The right of adults to education: A comparative analysis from the Portuguese and Italian policy agenda

Abstract

The subject of this article is the right of adults to education, with a focus on the critical analysis of education policy. We discuss human rights as a framework for citizenship in two national contexts of Southern Europe with the purpose of underlining key differences and similarities in countries with diverse histories but a similarly high number of low-qualified adults among their population.

In view of the above, this paper provides a detailed historical context for adult education policy in those countries and expounds on how current Portuguese and Italian educational policy agendas have considered the right of adults to education in the context of their democratic regimes.

For critical analysis we use Tomaševski’s theoretical 4A framework, built mainly for school contexts, and apply it to adult education policy. The objective is to understand ways of realizing the right of adults to education by means of policy measures undertaken by governments in those national states. Thus, we employed as an object of analysis the study of availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of adult education and learning against the backdrop of current changes occurring in Europe. This heuristic exercise makes a significant contribution to adult education literature in times of neoliberal trends.

Keywords

Adult education and learning availability accessibility acceptability adaptability realization of the right to education

Introduction

Global policy agendas often highlight that investments in lifelong learning are primary strategies toward overcoming the great contemporary challenges of competitiveness. It has been argued that specific education and training over the lifespan can enable adults to stay in the labour market and young people to achieve employability (OECD, 2012). Skills and competences have become the protagonists of the neoliberal narrative of a new generation of active policies (World Bank, 2010).

However, this human capital mainstream perspective has been criticized as an instrumental and partial way of understanding the role of lifelong education (Barros, 2014a; Borg and Mayo, 2005). Adult Learning and Education (ALE) has traditionally be considered within the paradigm of lifelong education as a key issue in promoting citizenship, equality, tolerance and hospitality, allowing for individuals’ active and responsible participation in society as human beings with rights (Darder et al., 2009; Freire and Macedo, 1987). According to this perspective, ALE can have a key role in building social justice and inclusion and in encouraging vulnerable adults to exercise the right to be full members in the political community (Arendt, 1979; Gelpi, 1985).

Therefore, we understand education as a right and we also consider ALE as a goal itself as well as a foundation for democratic citizenship (Mouffe, 2000; Torres, 2004). Nowadays, as in the past, this assumption could mean that we could be ‘in and against the state’¹ and the European Union (EU)’s governance concerning educational priorities and mandates. The ‘in and against the state movement’ states that it is possible, from a critical analysis of education policy perspective, to support national public and free basic educational agendas but at the same time to criticize them, in order to expand the vision of a quality public education for all as a lifelong right. We use this metaphor here to express the same idea, concerning the national agendas of both countries as well as current EU mandates for this field. Through this scope we can argue, in a sense, that in the field of ALE, recognizing life experiential learning of low-qualified adults is an intrinsic part of the right to have rights, and that it is crucial to construct a sense of belonging. Based on that aim, and current research, we could eventually suggest that those practices contribute to empower adults ‘to read the world’ (Freire, 2006) and engage in transformative educational lifelong projects. Simultaneously, the improved participation in civic life could also be a perceived benefit for adult learners as well as an opportunity for improving communicative competences. This is a role that ALE policy, when adopting a humanistic view, can play indirectly in matters of public concern (Tight, 2002; Titmus, 1989).

Framed within the above approach, the aim of this article is to discuss the right of adults to education in Portugal and in Italy as a broad issue of democracy and social justice even though these two countries differ considerably in their history of social, economic and institutional organizations. Occupational and internal labour markets also contribute to differentiate the path of each ALE policy agenda to a significant extent. However, Portugal and Italy have some similarities as well: they are two member states of the EU that share problems, such as high public debt, increasing youth unemployment, substantial adult long-term unemployment, significant number of low-qualified adults and youth school dropouts, economic crisis with cuts in welfare state expenditures and reform of the retirement system.

Against this backdrop, it is appropriate to compare these two countries, with different histories, because in accordance with their specific conditions, governing structures and constitutional provisions, the Portuguese and Italian states have developed measures for ALE and declared it an issue in terms of policy agendas. Consequently, our study intends to answer two questions: (a) How have Portuguese and Italian policy agendas taken into account education for adults in the last century? (b) Have those national measures realized the right of adults to education?

