Lifelong learning is often held to begin when compulsory education ends, when students are 16, and sometimes at the end of later full-time education, such as graduation at a university. This applies to the Department for Education and Skills, where lifelong learning seems to have little, if anything, to do with school education. Lifelong learning should mean what the term plainly says: learning lasts for life – ‘cradle to grave’ – and so begins when we are born and embark on the adventure we are well programmed to pursue: learning. The principal function of formal education, therefore, should be to help people to learn, embracing both content (knowledge, skill and understanding of various kinds) and process(the motivation and ability to learn successfully).

This book assumes that whether people are motivated to learn beyond the end of compulsory education, and have the capacity to do so, depends very much on what happens to them during school years. The foundations of lifelong learning are laid during these years. In the 21st century, getting these learner-centred foundations right is of immense importance for the well-being of individuals, for thriving communities and for the prosperity of the nation. Education of young people helps to prepare them both for life and also for remaking the world in which that life is lived.

In the following chapters we explore what happens in school years that weakens rather than strengthens these foundations, what might be done to put things right, and what implications this might have for policies for school education. This entails being open-minded about how education during school years might develop over coming decades, how the content and processes involved might have to change, and how the outcomes we expect of such education might be different in kind and evaluated in different ways.

This book does not start with a new vision, a detailed picture of lifelong learning and how that would make for a different education service in a different society.