Vision not Division: the contemporary value and

role of non-formal education in England

Ian McGimpsey, Max Hogg and Louise Thomas

October 2009

This is an unpublished draft, circulated for the use of

participants in the UK Youth Vision not Division event 18th –
20th November 2009
 1. Preface

This report stems from Vision not Division, an initiative of leading national youth work
charity UK Youth, to establish the value of non-formal education for young people today.
Their efforts are timely. Non-formal education has historically struggled for the recognition
and funding it deserves. Contemporary concerns about the quality of life of young people
growing up in Britain, compounded by the effects of a recession which has hit young people
hard, mean that this debate is vital now. Through Vision not Division UK Youth will seek to
spark action, to create the changes that will ensure that the contribution non-formal
education makes is recognised and valued.

The centre-piece of their work is a major three day conference entitled Vision not Division,
taking place in November 2009. To support this conference, the RSA undertook a series of
8 round table events to discuss the meaning, value and role of non-formal education. We
invited a mix of people with a direct involvement in education, drawn from RSA Fellows,
RSA Education Charter signatories, the membership of UK Youth, and representatives of
local government offices in England. The events took place in the north-east, north-west,
south-west, west midlands and London. In response to the strength of interest, four of the
events were held in London, and one in each of the other regions.

It was clear in the discussions that there were some fundamental disagreements between
participants. We have not tried to reconcile these views, but to work with the balance of
discussion to produce an analysis.

As such, this paper does not seek to provide a description of the discussions as they
occurred, nor does it account for all the positions and representations of non-formal
education that were offered. Instead, based on our analysis, the paper offers a provocation
to the wider debate. However, in doing so we have tried to reflect the broad balance of
feeling within the groups, and to highlight for the reader where schisms existed.

We are indebted to all those who took time to participate in these round table sessions and
would like to express our heartfelt thanks. What is useful in this report comes from the
energy and insight of the participants. It is of course the case that any inaccuracies or flaws
in the analysis are the responsibility of the authors, and not the participants in the events,
UK Youth or its partners involved in the Vision not Division consultation.

2. Introduction

When we hear education, we tend to think school. Despite compulsory education being a
comparatively recent development, the classroom or the lecture theatre has come to
dominate our perception of what education is. By comparison, education outside the school
is often poorly understood, under resourced, and seemingly lacking in validity and esteem.

Our purpose in this paper is to think beyond the relative order and hierarchy of the school
room and explore the value of ‘non-formal’ education in a changing social, economic and
public services landscape.

Despite the lack of public discussion of education that isn’t schooling, there are trends which
suggest it is increasingly important. Following a severe recession, nearly 1,000,000 young
people aged 16-24 are now not in education, employment or training (NEET). The continued
problems of engaging many young people in formal education, the dispiriting failure suffered
by many others, the increased access to knowledge outside of educational institutions, the
importance of supportive communities of learning outside the school to educational success,

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the problems of divorcing learning from personal experience and emotional well-
being…there is long and growing list of new and longstanding reasons to re-examine our
understanding of education beyond formal provision, and to reassess the value we place on
it.

2.1 What do we mean by non-formal education?

Non-formal education has no clear definition. In different times and in different countries,
the term has been used to mean quite distinct things.

There have been numerous attempts at definitions of non-formal education, or classifications

of educational activity as non-formal, formal and informal education.

Attempts at definition tend to be broad. In preparation for the round table discussions, UK
Youth suggested we send participants, among other things, a definition of non-formal
education derived from the work of the World Bank:

Non-formal education and learning (NFL) is a process of social learning centred on the
learner that is realized through activities outside of the formal education system. NFL is by
definition voluntary and intentional, and covers a wide variety of learning fields: youth work,
youth clubs, sports associations, voluntary service, and many other activities, which organize
learning experiences. NFL is also an integral part of a lifelong learning as it helps ensure
that young people and adults acquire and maintain the skills and competences needed to
adapt to a continuously changing environment.1

A commonly referenced, but not unproblematic, example of a classification of educational

types is that of Coombs, Prosser and Ahmed (1973) who distinguished between:
‘formal education (the institutionalised, chronologically graded and hierarchically
structured educational system, running from lower primary school to the upper reaches of
the university, generally full time and sanctioned by the state); non-formal education
(comprising an educational activity organised outside the formal system and designed to
serve identifiable clientele and educational objectives) with remaining educational activities
being categorised as informal education (the lifelong process by which every person
acquires and accumulates knowledge, skills, attitudes and insights from daily experiences
and exposure to the environment)’ 2.

