This year, HOLEX and UVAC are playing a leading role in the Get the Nation Learning Awards, England’s major celebration of lifelong learning and part of the campaign led by Learning and Work Institute. Our involvement is an opportunity to show that adult learning should not sit at the edge of the national debate about growth, work and opportunity. It is the thread that must connect them.

We are jointly sponsoring the Learning Provider of the Year Award, recognising providers that place adult learning at the heart of national renewal. Its message—when adults learn, society and the economy thrive—should guide policy. Yet youth skills, adult education, higher-level learning and employment support are too often treated separately. They form one system, which succeeds only when people can enter, re-enter and progress through learning throughout their lives.

UVAC represents universities and higher education providers and has spent 27 years championing learning at and through work. Its central insight is that the workplace is not simply where skills are deployed; it is one of the country’s most important learning environments. Apprenticeships, technical education and flexible higher-level study help adults advance, adapt to changing jobs and meet employers’ needs. Policy that concentrates on entry into work but neglects progression in work therefore misses much of the productivity challenge.

Policy attention is understandably focused on young people who are not in education, employment or training. Improving their prospects is essential, but a youth offer cannot alone address economic inactivity, basic-skills gaps or the need to retrain an ageing workforce. Adults need routes beyond an initial qualification, available when technology, health, caring responsibilities or economic change alter the course of working life.

HOLEX offers the complementary perspective of adult and community education providers working directly with people and places across England. Its members are often where learning begins—or begins again—through English, maths, digital and employability skills, community provision and accessible routes back into education. If UVAC shows how adults progress through higher-level and work-based learning, HOLEX shows how those furthest from formal education take the first step. Together they describe a pathway from confidence and core skills to further study, apprenticeships and sustained progression at work.

The shared conclusion is an opportunity agenda for all ages. England must improve the transition from education into employment, but also fulfil the promise of lifelong learning for those in the labour market or returning to it. The Adult Skills Fund supports adults to gain skills for work or further learning, while the Youth Guarantee sharpens the focus on younger people. What is missing is a clear account of how these offers connect across a lifetime, particularly for over-25s who need to progress, upskill or retrain.

HOLEX and UVAC are therefore calling for a national lifelong learning strategy and framework. It should set a common ambition across adult and community learning, further and higher education, apprenticeships and employment support, making progression visible and navigable. HOLEX members would provide trusted local entry points and routes back into learning; UVAC members would extend them through technical, higher-level and work-based education. The aim is not to blur their distinct contributions, but to connect them around learners, employers and local economies.

The wider policy architecture provides foundations. From January 2027, the Lifelong Learning Entitlement is intended to create a more flexible post-18 funding system, supporting eligible courses and modules that people can use to upskill and retrain. Get Britain Working similarly seeks to join up employment, health and skills support while giving local areas a stronger role in tackling economic inactivity. A lifelong learning framework should connect these reforms with adult and community provision, showing residents and employers not merely which programmes exist, but how one opportunity leads to the next.

National coherence must enable local responsiveness, not uniform delivery. Devolved areas should shape provision around their communities and economies within a framework of clear expectations, entitlements and progression routes. The test is simple: wherever someone lives, whatever their age or starting point, they should be able to see how to enter learning and keep moving forward. HOLEX and UVAC approach the challenge from different parts of the system, but share one argument: lifelong learning must organise and connect skills, employment and growth, moving adult opportunity from the margins of policy to the centre of national renewal.