Last Wednesday evening there was a reception at Westminster to mark 20 years since the inception of the Unison Return to Learn programme and the partnership with the WEA.
It was a really good event, organised by UNISON, which celebrated the programme and what it has meant to the union over those years.
Dave Prentis, the UNISON General Secretary, spoke warmly and with a real affection for Return to Learn saying it was one of the best things Unison had done as a union since it's establishment and thanking the people involved in it from the start and the WEA. Then Sue Highton, the elected president of Unison spoke saying that she had been a shop steward in the NHS in Sheffield when the programme started and had seen many colleagues benefiting from it - particularly union members who weren't (at least at first) activists. You could see from her comments - and those of some other local activists there - the pride there is in Unison's lay members in the programme as a ground breaking offer to to union members in the public sector - and in sustaining it for so long.
The WEA is currently working with Unison to update and renew our partnership agreement and to make sure this work continues. It's not always easy, as was said on the evening, when some of the key innovations in these programmes don't sit with the current skills emphasis in government. Unison and the WEA are founder members of CALL, the Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning, which is drawing these issues to the attention of parliament in a lobby in February.
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