Getting Monty back to learn

Keywords Men, Education, Qualifications, Unemployment

Too many men think that learning is only for women, says Excluded Men: Men Who are Missing from Education and Training, by Veronica McGivney. The report suggests that if the Government is to achieve the learning society it plans, the issue of men and learning needs to be addressed urgently for young men without qualifications and with few skills, manual workers, men from some ethnic-minority communities and older men. The study claims that men's attitudes to education are strongly bound up with traditional male roles and notions of masculinity. Men tend to have different learning priorities and interests from women and frequent fewer education sectors.

Work is a key motivator for men. Those who engage in education and training do so largely for practical and employment-related reasons. But in areas of high male unemployment, men consider investment in learning as one not worth taking.

Although the most common source of funding learning opportunities for men is their employer, about 40 per cent of workers - usually older workers and those with the lowest skill levels - receive no employer-supported training. John Gates, a former miner who followed an Open University degree course, commented:"Men are so busy being men that they don't have time for themselves."

Meanwhile, surveys undertaken by the Department for Education and Employment and the Campaign for Learning show that 93 per cent of adults say they enjoy learning new things, but only 66 per cent actually take part in learning. Some of the biggest barriers to learning include time constraints, low educational achievement, lack of confidence in the ability to learn and lack of awareness of learning needs. The surveys confirm that participation is concentrated among the best educated.