Methodological considerations

This article provides a comparison (Bray and Jiang, 2007; Bray and Thomas, 1995) between two case studies (Yin, 2014). It focuses on the different meanings, implications and outcomes that occurred in two countries concerning the policies of ALE. In particular, it examines how Portugal and Italy have declared in different policy documents through time a similar interest in taking specific measures to cope with low-qualified adults’ issues. It also analyses, using Tomaševski’s (2001) 4A framework, how the two countries have governed and regulated, in different ways, ALE as a right for their adult population. In order to discuss the aim and to answer research questions, we adopted a qualitative and comprehensive approach (Guba and Lincoln, 1994).

For critical analysis we use Tomaševski’s (2001) model and apply it, as a heuristic device, to adult education policy. The objective is to understand ways of realizing the right of adults to education by means of policy measures undertaken in those national states. To allow comparison, our article focuses on three fields for categorization: geographical location (Southern Europe: Portugal and Italy); non-locational demographic groups (low-qualified adults) and priority aspects of policy discourses on ALE. Empirical data used for the comparative analysis come from official policy documents (sources include programmes, laws and other public political instruments and tools) of Portuguese and Italian policy agendas on ALE. A significant part of the data corpus for the recent democratic period was collected in the broad study context of an international action-research project² on the European key competences for ALE that involved both authors.

Such a comparative analysis requires raising complexities with a multilevel rationale, avoiding superficial or simplistic results (Barros, 2009; Dale and Robertson, 2009); that is why we tried to understand the relevance of different historical elements and supranational entities influencing the political agenda of those two countries. Consequently, a historical contextualizing analysis (covering a century) is presented and developed. Two main political regime periods are considered: the dictatorship state (in Portugal from 1926 to 1974; in Italy from 1922 to 1945) and the democratic state (up to today). In the democratic period, some political measures have been pointed out in connection with: (a) international organization documents (OECD and UNESCO reports and surveys; EU communications and recommendations; and legislation impacts coming from the Maastricht Agreement in 1992 together with the Lisbon Agenda in 2001); and (b) local initiatives from civil society documents, as supranational levels of governance can no longer be separated from national and subnational ones (Evans et al., 2016; Sousa Santos and Jenson, 2000).

Theoretical framework

The subject of this article is the right of adults to education. This subject is addressed in two complementary ways: (a) from the review of some international organization discourses, particularly the UN and UNESCO arguments, highlighting that the states have the obligation to protect, respect and realize the citizens’ right to education as a matter of public concern; and (b) from a comparative case study of two concrete policy agendas and discourses developed through the adaptation and application of Tomaševski’s 4A model³ to ALE policy.

We take these complementary approaches because, as mentioned in the previous section, the right of adults to education must be understood and discussed by crossing the supranational, the national and the subnational scale of analysis. However, in this article our focus privileges, on the one hand, the supranational lens by considering the existence of the international human rights background, grounded in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights (UDHR, 1948) and, on the other hand, by considering national responsibilities arising from treaties adopted by those two states in order to reaffirm and guarantee these rights legally. Interestingly, it means that this subject is basically still an issue of a national right despite the efforts of international organizations such as UNESCO.

Thus, concerning the UN role in this topic, Article 26.2 of the UDHR states that:

Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance, and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the UN for the maintenance of peace.

In accordance with this framework, UNESCO has performed a very important role in the field of research by developing a vision of educational policy and governance as a vehicle to promote the human right to literacy and ALE as something more than mere alphabetization and free basic Education for All (UNESCO, 2011). Hence, UNESCO’s 2016 Recommendation on Adult Learning and Education underlines the idea that ‘the aim of adult learning and education is to equip people with the necessary capabilities to exercise and realize their rights and take control of their destinies’ (UNESCO, 2016: 8). This fundamental idea is already present, as the main ethos, in the influential 1972 UNESCO report: Learning To Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow.

Indeed, both the UN and UNESCO discourses selected above have established an international basis for humanistic policy agendas that have inspired policies and practices in several European national contexts. However, the level, the form and the content of social rights have been the object of political lobbying in the EU; thus, it impacts both the extension of the social and educational policies (Leibfried and Pierson, 1995) and the public awareness of social and educational justice (Bassey, 2016; Grant and Gibson, 2013). Consequently, it requires a permanent critical and vigilant attention to violations or deprivations of the right of adults to education, particularly of those most vulnerable, because the impact of diverse realities of social inequalities and injustices can lead to different opportunities of access to primary, secondary and higher education, as well as to different educational achievements (Antunes and Barros, 2019; Biasin, 2017).

