Hey y'all !
Today I got to speak at a QAA panel about the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) - an alternative form of funding higher education that promises to ensure you can dip in and out of education throughout your lifespan. There are so so many questions about if and how this will work, and as I am unabashedly proud of my five minute segment, you can check it out below !
Hi I'm Amber, I'm the Education Officer here at the SU University of Bath, and when I was asked to come and talk about lifelong learning, I was told the new favourite phrase of the education sector – “we want to hear your blue sky thinking”. Now I love this phrase, and I love the concept of blue sky thinking, but I'm going to use an example that instead might be a little macabre. You see, if I had had LLE instead of student finance England, I just KNOW that instead of sharing a single, one track, ever tightening path of Psychology, I would have used the opportunity to explore both educational psychology, which I love and adore, but also, and you may have already gathered this if you read my bio, some kind of training in mortuary sciences or anything else a bit funeral. Picture it now, a business that can support your child in school, and also help you plan your funeral, in a death positive way, so that same child has no worries when they are hopefully a lot older. I'd call it from the cradle to the grave, and hope that when those kids grow up and they're cool teenagers, they come up with a cool catchy nickname for it, like cradles with a Z, or those weird graffiti S’s we all carved into tables and rubbers when we were younger.
On a serious note though, not that I'm not serious about cradles with the Z, LLE would have been an absolute dream for my younger self - I am very openly a disabled student, and when I was applying to the university, I was doing it from the very same place that I was self teaching my a levels - my bed. Applying for university at any stage of life is just something that is amazingly intimidating, but with my situation, and with the situation of so many other disabled students, knowing that you would be able to pursue higher education, at your own pace, being able to switch between institutions if they could not accommodate you, that is the ideal. Imagine a system, where instead of having to weigh up “do I want my degree, or do I want my last scrap of health”, You can simply take a break, that isn't a massive suspension, that isn't dropping out, but is simply that - a break. You could leave for a semester, a year, five years, a decade, and always circle back.
This kind of thing also obviously doesn't only benefit disabled students, it also helps so many people who are not the quote unquote traditional student, I'm thinking of parents, carers, even people who just want to pursue some kind of short professional course. We have had about the cost of living 101 times over, and while we can focus on things that affect our students here and now, things like housing, nutritional food, and engaging in activities because we all deserve both bread and roses, but this also weighs in to where people now can fit their professional development. It is admittedly quite a privileged position to be able to engage in learning where you can also take a whole year out of work, but if you can take say a unit or a semester worth of credit each year, now that is something that you know you can work towards in whichever increment works for you, and stopping whenever you see fit. You can, after all, pick it up later. For now it is a part of your continuous professional development, but further down the line, you can top it up for a degree – or even completely switch what you’re learning and make a 180 career transition. If we are sticking with CradleZ as an example, I feel like the 180 to this is something a Batman villain would only dream up (and make terrible puns about if it was directed by Joel Schumacher in the 90’s), or maybe something more tame, like using the skills of knowing how kids education works and floristry to open a forest school. Another career path I think is a super idea by the way.
All in all, the LLE is something that has the possibility to be the ideal – it is flexible, it is modular and therefore personalisable in a way we have never seen before (at least here in England), it lets you stack and switch, and the sheer accessibility for disabled students and those throughout the lifespan is stellar.
It is simply such a shame to me that we are already seeing cracks in the system – a rather personal example is that here at Bath we have integrated masters with placement years – something we all clamour and fawn over because they are amazing bits of experience, and yet with the cap on the LLE, something that could be forced into a thing of the past.
Sitting on course approval panels, I know that units currently DO NOT stand alone, as they need to for LLE to truly work, – they form a programme of study to provide a set range of skills that can build up to a degree overall. If we are seeking accreditation in our learning, how would we know exactly what to choose ? In what order ? and who is going to advise us ? Which career service at which university or provider?
As well as this, the drum I will always beat is that of inclusive teaching practice. Part of this is providing learning that can be done online or hybrid. If we want courses that are truly, amazingly customisable, but relying on a student having to physically relocate every semester or so, how do we expect them to build the ever important community ? How do we expect them to find housing in time? When this is a learner with an established family, caring responsibilities, a GP that finally gets you and knows how you tick, we are facing barriers no amount of funding can solve.
While I have sincere hope for LLE, I know it needs a lot of work, and until then, we are gonna have to wait in the wings for CradleZ – unless, of course, this has proven to be some kind of accidentally amazing business case.
Thank you !