While classifications such as these can be more specific than some of the broad definitions,
in the end they tend to use either administration (who does it and where) or process (how
it is done) to distinguish between different kinds of provision in the UK. Smith has
questioned the utility in the UK of a distinction based on administration if it leads to ignoring
education processes which either take place outside recognised education institutions3, or
which command less esteem within them. For example, how does such a classification take
account of educational processes whose outcomes are unplanned (such as engaging in a
youth group) or which are less reliant on the provision by any institution (for example a
family taking it upon themselves to learn how to research their genealogy and history)?

As an alternative, Jeffs and Smith suggest starting from an account of process. From this
perspective, what some would describe as non-formal learning could be difficult to
distinguish from formal learning in the sense that it begins from a curricular base – i.e. there

1
World Development Report (WDR) 2007: Development & the Next Generation.
2 Coombs et al. cited in Carron G. and Carr-Hill R. A. (1991) Non-formal education: information and planning issues,
International Institute for Educational Planning, pgs. 5-6
3 Smith, M. K. (1997, 2005), Introducing Informal Education, available at: http://www.infed.org/i-intro.htm

3
is a planned learning experience, and, even if there is a degree of co-development of that
curriculum with the learner, there is usually a pre-determined outcome, pre-planned
materials and so on. They contrast this with a notion of informal education as a ‘non-
curricular form of education centred on conversation’4.

In the end, there is no a priori basis on which to decide what counts or does not count as
non-formal education. Instead we must seek to create the most useful definitions we can in
the contemporary context of educational provision.

3. Context of Vision not Division

There are perhaps two factors which mean that such a conversation can be usefully revisited
at this time – first the changes we see in some schools, and second the direction of public
service reform and particularly the notion of co-production.

3.1 The changing face of schooling

It remains the case today that ‘non-formal education’ is often defined not in its own right,
but in contrast to ‘formal education’, at least if the discussion at our round table events is
any guide. But formal education is changing.

Recent efforts to reform the curriculum and practice of schools are placing greater value on
learning which emphasises relevance to the learner, skills and competence development, and
personal development. These efforts commonly seek a more central role within pedagogy
for dialogue, learner voice, practical learning processes and learning with peers5. Teachers’
roles may be viewed as having greater flexibility, being seen at different times as facilitator, as
learning mentor, as co-learner and as curriculum creator rather than deliverer. The relevance
of learning may well be emphasised, with the experience and frames of reference of the
learner being seen as increasingly relevant, or greater account taken of economic or social
and environmental issues6. This brings formal education closer to processes that usually take
place outside school.

In the light of these changes, we need to find new, easily understood ways of thinking about
different kinds of non-formal education that are not so bound up with whether the
education is happening in or out of a school or classroom.

3.2 Co-production of public services

The second factor is the growing currency in discussions of public service reform of ideas
about citizen empowerment and the promotion of 'co-production'. The co-production of
public services can be understood as partnerships between citizens and government to
achieve a wide range of valuable outcomes7, rather than a more straightforward
producer/consumer relationship. The purpose of these partnerships is to mobilise the
resources that lie with citizens (such as personal agency and social capital) towards achieving
these outcomes while offering greater accessibility and control of government resources.

4 Jeffs, T and Smith, M K, 1996, Informal Education – conversation, democracy and learning, Education Now Books in

association with the YMCA George Williams College, pg 6-14

5 Williamson, B and Payton, S (2009), Curriculum and Teaching Innovation – Transforming Classroom Practice and

Personalisation, Futurelab, pgs. 6-31

6 For example, see Learning Futures: Next Practice in Teaching and Learning, 2008, Paul Hamlyn Foundation and

The Innovation Unit. Available at: http://www.phf.org.uk/landing.asp?id=368; or Opening Minds: Implementing a

Competence Based Curriculum, 2006. Available at:
http://www.thersa.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/155133/opening-minds-guidance.pdf
7 Horne, M and Shirley, T, 2009, Co-production in Public Services: A new partnership with citizens, Cabinet Office, The

Strategy Unit, pgs. 4-12

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The relevance of co-production to education could already be explored, for example, in
family learning or the practice of service learning increasingly established in American
schools and parts of Europe.