The UNESCO Recommendation on Adult Learning and Education states that: ‘all Member States, according to their specific conditions, governing structures and constitutional provisions, should develop comprehensive, inclusive and integrated policies for adult learning and education in its various forms’ (UNESCO, 2015: 8). This quote makes it clear that embracing ALE as a human right is fundamentally a responsibility and an obligation for democratic governments. Based on that, this article considers the case study of two national states’ responsibilities to reaffirm and to guarantee the right of adults to education.

In order to develop this analytical dimension, we resort to the theoretical contribution of Katarina Tomaševski, who was, from 1998 to 2004, the first United Nations Commission on Human Rights’ special rapporteur on the right to education.⁴ Tomaševski’s inspiration is deeply linked to an equalitarian perspective of human and social development that includes a strong criticism of human capital approaches to education (Klees and Thapliyal, 2007; Tomaševski, 1989). Tomaševski’s approach argues that education as a right is an indispensable means of realizing other rights.

This root cause implies agency and compromises because ‘the right to have rights, or the right of every individual to belong to humanity, should be guaranteed by humanity itself’ (Arendt, 1979: 298). Thus, the performance of national states on this subject should be kept under regular public observation. Indeed, this is an important part of the mission of critical adult educators and researchers, as we can choose to use educational and scientific work to support popular struggles for greater democracy, equality and social justice (Crowther et al., 2006). In this sense, Tomaševski’s approach to this subject is very useful because it improves the way the right to education (or the denial of the right to education for several social groups in many countries) is understood in analytical terms. However, her contribution remains anchored in relation to child learners and their contexts.⁵ Nevertheless, we believe the 4A framework could also represent an important heuristic device in the field of ALE for those researchers committed to the vision of ALE as a human right. Therefore, our analytical exercise could be an opening output to reframing policy studies in ALE in light of human rights, giving clarity to and concretizing our work as social justice educators, because it refocuses attention on a broader array of fundamental rights to be accomplished by national states, particularly in post-welfare European democratic regimes, and it explicitly contests, with concrete evidence, our globalized and neoliberal context which is heavily influencing educational ALE reforms in Southern Europe’s current times of austerity (Barros, 2018; Marescotti, 2017; Mascio and Natalini, 2014; Moury and Freire, 2013). Those are our main arguments for comparing the two selected countries.

In this light, we strongly agree with Vargas Tamez (2012) when he states that Tomaševski’s 4A scheme represents a valuable tool to (a) analyse ALE as a human right in the context of states’ obligations, and (b) evaluate national policies, measures and programmes in this field. According to Vargas Tamez,

Thinking the [ALE] EPJA as a human right implies a change of perspective. You need the distancing of the common logic of unsatisfied basic needs and ‘educational backwardness’, and the recognition of the obligations and responsibilities of the State for the guarantee of this right; that is, that the right to education only can be guaranteed when educational services are available to all persons; When are affordable universally; When the obstacles have been removed (economic, cultural, structural, gender, etc.) for access, enjoyment and use; When are adequate and relevant not only to the educational needs of the groups who are aimed, but also their desires, interests and aspirations of learning. (Vargas Tamez, 2012: 41)

Thus, in this article we have intended to develop such an analysis in order to understand possible ways of realizing the right of adults to education by means of policy measures undertaken in Portugal and Italy. According to this approach, we realize at the same time that availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability are not necessarily the standard four attributes used in every international treaty for public education policy agendas and, as such, national historical contextualization of ALE agendas is always needed. We present that later in this article.

With that having been said, we consider Tomaševski’s analytical proposal a useful way to clarify the right to education in terms of tangible factors. Presented in more detail below, it is our central tool for a better understanding of the realization of the right of adults to education on the Portuguese and Italian policy agendas. The 4A scheme assumes that governments have an obligation to make education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. These 4As are to be respected, protected and fulfilled by the governments of each country, as the prime duty-bearer (Tomaševski, 2006). In fact, this main assumption enables us to undertake such a comparison beyond the school environment, particularly in two national contexts with significant percentages of low-qualified adults. The implicit aim is to expand the role of research whilst reinforcing government responsibility for ALE. Furthermore, this scheme gives us a lens through which we can also better consider the national tensions coming with the shift, that occurred in Europe, from the Keynesian mandate (with lifelong education political priorities) to the post-Keynesian mandate (with lifelong learning political priorities) advocated for the field of ALE policy (Barros, 2012). This kind of information is required for governments willing to develop ALE as a human right in current times.

