The concepts of ‘learning society’ and ‘lifelong learning’ appear in a number of guises in the literature and in policy pronouncements (Coffield, 1999). Our project was concerned with policy and practice: the strategies to bring about a learning society in the wider national sense and to develop a learning culture at the level of organisations, groups and individuals. We focused on a particular feature – credit-based learning – and its role in the development of learning cultures at local level.

National policy statements about the Learning Society offer numerous visions of lifelong learning as part of a ‘learning culture’. The government's own vision of lifelong learning is set out in the White Paper, Learning to Succeed:

The underpinning of such lifelong learning by the development of a ‘learning culture’ is elaborated in the reports of the advisory group under the chairmanship of Bob Fryer (1997, 1999). Such a lifelong learning culture (Fryer, 1997) would be characterised by:

• • the absence of a ‘learning divide’ where a minority with qualifications continue to learn throughout their lives and the majority have few or no formal qualifications and do not participate in systematic learning after leaving school;

• • a shared responsibility for learning between individuals, employers and the state;

• • widened participation and higher levels of achievement – “many more people successfully get to the starting line” (p 5);

• • accessible learning: flexible but coherent and coordinated, learner oriented rather than provider oriented;

• • an emphasis on home, community and workplace as key places of learning;

• • a credit framework where interim achievement is awarded and units of credits can be accumulated into full qualifications according to need;

• • a changed language and vocabulary to describe learning (p 13);

• • inclusion and social cohesion (p 14);