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| Path: Home > Research > Health & Disability Equality > Background |
Introduction
[ Learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities ] [ Health ]
The Health and Disability Equality Team aims to:
 | Promote inclusion and widening participation for learners with disabilities or learning difficulties. |
| Promote the voices of learners with learning difficulties and learners with disabilities. |
| Support teachers and learning providers in developing good practice. |
| Respond to policy consultations and to be a critical friend to government departments and other agencies. |
| Promote inclusive curricula, that meet learners needs and promotes achievements and progression. |
| Work in collaboration with other agencies and organisations to promote adult learning. |
| Conduct good quality research and consultation that extend knowledge, provide evidence and recommend change. |
Learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities
The Tomlinson report on Inclusive Learning (1996) set a major milestone in the development of learning provision for adults with learning difficulties and adults with disabilities. Since 1996 provision has grown beyond recognition in many cases from small discrete and segregated courses to a wide range of integrated main steam and specialist provision across all sectors.
The Disability Discrimination Act has brought with it new rights for learners, ranging from access rights to entitlements to reasonable adjustments to learning provision. See New Rights to Learn.
The definition and understanding of disability has expanded, we should no longer expect learners with disabilities to be registered disabled; but recognise that disability includes a wide range of impairments and conditions. These may include learning difficulties, sensory and physical impairments, mental health difficulties, acquired disabilities and long term disabling health conditions such as ME or heart disease.
For all learners, including learners with disabilities, there has been a growing recognition of the need to practise learner or student centred approaches to provision design and delivery. For adults with learning difficulties the Department of Health Valuing People team has promoted the cross sectoral person centred planning approach that not only requires providers to put the individual's needs, hopes and aspirations at the centre of the planning process, but also work, at least collaboratively, with other agencies.
Health
In this country there is a learning divide between people who have good initial education and continue to learn and people who have a poor experience of initial education and are currently not represented in adult education. There is also a health divide between those in higher social classes and those who are low skilled, unskilled and unwaged. Government agendas have tried to address these inequalities.
The Learning Age (1998) spoke of the "wider contribution" that learning can make to social cohesion. Learning to Succeed (1999) pointed out the role which education could have in "helping communities to help themselves."
The NHS White Paper Saving Lives (1999) was signed by eight government departments and aimed to improve public health through collaborative action; setting the goal for the NHS of health improvement. We know that poor health can be attributed to social, economic and environmental factors and that there is a link between poor initial education and poor health. The NHS White Paper stated that
"Education is vital for health. People with low levels of educational achievement are more likely to have poor health as adults….By improving education for all we will tackle one of the main causes of inequality in health. (4.16)"
We know that returning to learning as an adult can also have positive impacts on an individual’s health. In ‘The Impact of Learning on Health’ (Aldridge and Lavender 1999) 89% of respondents to a questionnaire asking about the impact of learning on health said that returning to learning had a positive on their mental health, 87% said it had a positive impact on their physical health and 30% said it helped them to manage pain more effectively.
Yet we also know that those with poor initial education, making them vulnerable to poorer health in later life, are also less likely to be participating in learning as adults.
NIACE has two strands to the learning and health work.
Firstly, we aim to promote the widening of participation in learning
among people with poor health. This includes the work we are doing to improve
access to learning for people with mental health difficulties and the support we
provide to ‘Prescriptions for Learning’ projects through the Consortium.
Secondly, we evaluate the impact that learning has on health and how learning can be a force for health promotion. This includes the evaluation exercises we do on projects such as ‘Prescriptions for Learning’ and the development of ‘Healthy Colleges’. Work, such as the report and literature review on self-esteem straddles both strands as it is concerned with how low self-esteem can be a barrier to learning but raised self-esteem is very often an outcome of learning.
Click here for NIACE Briefing Sheet on Learning and Health >
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