The 4A framework shortly revisited

In Tomaševski’s terms, education is a meaningful right in national contexts if it is available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. These four attributes must then be present as a guide for policy development and implementation. Indeed, both before and after her role in the UN, with relevant work done on this matter, those 4As were considered as essential to monitoring ways of realizing human rights in several different domains. For example, Anyinam (1987) has drawn attention to the need to re-examine these attributes as applied to ethno-medical policy and practices in Africa. And a considerable amount of work has been done subsequently to develop the 4A framework on literacy around the globe.⁶ However, in the field of ALE there is a scattering of contributions and therefore this article seeks to examine those four attributes as applied to ALE national policy measures in more detail.

Considering Tomaševski’s work on the 4A scheme, Availability embodies two different governmental obligations: the right to education as a civil and political right requires the government to permit the establishment of educational institutions by non-state actors, while the right to education as a social and economic right requires the government to establish them, or fund them, or use a combination of these and other means so as to ensure that education is available. (Tomaševski, 2001: 13)

This should mean that education has adequate territorial coverage, as well as infrastructures and trained teachers able to support the delivery of education. When adapting the 4As to monitoring ALE national policy agendas, we considered the nature and extent of availability by the presence of different types and modalities in the contexts of public ALE national offers. Particularly we think that availability of ALE can be viewed in two main ways: availability in terms of total supply of practices and trained educators, and availability as a geographical distribution.

Considering Tomaševski’s work on the 4A scheme, Access is defined differently for different levels of education. The government is obliged to secure access to education for all children in the compulsory education age-range, but not for secondary and higher education. Moreover, compulsory education ought to be free of charge while post-compulsory education may entail the payment of tuition and other charges and could thus be subsumed under ‘affordability’. (Tomaševski, 2001: 13)

This should mean that the national education system is free and non-discriminatory, and positive steps are taken to include all, particularly the most marginalized and poor. When adapting the 4As to monitoring ALE national policy agendas, we considered not simply the geographical proximity of practices but also the presence of measures that allowed, with concrete criteria, the practices to explore cultural, social and psychological proximity with heterogeneous adults, looking for the adequacy of ‘accessibility coverage’ (Anyinam, 1987).

Within the context of Tomaševski’s work on the 4A scheme, Acceptability is an important facet of education that has to be highlighted by the addition of ‘quality’ before education in policy documents, thus urging governments to ensure that education which is available and accessible is of good quality. The minimal standards of health and safety, or professional requirements for teachers, thus have to be set and enforced by the government. (Tomaševski, 2001: 13)

This should mean that the indicators for the quality of the education system as a whole (including schools and related bodies, teaching and learning environment, etc.) have been adequately achieved. But also, the quality and relevance of contents of education, monitoring what the system offers to the students (i.e. quality of teaching and learning process, curriculum etc.). When adapting the 4A to monitoring ALE national policy agendas, we considered acceptability by studying reports on relevance of ALE by adult learners and practitioners. Public discourses by policy-makers giving importance (or not) to the quality of public educational offers in this sector also provide information on the ways ALE as a human right for adults is accepted.

Finally, in Tomaševski’s 4A scheme it is pointed out that Adaptability has been best conceptualized through the many court cases addressing the right to education of children with disabilities. Domestic courts have uniformly held that schools ought to adapt to children, following the thrust of the idea of the best interests of each child in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. (Tomaševski, 2001: 15)

This should mean that formal education systems evolve with the changing demands of society and adapt to suit individual specific needs. When applying the 4As to monitoring ALE national policy agendas, we considered that ALE systems are generally regarded as open and flexible, usually being inscribed in a non-formal educational paradigmatic approach. This openness of ALE, therefore, makes it more adaptive, varying in nature and degree, and thus being capable of incorporating new elements to meet new contextual pressures upon society in different ways.

The above exercise has borne in mind the main structural and cultural differences between schooling and adult education, highlighting what the 4A framework could look like in the specific context of ALE. Thus, later in this article, we undertake a comparative analysis of the availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of these two national policy agendas of ALE.