Non-formal education is often bound up with ideas that education is not done ‘to’ the
learner, but ‘with’. As these ideas mature, it may be that there is an opportunity for non-
formal education to articulate itself better in the context of empowering public services than
it has been able to in the recent decades of managerialism and powerful central government.

The political context of this debate is important to consider. Politicians of all parties in the
run-up to an election in 2010 are faced with a need to cut public sector expenditure to deal
with national debt, while not sacrificing public services. In future, education processes that
can demonstrate a role in creating a citizenry more able and inclined to engage in solving
their problems with public services, rather than by them, are likely to be of value to
government.

It is within this context that UK Youth are seeking to re-define and articulate the particular
value of non-formal education.

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4. The meaning and value on non-formal education

With this in mind, rather than ask the question ‘what is the right definition of non-formal
education’, it may be more useful to ask ‘what can people mean by non-formal education’ as
a foundation for an exploration of its value. This report offers one answer to this question
based on the discussion of participants in the round table events and uses that discussion to
open up further avenues for arguing for the particular value of non-formal education today.

Education is perhaps a uniquely valued idea. Inviting people to gather and discuss non-formal
education specifically has been a forceful reminder of just how much people care about the
subject in general. There was widespread commitment to the idea of education as a lifelong
process of development, and a collective, social endeavour. Supporting people to learn as
they explore their interests, find their talents and fulfil their individual positive potentials is
an animating prospect for many. Working with groups, classes, congregations or a
generation of young people to help them to realise a good life in a good society is something
like a moral duty that is taken very much to heart. Perhaps this isn’t surprising, but it is
certainly encouraging.

However, education is also very easy to have an argument about. As groups explored the
diversity and breadth of education processes, settings, relationships and ends to which non-
formal education could be used to refer, tensions quickly emerged.

This report begins with a short account of where those tensions lay. In most cases they
reflect longstanding differences and dichotomies. However, they are worth recounting here
as participants discussed them as part of an attempt to understand the value of non-formal
education now and in the coming years. As such they reflect headline issues which any
search for a generally accepted idea of non-formal education will have to take account of if it
is to make progress.

4.1 Bad Language

In the discussions ‘non-formal education’ had, unsurprisingly, no clear definition, except in as

far as it was seen as distinct from an idea of formal education. Non-formal education, rather
than having its own identity, therefore often appeared to be defined against formal
education.

For its part, formal education was understood in three ways at the same time. The first was
as taking place within the institutional confines of the school, mandated and funded by the
state both locally and centrally whose aims and accountability were about ‘the system’, not
the child. The second aspect of this working definition was that formal education was
defined by particular processes characteristic of school – sequential progress through
curriculum based on age, guided by professional teachers, where content is defined by
central government and teachers, for the purpose of the achievement of recognised
certificates. The third was about the lack of agency on the part of the learner: attendance at
school was required and there was seen as little negotiation with staff over content or
process.

In the discussions, non-formal education tended to count as anything where these conditions
were not the case.

There are two implications to this for any future discussion of non-formal education. The
first is a tendency to confuse informal or incidental learning (where unplanned learning takes
place through daily interaction with the environment) with education (a deliberate, planned
process, with values and aims, means to engender learning). In any public discussion of the

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future value and purpose of non-formal education, we suggest it is important to continually
make this distinction clear.

The second is to recognise that the term non-formal education itself may not be helpful in
expressing its value. The term tended to be used in the discussions not to distinguish
between institutions, education processes, purposes or outcomes, but rather to describe
education which held the agency of the learner as the foundation from which it built. This is,
perhaps understandably, distinct in some ways from more nuanced academic definitions of
non-formal and informal education. However, it may be useful in considering what could be
at the heart of a compelling public articulation of the value of ‘non-formal’ education as we
reconsider the use of this term, and the parameters on which we seek to create a definition.

