuinely demand-driven system that is responsive to local needs and circumstances. Graham Hoyle argues that the government must be bold and move towards a demand-led open skills market with a single FE budget open to all providers. Ian Searle advises to recognise that all kinds of learning can be worthwhile and give learners greater control over their destinies. Susan Anderson argues that the focus must be on a "bottom-up" approach with employers building partnerships with local providers. Peter Templeton says the proposals don't go far enough in creating a funding and policy framework that sustains adult learning, especially in the most disadvantaged communities. Tricia Hartley suggests that people must support the minister in ensuring that personal development and the joy of learning stand alongside employability in everything they do. Finally, Alastair Thomson says ministers have set out the government's priorities for adult education with energy and passion, but little of that vision appears to have made it into the consultation papers.

Mike Tomlinson's proposed reform of the 14-19 qualifications system could revolutionise secondary and much of further education. In this article, Martin Tolhurst, Ann Hodgson, Ken Spours, Judith Norrington, Geoff Layer, Brendan Barber, Victoria Gill, Carole Stott, Arnold Dillon and Dick Palmer give their reactions to the long-awaited report.

The first decade of the current Labour Government had been characterised by a whole raft of education reforms aimed at driving up standards--a focus on early literacy and numeracy, standards funds to push up exam results, the much greater use of technology to track individual pupils' progress and to ensure a growing number achieved the benchmark leaving standard of five good GCSEs. Yet despite all that, and despite 10 years of economic prosperity, the numbers who became "NEET," or not in education, employment or training, remained stubbornly high. In 2007 the proportion of young people disengaged in the autumn after they reached the school leaving age was around 10 per cent, and had been for years. The reasons for this had very little to do with standards in schools--indeed, research from the London School of Economics had estimated that just one seventh of the causes of educational failure could be placed at the door of the secondary education system. The real causes of underachievement and disengagement, the author felt, went much deeper. Young people from working-class backgrounds are being let down at every stage of their lives, but mentoring--good support and guidance from an adult who doesn't judge them--the author argues, can be the key to turning things around for them.

This is a fascinating time for adult learning in the UK. With a plethora of reviews reaching report stage alongside ongoing discussion about funding, qualifications and quality and the review of post-16 planning and funding in Wales, there is a real sense that things are about to change after a decade of well-meant but often misfocused reform. There is now an opportunity for serious reflection on how to deliver the demand-led system ministers would like to see in a way that has both the needs of employers and the wishes of learners at its heart. In this article the author sets out six "demands" which should frame debate about the creation of a truly demand-led system.

In these austere times it is difficult not to feel pessimistic about the future. The economic news seems universally bad, the Euro crisis seems interminable, the housing market is stagnant, there are more than one million young people out of work and public spending is set to fall even further over the next few years. Participation in learning has declined, both in the publicly subsidised sphere but also in the workplace where the economic crisis has hit employer spend on training as well. A recent Institute of Fiscal Studies report suggested that public spending on education is set to fall from 6.4 per cent to 4.6 per cent of UK national income over the next four years. These are difficult times but there are opportunities too as well as signs that the sector is responding positively to the challenges it faces. The author remains optimistic and outlines reasons to be cheerful even though times are tough.

The author, chair of the new improvement organization for further education and skills, shares her optimism on what the emerging agency can achieve, but she is aware of the challenges facing a sector struggling to keep pace with inspectors' expectations. These struggles include: (1) The slow delivery of curriculum; (2) The sector's struggle to keep pace with Ofsted's expectations; and (3) The outdated quality of workforce. The author contends that the workforce reform is rich in its offer to the further education sector, but only once moulded to deliver more prosperity to more people through the distribution of ability. As such, it is essential that the spirit of the further education sector be carried into the future: updating it, extending it, but keeping the fundamental message of economic inclusive alive if educators are to inspire the old and compel a new workforce to join the task.

For those working in adult learning, supporting active citizenship has become one of those principles-turned-platitudes they like to recite, but they need to search hard in the small print of recent White Papers to be sure that the Government cares about the wider purposes of learning beyond functional training for employment. "Active citizenship" is one of those formerly radical terms that used to be associated with audacious grass roots energy, participatory democracy and progressive social change--in the days when adult education was considered to be "a movement" with organic links to some of the most influential social movements of recent times, such as the labour and trade union movement, the women's movement, the civil rights movement and the peace movement. It has now become a happy-clappy soundbite--like "empowerment", "participation", "social inclusion" and, most recently, "respect"--that New Labour routinely appropriates to pretend a radical-sounding approach to an otherwise authoritarian pre-occupation with micro-managing the potentially troublesome attitudes of the lower orders. When faced with a rather limited view and moralistic application of the language of participation and citizenship, it is worth considering what has been won and lost when those employed in adult learning talk about active citizenship. The conceptual shift, over the last 15 years, from adult "education" to adult "learning", has made a huge difference to what they actually "do". Instead of specialist teachers and enthusiasts, teaching a wide range of subjects, designed to stimulate and challenge a relatively wide range of people, the day job for most of them now entails enticing and cajoling the poor and other minorities into activities designed to make them healthier, more socially competent and more likely to get a job. Either that or processing the blizzard of paperwork routinely required to prove that the latest short-term initiative has been delivered on time, on budget, and in line with government targets. In this article, the author contends that it is about time adult educators get back in touch with the energy, commitment, and anger that fuels active citizenship and rediscover the educational potential and significance of popular social movements. After all, states Thompson, there is nothing left to lose. Education for pleasure has virtually disappeared. Education for activists in trade unions, community groups, and women's organisations has been regulated out of existence or readjusted to the requirements of the skills agenda. And education for the poor has everywhere become a condition of benefit, employment, or citizenship, designed to keep them busy.

The statutory right to request time to train for all employees is the right way forward for UK plc and for workers. The coalition government not implementing this legislation in full would be a backward step. The author says this with such certainty because the status quo in which a third of employers don't train their workers and 10 million workers receive no training is not a competitive position in the modern world. The right to request time to train only offers part of the answer but could transform workplace training. In this article, the author discusses the benefits of this legislation for workers and employers, and stresses that there is a genuine opportunity here to boost skills from the bottom up, with the prospect of an improved bottom line for everyone.