By focusing the discussion on the framework of human rights in the present-day democratic political arena in two national contexts of Southern Europe, a historical contextualization of the main national realities is needed. In view of that, this paper provides a detailed historical context for adult education policy with the purpose of underlining key differences and similarities in countries with diverse histories but a similarly high number of low-qualified adults among their population. We draw attention to Portuguese and Italian specificities rooted in socio-political backgrounds, and how current educational policy agendas have considered the right of adults to education in the context of each democratic regime. Therefore, the next two sections are dedicated to this description and analysis.

The Portuguese policy agenda of ALE – historical contextualization

In order to introduce the analysis of the ALE policies in Portugal from the dictatorship state period until today, Table 1 displays the policy measures undertaken by governments. Administratively, Portugal is de jure a unitary state and the public policies have a national scope despite the existence of two autonomous regions.

Table 1.

Portuguese ALE policy measures through time.

1952	Popular education plan
1953–1956	National adult education campaign
1971	Primary school supplementary courses for adults
1979	National literacy plan for basic education for adults
1986	Second chance / recurrent education for adults
1999–2006	Knowing Plus programme
2006–2012	New Opportunities programme
2016	Qualify programme

During the dictatorship state (1926–1974)

In Portugal, the fascist government lasted four decades (48 years). During this regime the ‘education of the people’ was seen as likely to turn into subversion (Melo, 2007). Consequently, the agenda of public policy concerning the education of adults did not go beyond a discursive intention⁷ of promoting literacy and numeracy to a certain extent. The education of adults was explicitly designated by the dictator Salazar himself as a ‘method of the poor’, which was based on ideological manipulation and curricula simplification (Ramos, 1993). The general vision was connected to the idea that the regime should not teach the people how to read. And, indeed, in 1930 a total of 62% of the population over the age of seven was unable to read (Candeias, 2001). Thus, the educational mandate was clearly geared towards the creation of qualified elites at the expense of mass literacy.

However, in the 1950s two literacy programmes were on offer for adults, namely the Popular Education Plan in 1952, and the National Adult Education Campaign, promoted between 1953 and 1956. Regarding this agenda, Melo and Benavente comment that ‘for a little more than two years, these adult education courses delivered about 150 000 certificates of elementary primary studies’ (1978: 29), and underline the compulsive nature of the measures taken, by remembering that ‘to get a driver’s license or to get a place in a factory, it was necessary to have “the paper”’ (1978: 29). Those were policy instruments used by the regime to obtain statistical improvements in the Portuguese literacy panorama, as required by the European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA), which Portugal joined in 1959. By 1960, statistics showed that 30% of the population over the age of seven could not read, which was considered a big step forward for the modernization of the country (Candeias, 2001).

In the final phase of the fascist government, educational policy promoted the overall increase of compulsory education for all and in 1971 the Primary School Supplementary Courses for Adults were launched. However, those courses were not adequate for adults and mostly ‘only repeated the format of the courses of elementary basic education for children but were delivered in the evenings (the same teachers, the same issues, strategies, activities, forms of assessment of children and especially those same purposes)’ (Silvestre, 2003: 111). Therefore, when the dictatorship finally succumbed it could be said that the education of adults did not have a past in Portugal. And as happens under a dictatorship state, people were deprived of the enjoyment of many rights and freedoms, and the right of adults to education was particularly denied, preventing people from having access, through literacy, to the ‘dynamic nexus’ of social relations, communication and praxis (Benavot, 2015); thus this reality threatened the relational support necessary to foster autonomy as the pillar of citizenship.

During the democratic state (1974 to the present time)

In Portugal the democratic government emerged four decades ago. During this 45-year-old regime the policy agenda of ALE was intermittent and had some contradictory mandates (Lima, 2005). As part of the post-revolutionary educational agenda several political literacy measures can be mentioned, albeit they had little real impact or implementation.⁸

The first framework law appeared in 1979 and was concerned with the elimination of illiteracy and the creation of basic education of adults.⁹ It led to one of the most important Portuguese political measures in the field of ALE: the National Literacy Plan for the Basic Education of Adults. The main policy documents and discourses that had an influential role in delivering this literacy plan were, at the national level, the new Constitution of the Republic of 1976, and, at the international level, the UNESCO report Learning to Be: The World of Education Today and Tomorrow of 1972; the UNESCO report Towards an Education Policy in Portugal of 1975; and UNESCO’s Recommendation on the Development of Adult Education of 1976. This literacy plan reflected, then, the humanistic mandate promoted by UNESCO and it was important because it expressed a view of policy-makers that accepted and valued the right of adults to education for the first time in the Portuguese policy context. This literacy plan had an open scope for conceptualizing the field, with several open and flexible modalities, from popular education to local development, and was designed to be available and free with widespread geographical coverage. It was to be implemented over a time period of a decade with two phases of execution of five years each. However, as a political right turn in government took place in 1985, this plan was abandoned, being considered by national policy discourses as not in line with the required modernization of education, viewed as necessary for a country that had just entered the European Economic Community in 1986.