4.2 Who takes responsibility?

In formal education, the idea of the teacher, and perhaps the head teacher, is synonymous
with conceptions of formal education. People in these roles embody what formal education
is, and they are responsible for doing it well. The charitable objectives of UK Youth point
clearly to the support of youth work as a profession and youth workers as practitioners of
non-formal education, yet it was clear that non-formal education has no real equivalent to
the teacher. While youth workers might be the most likely equivalent group to point to, it
was clear that conceptions of their role and purpose were quite distinct from notions of the
value of non-formal education. Specifically, the efforts of youth workers were seen as
targeted at a small group of disadvantaged or problematic young people, while their work
and methods were seen as transient activity that took place ‘in the moment’ in response to
the shifting attitudes, behaviours, trends and situations encountered in working with young
people. So, even where youth workers were seen as a non-formal equivalent to the teacher,
as by some participants, there was a reluctance to promote this to others. Non-formal
education by contrast was seen as having a value and purpose for all young people, and a
tradition bound up in the personal histories and experience of the discussion participants.

A more consistently expressed role for the educator that embodied non-formal education
was that of a ‘learning mentor’ – someone who helped the young person construct their
experience of learning and follow it through over time, as their sense of their own identities
developed in relation to the world around them. It is of note that this role cut across
settings and professions, operating not on behalf of institutions but between institutions on
behalf of a young person or people. Learning mentors could operate in schools or outside,
could be teachers, youth workers, or other responsible adults with the appropriate
knowledge, skills and networks, for example working through community organisations or
faith groups.

A recognisable, well understood and coherent ‘professional’ group who do this work may
not be possible, and may not be desirable. Indeed, it is necessarily less about a professional
silo, and more about constructing a network of provision across multiple settings and
providers8.

However, it is key that this is not driven by providers and their needs. ‘Building agency’
cannot be crudely equated with devolving choice and responsibility for the selection of pre-
existing educational services. Adults need to construct a meaningful role in young people’s
lives as mentors and mediators, in a world where young people often struggle with the
identities they possess and that are offered to them as they grow up, and where a dominant

8This idea could be related to what might be termed a ‘classical’ view of the youth worker, recognised in large
parts of the 20th century but, arguably, almost lost in recent decades. For further discussion of this idea, see Jeffs,
T & Smith, M (2008), Valuing Youth Work, Youth and Policy, 100, pgs. 277 - 302

7
culture of competitive individualism and consumerism can have a deleterious effect on young
people’s well-being.

The idea of ‘learning mentors’ may be one way of recasting the idea of adults in relation to
non-formal education. Still, professional identity remains a key issue to consider in
representing non-formal education publicly, and in seeking public understanding of its value.

4.3 Rage against the machine?

Underlying many of the tensions in the discussion was a competition between two
ideological positions. On the one hand, some participants seemed to be working from the
basis of an overall consensus about the aims of education within which there was a plurality
of actors, processes, and objectives. On the other was a more radical notion of non-formal
education as a process that should seek to thrive within subaltern spaces, working for the
interests of the young person in the face of the countervailing forces of a range of formal
institutions dominated by the market, the state or powerful groups in civic society.

The plural notion of education was the dominant position. However this competition
between ideologies found expression in a range of tensions. For example, some felt that
possessing a connection to a wider set of educational purposes threatened the educators’
spontaneity in responding to the learner, and tied them back to prescribed outcomes. As
such, the unique value of non-formal education was threatened. Another example was the
tension between an inclusive view of the value of non-formal education and the importance
of young people’s voluntary involvement in it (sometimes tied to notions of volunteering
experiences or civic action) against the importance of non-formal education that is targeted
towards disempowered or ‘problematic’ groups who may not voluntarily engage in any
educational process or relationship with adults.

As these tensions played out, an analysis emerged which shaped the discussion of non-formal
education, with three main ideas developing:
1. the place of non-formal education in a ‘whole education’ picture,
2. its special value, and
3. how we might find practical ways to promote it.

4.4 The place of non-formal education

Underpinning the groups’ discussions was an idea of education as a ‘whole’ process,

supportive of a person’s holistic development as well as a range of social and economic aims;
it was constant, lifelong and took place anywhere. It was not a series of pieces. However,
this ‘whole education’ was made up of a number of elements – different kinds of educational
processes and experiences that made for knowledgeable, capable, moral, sociable, engaged
citizens and rounded individuals.

