Publisher's Synopsis
The Aylesbury Report was first published in 1981, the result of action research project in a large housing estate in South East London. It documents an almost unique moment in the history of adult education in England - when a local education authority encouraged its employees to be adventurous and experimental in the delivery of adult education. The Inner London Education Authority, who commissioned the original report, was not keen to publish it, and it was eventually published by Southwark Adult Education, hence the almost clandestine and underground distribution of the Report. Now that outreach and community based education is very firmly back on the political and educational agenda, the issues raised are again inspirational and extremely relevant. Key current debates which the Aylesbury Report illuminates include the following:?The pressures and actual work of outreach?Providers' relationships with voluntary organisations?What it means to 'consult the community'?Community education workers as professionals - whose side are they on??How are needs assessed??The tension between learner-focus and centralised bureaucracies?Staff development and training.;In reading the Aylesbury Report, adult education workers will discover that they are part of a continuum of developments in progressive and radical adult education stretching back over a hundred years, and draw strength for current and future work.