As a result, a new political period started where the sector of ALE was marginalized and not considered a political priority. Hence, the educational agenda embraced a vocation mandate and the basic law of the education system¹⁰ was created, through which adult education was mostly confined to a second-chance formal education. Indeed, during this decade the public provision available for adults was known as recurrent education, developed as free compensatory evening courses for adults delivered at schools. Consequently, by the last decade of the last century, the educational qualification level of adults was still very low (Benavente et al., 1995). In this respect, Villaverde Cabral highlights the fact that ‘in 1950, about half of the Portuguese population was simply illiterate (. . .) half a century later, in addition to those that were not caught by the literacy process (about 15% of the population), there were nearly 50% functional illiterates’ (2002: 51).To emphasize how much this Portuguese educational reality becomes worrying, from a framework of human rights, he continues that ‘at the beginning of the 21st century there is nothing remotely comparable with this fact in Europe’ (2002: 51).

After being governed by a right-wing ideology from 1985 to 1995, a left-wing government took office and its agenda included relaunching the ALE policy and practices in Portugal. Indeed, between 1996 and 1999 several preparatory political initiatives occurred with this purpose, such as the new Educational Pact for the Future (1996), the Carta Magna for Lifelong Education and Training (1998), the strategy document entitled A Bet on Educational Participation of All (Melo et al., 1998), and the constitution of an Official Delegation to participate in the 5th CONFINTEA (International Conferences on Adult Education) of UNESCO. Together these elements operated as the building blocks for the second most important Portuguese political measure in the field of ALE that took place in the democratic period: Knowing Plus: Programme for the Development and Expansion of Adult Education and Training, 1999–2006. This political programme introduced in Portugal the innovative idea of shaping the national ALE agenda having the recognition of prior learning (RPL) as a central pillar to realize the right of adults to education. Therefore, since 2001 the policy and practices of ALE have been diversified,¹¹ although keeping, as a common characteristic, the experiential learning of adults as an adaptable attribute and departure point for educational processes mainly based on tutorial practices and biographical approaches, being inscribed in a non-formal educational approach.

A third Portuguese political measure in the field of ALE took place in 2006, the New Opportunities Programme – 2006–2012, and was responsible for expanding the availability of the RPL system while at the same time creating a marketing campaign through which a completely new public visibility and acceptability of the field of ALE was obtained. However, that political measure¹² also introduced some new tensions and ambivalences in the framework of the 21st-century new public Portuguese panorama of ALE (Barros, 2014b, 2016). Some shifts in the main vision supporting the mandate for ALE, recently reshaped by the paradigm of lifelong learning, have been expressed in recent political discourses. For example, policy priority changes are visible by the adoption of politics of measurement in the field of ALE, mainly supported by a rational of outcomes-based assessments in the RPL system in Portugal (Barros, 2019). Thus, several risks for the humanistic ethos previously present in the agenda have been debated in research literature since then, with the intention of avoiding the manipulation of the ALE agenda in order only to achieve statistical demands, as was the case in the past during the dictatorship regime. After a dark period when the ALE agenda was suddenly suspended within the austerity policy context introduced in Portugal by a right-wing government between 2012 and 2015, a turning point seems to be currently happening through the fourth Portuguese political measure in the field of ALE that was introduced in 2016: the Qualify Programme. A new political priority and importance, in the framework of human rights, has been given again to the field and previous practices have resumed, being once again available throughout the country.

From this historical contextualization, it seems clear that the Portuguese national policy agendas have considered education for adults differently during the last century. However, only after the implementation of the RPL policy and practices in 2001 has the right of adults to education been consistently considered as a framework for Portuguese ALE policy measures. Bearing this in mind, we have selected three policy objects for study: (a) the Knowing Plus measure; (b) the New Opportunities measure; and (c) the Qualify measure, to be analysed with the Tomaševski (2001) theoretical and analytical framework, as presented earlier in this article.