This idea wasn’t shared by all, indeed some participants found it objectionable, but many of
the discussions appeared founded on this idea which amounted to a sense of common social
purpose in education. However, there remained a question about how much this sense of a
common purpose was really shared across society. If there was general agreement about
such a broad notion of education, why in most people’s lives was their experience of it
overbalanced so heavily towards formal education during childhood and adolescence?

In the end the state tended to be seen by the majority of participants as the chief culprit,
responsible for skewing education practice and narrowing ideas of educational success for its
own ends.

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This domination of education by the state and its agencies was seen as both harmful and
pointless: harmful because an experience of education dominated by formal education has
negative consequences for young peoples’ enjoyment of and engagement with learning, and
their motivation and capability to carry on independently; pointless as the state was seen as
unable to realise the potential of education in all our lives from the centre, either through
the control of schools or the co-option of youth workers.

It should be pointed out that there was a tendency to unfairly caricature both the aims and
practice of schools, and the initiatives of the state such as the National Curriculum for
England. This was a view challenged by some participants, and not only those directly
involved in formal education. Those espousing this countervailing view often pointed
towards efforts towards greater personalisation in schools, and the Every Child Matters
agenda, as well as a qualitative sense of a cultural shift in schools to be more sympathetic to
non-formal education as discussed here.

In particular, there seemed to be greater synergy than was generally acknowledged between
what this group wanted young people to experience through non-formal education and the
aims of the new secondary national curriculum to enable all young people to become:
• successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve
• confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives
• responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society9

One conclusion may be that part of the antipathy towards formal education, and particularly
schooling was perhaps a result of a lack of awareness amongst those concerned primarily
with non-formal education of the growing flexibility within the National Curriculum, and
some schools’ innovative practice in exploiting that freedom. This lack of awareness could
usefully be challenged.

That said, the sense of education as simultaneously having a common collective purpose and
education as an imbalanced contest between competing perspectives is perhaps less
contradictory that it seems at first. The groups tended to treat education as a contested
transactional space but a shared space nonetheless, defined by the broad acceptance of the
purpose of education described above.

This leaves us with the notion of plural education communities, with diverse actors
possessing a legitimate role in fulfilling a broadly shared overall purpose and consensus.
These various actors worked across a continuum of processes and more specific aims, and
much of what they did, though not all, had value.

One interpretation of the discussion could be that the problem for non-formal
education that has occurred is that the education space is currently dominated by the
bureaucracy of (increasingly central) government and a form of individualistic
instrumentalism propped up by the cultural value placed on wealth and consumption.
The comparatively low value placed on a more rounded sense of individual development or
development as a social being, and the high value placed on measurable accountability,
resulted in educational processes which spoke to narrow aims.

4.5 The special value of non-formal education

9 The National Curriculum for England Key Stages 3 and 4, Curriculum Purposes Values and Aims, (2009), QCDA.

Available at: http://curriculum.qcda.gov.uk/key-stages-3-and-4/aims/index.aspx

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The particular value of non-formal education as it tended to be formulated by the group was
an education that starts with, and whose processes are principally bound up with, the agency
of the young person in their context as opposed to the imperatives of institutions of the
state or the market. It starts from the perspective of the learner, it draws its aims, its goals
and its life and energy from them and their voluntary participation. It is focussed on types of
learning which could be described as developing the agency of learners in their social
context. As such it tends to be seen as focussing on the development of social and
interpersonal skills, values and ethics, practical learning processes, and engaged dispositions.

Within a broad spectrum of education provision, there was the shared belief that non-formal
education had a distinct and important value for most people, if not everyone. This value
could not otherwise be fulfilled through school or other formal processes.

However, as discussed above, the language of non-formal education was of limited use to
participants and the term often meant several things at different times. In any case, given the
nature of much school based innovation, the definitions that have been used in the past are
probably less useful than they were. It was felt that problems in articulating an intuitive or
recognised value puts non-formal education at an important disadvantage in discussions with
potential commissioners and funders.

