The Department for Business, Innovation & Skills in the UK commissioned and published (in March this year) a white paper on ‘The Learning Revolution’. The paper is about the importance of informal learning in the UK and suggests ways in which the government, local bodies, institutions and individuals can support access to and make better use of informal learning opportunities. For anyone interested in learning outside the classroom, this is compulsory reading. It is frank in saying it is intended as the ’start of the journey’ and I do not find as much ground-breaking ideas in it as I would have liked (anyone care to join its suggested ‘Festival of Learning’?), but there are certainly very many excellent suggestions. At least in the Uk there is an awereness of the importance of the issues and a commitment to spending GBP210 million on it (although unfortunately ‘only’ 20 million of that goes to its ‘transformation fund’ which is where one would hope to find the potential for real change).
You can download the paper here.
Tags: informal learning, out-of-class