The Italian policy agenda of ALE: historical contextualization

The Italian ALE measures are shown in Table 2, which displays the different policy measures adopted since national unity and during the dictatorship period until today. Even when considering the same political regimes (dictatorship and democracy), Table 2 shows relevant current differences which are better understood according to the diverse economic and sociocultural regional contexts. Administratively, Italy is a republic with a central government, yet with several regions operating as autonomous entities with defined powers, of which five are autonomous macro-regions with special statute. Thus, even if the main public policies have a national scope, regional policy agendas can be differently managed.

Table 2.

Italian ALE policy measures through time.

1908	Evening and holiday local schools for adults
1911	Nationalization of local schools for illiterate adults
1919	National agency for the education of illiterate adults
1922	Committee of Struggle Against Illiteracy (CLA)
1947	Emergency schools for illiterate adults
1951	National Union for the Fight against Illiteracy (UNLA) – Centres of Culture for Lifelong Education
1973	‘150 hours’ law
1997	Permanent territorial Centres for Education and Training in Adulthood (CTPs)
2012/2014	Provincial Centres of Instruction for Adults (CPIA)

From national unity until the end of the dictatorship period (1922–1945)

Since its formation as a nation, Italy’s big issue has been illiteracy (Vigo, 2017). In 1861, 78% of the population was illiterate, with the highest percentage among women (84%); 10 years later, in 1871, the percentage had dropped slightly to 73%, but in some regions in the south, illiteracy affected about 90% of the population. The Italian government decided to tackle the problem starting with children, not with adults.¹³ Very little had been done for adults. Indeed, the first legislative measure of the Italian government was the Orlando law (Law 8 July 1908, no. 407), which established evening and holiday schools for adults. With the goal of encouraging participation, the law set forth that writing and reading abilities were required to be granted permission to use weapons, to obtain a professional license or to receive prize money. However, given that these schools were local, without state funding, they were implemented only in a few areas of Italy. During national unity, and before the fascist dictatorship, two laws tried to tackle the problem without arranging effective solutions in practice: the Daneo-Credaro law (Law 4 June 1911, no. 487) nationalized local schools for illiterate adults without providing funding for this operation; and the Baccelli Decree (Royal Decree 2 September 1919, no. 1723) established a National Agency for the Education of Adult Illiterates with the aim of teaching writing and reading to Italians, who massively emigrated to the United States and to Latin America to find a job.

During the fascism period (1922–1945), this agency was transformed into the Committee of Struggle against Illiteracy (CLA); illiterate adult schools were used for propaganda, gathering consensus towards the regime. Schools were also used for social and political control of adults during the dictatorship period. The Gentile school reform (1923) concerned exclusively children and adolescents shaped by the fascist culture; the educational curriculum was split into two paths: one focused on classical and academic studies (attended by the best performers or by elites); one was directed to vocational training (taken by other students or the lower classes). This reform remained unchanged for decades and it settled in the Italian formal education system (Bertagna, 2006): adults were not considered as learners or as citizens and they did not have regular training courses or formal dedicated courses available in the territory. The illiteracy data in the 1941 census were not revealed, probably because, as Russo (2001) argues, fascism was not able to curb the problem and ‘civilize’ the nation.

The problem of adult illiteracy became worse as a result of the two World Wars; as a consequence, in 1947, the Ministry of Education started ‘emergency schools’ (DL 17 December, 1947, no. 1559): public courses in popular schools or in local adult centres aimed at more than 30,000 illiterate adults. Limited funding, poor pedagogical culture, lack of political planning, inefficiency of some schools and bribery may account for the limited success of this measure. The 1951 census revealed that over 13% of Italian adults were still illiterate (ISTAT, 2011); in particular, women did not usually attend evening or holiday schools but only sewing, mending and embroidery courses. The fascist government underestimated the problem (Russo, 2001); ALE was not considered as a proper form of education but only a ‘minor’ and reparative measure aimed at adults defined as ‘poor and disinherited’.

The teaching methods used with children were applied to adults, focusing on instrumental learning and on its mechanical and repetitive aspects (Marescotti, 2017). The most significant pedagogical approaches developed in Italy at that time – the Montessori educational system and Gentile’s philosophical actualism – were not followed up when it came to teaching adults to read, write and do maths.