This is particularly the case as non-formal education in the sense described was seen as
distinct from an education bound up in the concerns of the state. The accountability regime
which schools were required to operate within meant schools were seen as inherently
instrumentalist, and limited in their capacity to be democratic institutions. Schools’ concern
with exams as an account of system performance was seen as dominant, meaning their
curricula were necessarily skewed towards knowledge transmission. Where schools were
acknowledged as being concerned with wider issues of wellbeing, health or lifestyle, for
example obesity or sexual health, there was a sense that they were concerned with those
issues to the extent that they were motivated by priorities coming from government or
some other authority. This was not always seen as negative. Many felt that school had an
important role to play in such learning, but that the quality of such learning was affected by
the nature of young people’s engagement with it. It was distinct from what could be achieved
by non-formal education processes.

It should again be pointed out that it was not that participants failed to recognise that non-
formal education could take place in formal settings like schools. Rather they felt that
schools were too often not hospitable ground in which it could grow. However, it should be
possible to find greater complimentarity between the two. For example, schools could
commission non-formal providers to work within and around them to deliver better quality
work in these areas. This need not be standalone or set aside from the curriculum. In fact, if
there were spaces for greater interaction between classroom and non-formal educators, the
integration of the two could be powerful.

Education which held the agency of the learner at its heart was regarded as a challenging
notion for any educator. In a pure sense, they could not require the participation of learners,
nor allow themselves to be dominated by institutional imperatives derived from
accountability frameworks or government policy or any other source which did not involve
dialogue with young people. Indeed, this idea of distinctive value was acknowledged as
potentially in conflict or contest with other educational goals and processes, while not being
discontinuous with the sense of a wider purpose of education. This might suggest that in the
contested transactional space of education part of the distinct value of non-formal education
was to challenge present imbalances or imperatives in the interests of a broader educational
purpose. However, the lack of a powerful or distinct professional voice associated with non-
formal education presents a real practical difficulty.

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There was no doubt of the critical value placed upon this form of education by participants.
Indeed, within an imbalanced education picture overall, it was seen as particularly important
at this time. However, there remain important questions about how it could be championed,
and by whom. This causes complexity about how this distinctive value is discussed or
represented.

4.6 Promoting non-formal education

To summarise, if we accept the idea that there is a widely shared sense of a broad and
inclusive purpose for education, and a distinctive valuing of education based on the agency of
young people as part of a mix of educational provision, then it follows that part of the role
of non-formal education at this time is itself to challenge imbalances in education provision.
Its role may be counter the concerns of government represented through schools, and a
culture of narrow individualism.

The problem of multiple aims and a plurality of educational processes within diverse
communities of learning have existed throughout at least the last 130 years. During this time,
these diverse interests have given rise to examples of what might be termed ‘clumsy
solutions10’. They can be found, for example, in the settlement movement which sought both
to democratise higher education and culture to working class people while innovating and
organising within poor urban (and later rural) communities, or in village colleges which
brought together the contexts of formal and informal learning – the school and the village –
into one space.

We suggest that it may be possible to create the conditions which could see new solutions
emerge to the problems of how to resource and value non-formal education. Creating these
conditions revolves around three ideas drawn from the round table discussions.

The first is to tap into the power of the idea of a broad education community which
share some fundamental values and purposes that cut across professional and institutional
boundaries. These loose education communities possess important collective resources, but
may lack a sense of a synthesising education discourse. Indeed, many non-formal educators
may not see themselves as educators at all, but as concerned with young people’s personal
or social development. As such, they may not perceive their connections to other types of
provision, being focussed instead on their distinctiveness or value to the point of being
insular or dismissive of others. Such a synthesising discourse could seek to bring together,
for example, schools or local colleges with civic institutions who provide recognised non-
formal education, or who provide experiences like volunteering.

The second idea is that non-formal education could be expressed as an education founded
on the agency of young people, and not on the basis of who is providing it. Discussions of
educational process will remain important to practitioners, but they would not be central to
the expression of the purpose and identity of non-formal education. This expression of the
value of non formal education could be more easily understood by the public, and would
relate to a distinct core strength of many workers and providers in this space.

