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Working and ageing
130 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

was, how far, and in what ways, training contributes to the employability of
older people, and to extending working life.
The study included a literature review; a short survey (which asked 15 500
adults about their skill levels and participation in training); an analysis of data
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from six major national sources ( ); and a reanalysis of qualitative interview
data from two previous surveys of older people and one of employers. The
findings were published in 2010 (McNair, 2010).
The report is the most extensive investigation to date into the role of training
in the older labour market, but most of the research was undertaken during a
very long period of economic growth, when attitudes to work might be
expected to be positive, and employers unusually aware of labour shortages.
Were the research to be repeated after the recession which began in 2008
some responses would probably be different.

7.5. Research base

One important finding is scarcity of research evidence on training and older
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workers in the UK and other English speaking countries ( ). This reflects the
position of older workers on the margin of several distinct academic disciplines.
Until recently, labour-market economists tended to treat older workers as a
contingent workforce, to be retained or driven out of the active labour market
in response to economic and business cycles, rather than a resource in their
own right. Gerontologists, by contrast, focused on ageing post-employment,
while those researching education and training concentrated mainly on
vocational education for young people and adults in mid-career, or on
education for leisure for those in retirement (McNair and Maltby, 2007).
The one exception to this pattern is research into training and
unemployment among older people, where there is a substantial body of work,
mainly commissioned by government to evaluate specific policy interventions
and schemes (Newton et al., 2005; Newton, 2008). This evidence is important
but concerns a small and unrepresentative group of older people engaged in
(often short lived) pilot programmes from which it would be difficult to
extrapolate to the wider older population.

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( ) UK labour force survey (2009), workplace employment relations survey (2004), the English
longitudinal study of ageing (Wave 3, 2007), the national adult learner survey (2005), the NIACE
annual adult learning survey (2009), and the survey of employer policies, practices and preferences
in relation to age (2006).
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( ) Though one may suspect that this is true for other countries as well.