National Strategies of Adult Education

Abstract

In spite of the fact that there is no agreement among adult educators on the issue whether the systemic regulation of adult education by the state is advantageous or not, there are indicators that several countries are trying to cletermine their national strategies of the adult education development. Creating such a strategy has been recently recommended in several international documents, i. e. OECD (1996), Unesco - CONFINTEA V (1997), connectecl as a ruJe with the life­long learning strategy. Such a strategy should incorporate the systemic regulation of aclult education as well. In our comparative analysis we tried to identify those national projects of different countries which could be defined as national strategies for the development of adult education in particular countries. After having identified them we made a comparative analysis to find out the basic elements which should be applied if the strategy is to be designated as entire and cohesive one. These elements are: a/ broad social, political and scientific schemes; b/ basic objectives of the programme; c/ a scientific-conceptual scheme of adult education; d/ a need for adult education; e/ functioning of the system and organisation of adult education in a country; g/ the present systemic regulation of adult education; hi a national programme; i/ the strategy of life-long learning. The results of the research show that the majority of the reviewed programmes can not be designated as entire and coherent strategies of aclult education although most of them applied most of the elements. Therefore they should rather be designated as programmes, agendas, campaigns etc. as they mostly satisfy the current societal needs of the particular country. In Slovenia we are trying to submit a strategy which will apply all the elements quoted.