Third, such an expression of its value, linked to broader purposes and cutting across
institutional divides may allow for more transaction between formal and non-formal
education providers. Dialogue and learning between different practice traditions in

10 The term ‘clumsy solution’ is drawn from the work of Michael Thompson on Cultural Theory. Cultural Theory

has not been used rigorously here to produce this analysis, though it was of influence. For a brief overview of
Cultural Theory, see Michael Thompson’s article ‘Beyond Boom and Bust’ for the RSA Journal, Winter 2008,
available at: http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/journal/archive/winter-2008/features/beyond-boom-and-bust

11
education is rare. Are there ways for school teachers to understand the educational role
that youth workers can play? Do they understand what detached youth workers do? Do
youth workers understand what teachers nowadays do in the classroom? Giving professions
such as youth work, and the wider set of providers of non-formal education, an opportunity
to articulate their worth and value in support of shared educational ends (as opposed to
subordinate to schools’ institutional ends, such as discipline within the school) is key. As
school leaders, for example, grow in their recognition of non-formal activity, and their sense
of its value grows as distinct from but linked to their own success, the possibility of co-
opting their support and resources becomes more real.

At the moment, the contested space that education occupies is dominated by hierarchical
and individualistic voices – discipline and order, personal exam success, skills for
employment and so on. It is not our intention to imply that non-formal education has no
relevance to these aspects of education, nor that they are unimportant. However, by
recognising the relevance of non-formal education to the educational needs of everyone, and
having an articulation of its distinct worth for the learner and socially, it may be possible to
win back territory and resources for more collaborative and egalitarian qualities in
education, and so achieve for young people a more whole and relevant educational
experience.

5. Conclusion and Recommendations

The conclusion and recommendations of this report are intended to support UK Youth and
participants in the Vision not Division conference. Therefore this is an attempt to draw
conclusions and pull out recommendations that will be useful to the educators participating
in this deliberation about the role and value on non-formal education.

Our conclusions boil down to three core priorities:

1. promoting a clear and relevant articulation of the value of non-formal education,
rather than the definition;
2. helping non-formal educators communicate this value locally to support better
collaboration with formal educators;
3. communicating the value of non-formal education to policy makers on the grounds
of current policy priorities.

Articulating the contemporary value of non-formal education

Non-formal education remains a term that is not well understood. In addressing this, a
‘definition’ of what we are talking is no doubt useful, but we must think about what a
definition is for, and what is most effective in spreading understanding of and support for
non-formal education. We suggest:
- understanding non-formal education as centred on efforts to build the agency of
young people and articulating it as such
- combating the perception of non-formal education as being defined ‘against’ formal
education – promoting its distinct value alongside formal education efforts in the
context of a shared, overarching educational purpose

Growing the capacity of non-formal educators to work with the formal education community
Non-formal education often lacks a professional group which embodies its work, while
school-based educators in particular may lack understanding of what it does or a sense of its
value. However, schools now have to take greater account of young people’s wider well-
being and development as citizens, and possess greater flexibility in the curriculum. This may
provide a route to greater collaboration and understanding. We suggest:

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 - developing the concept of the learning mentor as a role that embodies the value of
non-formal education, is of universal value to young people, and cuts across
professional categories
- develop the professional understanding and local relationships between youth
workers and school-based staff, providing a context of education provision in which
new solutions can emerge
- using such collaboration as a route to resources and funding in an environment
where responsibility and budgetary control is increasingly devolved to local
education leaders

The value of non-formal education for policy makers and in a wider social context
As well as promoting better understanding within the education community, non-formal
educators have the opportunity to articulate their particular value to policy makers at this
time. We suggest:
- promoting the value of non-formal education in enabling participation and citizenship
at a time of social change and public service reform which emphasises co-production

Amongst participants in the round table discussions there were important points of
agreement. There was an affirmation that young people need adults who are on their side,
building relationships with them as people not outcomes, and working to build their agency
and help them shape a world they want to live in. They were equally clear that the education
system, dominated as it is by hierarchical and individualistic voices, is struggling to meet that
need.

What we do about that situation will inevitably be the source of greater disagreement,
particularly in a fast changing education and public services landscape. However, the debate
is crucial if we are to find our way to a bold vision for non-formal education, and a clear
articulation of it, that will galvanise educators and help them find ways amidst the change to
meet that need.

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