Having failed to engage any of the five political parties through twitter on the subject of lifelong learning and what their policies might be, the next stage of my quest has led me onto their websites and the search capabilities that they offer.
The first problem I encountered with this approach was that both the Conservative Party and UKIP don’t appear to have this rather important function on their websites. (This is 2015 and not 1995, right?) I can only assume, at least, until their 2015 manifestos are formally published, that they have no policies in this area that they’d like people to be able to find easily.
However, the Liberal Democrats, Green and Labour party websites all have prominent search functions. And all three sites seem to have it delivered by an embedded Google search engine, which probably means that it’s likely to work.
So I thought I’d try half a dozen different search terms that someone interested in policies for lifelong learning might use and see what they turned up. The table shows the search term I used and the number of times it appears in connection with a policy document, consultation or manifesto (I’ve excluded hits on personal biographies and other items that contain the search term).
| Search Term | Liberal Democrats | The Labour Party | The Green Party |
| Adult education | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Lifelong learning | 0 | 1 | 5 |
| Mature student | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Older student | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Open University | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| ELQ | 0 | 0 | 0 |
(Note: I included ELQ – Equivalent or Lower Qualification – as it’s a technical term much-loved by many policymakers. However, it didn’t return any hits.)
At this stage in the process, I therefore (with regret, as Lord Sugar might say when firing an apprentice) added the Liberal Democrats onto the “wait until the 2015 manifesto is published” list too.
The Labour party website turns up the same document for both the lifelong learning and Open University search terms. It’s their 2008 “Partnership in Power – second year consultation document” and so probably doesn’t reflect current policy.
The hits for the Greens turn up an eclectic selection of local election manifestos (from Brent in 2005, Enfield in 2010, Camden in 2010 and London in 2012) plus a 2006 report on all manner of topics from one of their MEPs. These documents are therefore too old, too general, too local or all three of these things to rely on.
My conclusion is that I’m therefore going to have to wait a little longer until the General Election manifestos are published to see definitively what the parties are seeking to attract the lifelong learner vote with in May.