It’s a fact that there are now more adult learners than there are juvenile learners in the world.  Hence, the Adult and Community Education (ACE) sector, or the fourth sector as ACE is sometimes called, is important.  It’s important because ACE is concerned with second chance and recurrent learning for adults and the adult demographic now constitutes the bulk our population.  Put simply, the adult population now outnumbers children for the first time in history and of course, it is adults, not children, who vote governments in or out.  So attacking the adult education sector, as has happened in Aotearoa New Zealand, is hardly politically defensible for any administration that wants to remain in power for more than one term.

The ACE sector has previously been under attack but not ever before to such an extent as now.  In 1972, during the Holyoake era, the Hon. George Gair who was the then Under-secretary of Education, took away a $45.00 subsidy per class for non-vocational classes.  That's not a large sum of money now but at the time the effect was quite staggering.  It was staggering because the following year saw a resultant 29 per cent drop in attendance at non-vocational evening classes in the Auckland region alone.  Such classes were mainly attended by women.   And now, such classes have not only been attacked, they’ve been almost completely decimated by the executive fiat of our current Minister of Education.

It's a nation-wide tragedy and a sad example of developmental, social and economic short-sightedness.  By the beginning of 2010, the Minister of Education, the Hon. Anne Tolley, will have stripped the ability of four out of five schools to be able to provide adult and community education classes.  This will have occured after a century or so of such classes being an integral part of the Aotearoa New Zealand educational landscape and culture.   ACE activities have provided start-ups for businesses, second chance education opportunities for those who struggled with formal education, and, a broad sweep of ongoing professional development activities for a wide spectrum of services and industries.  Hobby classes or educational recreation have, in fact, been only a small part of the ACE enterprise.  But while removing a cultural artefact such as ACE may be regrettable from a cultural and lifelong learning perspective, Minister Tolley’s attack on ACE activities is actually much more deadly than previous assaults.  It’s far more toxic because it undercuts the voluntary sector which is a crucial component of Aotearoa New Zealand’s well being.
  

Specifically, Minister Tolley has repeatedly reasoned that 'hobby classes' are not worthy of support but tragically, she clearly overlooks the reality that around half of the classes being provided by the ACE sector focus on providing training and continuing professional development for people who work as volunteers in the health and voluntary community services sectors.  And that sector, according to KPMG, provides around sixteen billion dollars worth of service to the population of our country each year.  (The figure of sixteen billion dollars, incidentally, was reported on national radio in 2004 as the value of services provided to Aotearoa New Zealand as then estimated by KPMG.  Furthermore, it was suggested at the time that this was actually a conservative estimate of the worth of services provided by our voluntary sector.  Thus the worth of voluntary services now is likely to be well in excess of sixteen billion dollars.) 

Regrettably, therefore, the Minister has not only taken away an important source of lifelong learning opportunity for families, but far, far more seriously, she has undercut the very core of training opportunities for the multi-billion dollar voluntary sector upon which Aotearoa New Zealand is very much dependent.   (A 2004 study of the sector by Jens and Belinda Hansen indicated that about half of the courses offered by ACE were concerned with training people from the voluntary sector.  Click here to access that report.)

Of course, during any recession, let alone one displaying the intensity and magnitude of that currently being experienced, the value of contributions made by the voluntary sector will most assuredly grow.  Hence, those providing such services need to be able to learn how best to deliver and ACE has been shown to be a major source of such learning.

It’s a question of supply and demand.  As the recession bites and as the government’s tax take shrinks, demands for voluntary social services grow and it's not long before demands outstrip the ability to supply.  Hence, what few services voluntary agencies are able to provide become increasingly sought after and more and more essential for increasing numbers of people.  As unemployment expands, and as family finances become leaner and meaner, and as requests for food, housing and health assistance escalate, the need for quality voluntary services swells.
  

Quite simply, therefore, the voluntary sector needs to be at its very best during tough times; it needs to be able to provide quality social services, especially when government coffers are being systematically shut off or curtailed.   For this reason, removing a ACE revenue from the voluntary sector is both short sighted and disingenuous to the New Zealand public. 
 

Denuding the voluntary sector of a central and essential source of training is, therefore, a long term folly which demonstrates serious social and economic irresponsibility.  It’s folly because removing ACE funding undermines the ability of the voluntary sector to teach volunteers to provide quality community social and health services.  It not only undermines the sector now, at a time when such services are very clearly needed, but also undermines them for the foreseeable future.  And given the ever increasing aged population of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the increased onset of age related health issues, the cost to our community as a consequence of ACE cuts is in many ways inestimable. 

In the Prime Minister's own electorate of Helensville, activities at a Men and Families Centre, which focuses amongst other things on preventing violence and substance abuse, will be cut because the local secondary school will no longer be in the business of providing funds to community agencies.  In the same electorate, a Women's Centre and a Community House will have their social services delivery and training capacity severely curtailed as a consequence of these cuts.  Moreover, the ACE cuts have also killed off a major source of training revenue for a local citizens' advice bureau.
  

So Minister Tolley’s folly is not just about removing most of the hobby classes upon which she seems to have become so fixated; it’s not just about removing a cultural icon of lifelong learning from our landscape; and it’s not about making many hundreds of secondary school based adult and community tutors and education organisers redundant.  No, it’s more seriously about undercutting the sixteen billion dollar plus voluntary sector upon which ordinary aging Kiwi mums, dads and grandparents have necessarily become ever more dependent.