Understanding Participation in Lifelong Learning in Northern Ireland: schooling, networks and the labour market John Field University of Warwick j.field@warwick.ac.uk Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland, August 27th to August 30th Introduction The concept and practice of lifelong learning are now generally treated as highly desirable policy goals. What practical priorities flow from the espousal of this broad goal. Most policy-makers would concur with adult education scholars in concluding that the decisive steps in creating effective adult learners are taken during childhood: nothing breeds demand for lifelong learning like early success. However, while this conventional hypothesis generally holds good, it has rarely been examined in detail in concrete social settings. Taking the six counties of Northern Ireland as a focus for inquiry, this paper examines empirical evidence of the relationship between (a) initial schooling and (b) adult participation in learning. Far from confirming the conventional hypothesis, the Northern Ireland pattern demonstrates a strong divergence between initial attainment and adult participation. While structural factors such as emigration account for a part of the divergence, I contend that social relationships and values have also played an important if largely unnoticed part in reducing demand for training and education among adults; these have also influenced the nature of schooling in Northern Ireland, in ways which may run counter to the development of lifelong learning. The paper introduces these factors, which are analysed with the help of recent debates about ‘social capital’. I conclude that these deep-rooted features of society and schooling offer a number of robust challenges to policy-makers and educationists in Northern Ireland. Divergence between initial and continuing education In a well-established standard text on adult learning, Patricia Cross concluded that: