All Party Parliamentary Group report puts ESOL firmly in the case for adult education reform
- Nov 2026
- SLC
The All Party Parliamentary Group on Further Education and Lifelong Learning has published Skills for life, work and place, the report of its adult education inquiry. Chaired by Jonathan Brash MP, with the Association of Colleges as secretariat, the inquiry ran for four months, drawing on more than 150 contributors, 85 call for evidence responses, five parliamentary evidence sessions and five learner focus groups.
The report makes 12 recommendations grouped under five ‘shifts’ needed for adult education to realise its full potential. ESOL appears in every chapter – Growth and Employment, Adults and Society, and Systems and Policy’ and has a recommendation of its own.
The report describes a sector asked to do more with less, highlighting decades of underinvestment and underappreciation. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, public spending on classroom-based adult learning has fallen by around 70% in real terms since the early 2000s. Among the call for evidence respondents:
There is urgency. The report states that the need for adult skills is greater than ever as so many of the challenges facing the country depend on having an adaptable and skilled workforce to meet them.
The report’s central finding is that England lacks a national vision for adult education. It names provision for adult speakers of other languages as part of that gap. With responsibility for adult skills now moved to DWP, the APPG sees an opening for reform. It welcomes the Lifelong Learning Entitlement but warns that it does little for learners below Level 4, where need is most acute.
The chapter on growth and employment places ESOL alongside literacy, numeracy and digital skills as gaps that stop adults progressing into technical training and priority sectors. Demand for ESOL is so high that several providers said ESOL alone could absorb their entire Adult Skills Fund allocation.
Education providers listed integrated ESOL and vocational pathways among the provision they are least able to offer at scale. The constraints are funding, staffing and infrastructure. Integrated provision is fragmented and localised but does exist: Liverpool City Region, for example, uses part of its devolved funding to pay for the extra cost of team teaching, with an ESOL teacher working alongside a vocational tutor. ESOL is also listed among the subjects with tutor shortages.
On careers guidance, the report finds that ESOL learners have variable experiences. Providers do not always establish learners’ prior education, skills or ambitions. Learners often get unclear information on how to access further learning or what level of English their career goals require. This can lead to inappropriate course placement or early withdrawal. Where guidance works well, it makes a difference: one ESOL learner described gaining confidence through interview preparation with her teacher.
The chapter on adults and society states that ESOL is central to integration, opportunity and progression. The benefits reach across generations, with parents better able to support their children’s schooling. ESOL also improves health literacy and reduces isolation. One learner said she could now speak to her child’s teacher and her doctor.
Dr Sam Rushworth MP gives a clear example from his constituency. Bishop Auckland is in an asylum dispersal region with no established diaspora community or hosting infrastructure, and community tensions have followed. He describes ESOL as essential to integration there.
Contributors made several further points:
The report cites the 2025 AoC and Bell Foundation report on the uneven approaches to ESOL across mayoral authorities, which called for a national strategy that mayors could apply locally. Finland is offered as an international comparison. Its vocational programmes combine language learning with mandatory workplace training and have no residency conditions.
Recommendation 10 on ESOL is clearly articulated and worth stating in full
Adult ESOL provision is central to community cohesion, enabling learners to participate fully in local life, access services, progress into work and build connections across diverse communities. A clearer national commitment is needed to ensure ESOL is consistently funded, locally coordinated and recognised as a core part of England’s integration and wellbeing agenda, requiring:
→ ESOL as an integral part of the new national vision for adult education, essential to community cohesion, integration and access to employment, with clear expectations for local coordination and provider involvement
→ protected funding for local delivery, improving and stabilising ESOL funding so colleges and community providers can offer flexible, accessible provision that meets local needs and supports new learners to participate confidently in their communities.
Three other recommendations are also relevant for the ESOL sector:
Reading between the lines
This is a clear parliamentary endorsement of a national ESOL commitment, framed as both economic and social policy and therefore very encouraging for the sector.
Some questions remain open. The report does not say what a minimum ESOL entitlement would contain or what it would cost. Residency rules are identified as a barrier, rated a major or moderate one by 45% of respondents, but none of the recommendations directly addresses them. The sector’s task now is to turn the APPG’s broad support into specific detail.
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