In the Italian legislative provisions, adult education was not considered as a right of individuals, as a citizenship right. This lack of vision made the condition of illiterates difficult, as they were adults living mainly in rural areas, belonging to the weakest segments of the social groups (urban underclass, agricultural population, fishermen) and with low income and low-wage jobs. ALE was not considered a part of the formal education system but a mere completion of basic education or further training only for those who had not had the time/chance to study. This would produce significant consequences in individuals’ lives and for the social, economic and cultural development of Republican Italy.

During the republican state (1945 to the present time)

The 1961 census shows that although the percentage of adult illiterates (8.3%) had improved, many areas in southern Italy, in the north east and in the centre of the country exceeded the average values. In Republican Italy, ALE continued to have a negative meaning of reparation: it was identified with literacy and basic skills and associated with popular/poor schools. In the reform plan of public education that in the 1960s and in the 1970s built up the formal system,¹⁴ALE was not included.¹⁵

In those years, the concept of lifelong education started to expand. Through the documents of the Council of Europe (1970) and through the conferences (Montreal 1960, Teheran 1965, Nairobi 1975) and the UNESCO reports (Faure et al., 1972), a new vision of education for adults as a right at every age was required. Adult permanent education, no longer limited to mere literacy, was conceived as a strategic function for the development of democracy and as a right of every man/woman. Anna Lorenzetto, one of the founders of the UNLA and an active member at UNESCO, stressed the problem of adult education as a crucial factor for the modernization of Italy. She regarded the national education system not as limited to the school system but rather in the logic of open educating communities, in order to dignify all adults as Italian citizens (Russo, 2001).

Despite this cultural perspective change, national policies continued to view ALE as an issue of little interest for the country. For this reason, the first legislative act dedicated to ALE emerged in Italy outside of the formal school system or public laws. During the youth revolts and the trade union protests in the early 1970s, after a successful struggle for the national contract of metalworkers, ALE started to be considered as a fundamental right for social participation or democratic development of individuals. The so-called ‘150 hours’, successively extended to all workers’ categories, was a non-governmental measure achieved in 1973. It related to the duration of the period paid by the owner over a timeframe of three years, which permitted low-skilled adults to obtain their compulsory education or their middle-school certificate. The ‘150 hours’ was not included in the formal system of education but was the first effective form of continuing education where education was conceived and guaranteed as a right to Italian adults. For the first time, illiteracy was not the only goal; this measure recognized an adult’s rights as a human person, contributing to personal fulfilment, to social mobility, to cultural development and to active citizenship. For two decades, the ‘150 hours’ was the only institutional form of ALE that created opportunities, enhancing social participation and cultural engagement of Italian adults. Its cultural and social value was not identified with basic literacy or professional training, but it was focused on permanent education and the continuous training perspective (including qualification, specialization, refinement, further development and expert knowledge) during adulthood.

At the end of the 1990s, the first national measure on ALE was the establishment of the Permanent Territorial Centres for Education and Training in Adulthood – CTPs (Ministerial Order 29 July 1997). The Italian government recognized the CTPs’ educational, cultural and social mandate aimed at improving the new training needs of the adult population and the global labour market requirements. The policy responded to the progressive process of Europeanization of the country (Marescotti, 2017) based on the Treaty of Maastricht (1992) and on the Schengen Agreement on the movement of goods and people (1995). The guidelines emerging from international organizations such as UNESCO, based on the wide dissemination of the Delors report ‘Education: a treasure within’ (1996) and on the Hamburg Treaty (1997), opened the country to the lifelong learning framework wherein ALE found a new place.

The first national report ‘Education in adulthood’ (Gallina and Lichtner, 1996) introduced a new perspective for ALE, regarded as a crucial issue to deal with the profound transformations in social processes, with the changes in the job market and with the new identity needs of Italian adults. The report considers Italian ALE as a form of non-formal learning and underlines how ALE is not only about the adults at school but is also about the adult’s right to learn and represents an individual and social resource for the country. According to an integrated training system vision, where different targets (children, adolescents, adults, elderly), organizations (schools, associations, institutions, companies), needs and forms of learning (formal, non-formal, informal) are linked, ALE found its place in CTPs as a specific matter. CTPs can be also considered as a state response to the first large migratory flows from Albania and from North Africa in the early 1990s that dramatically raised the problem of thousands of people without a house or job and who had to learn the Italian language. Cultural initiatives in the territory and educational offers for adults, both Italian and immigrants, had a new institutional reference point in CTPs. CTPs spread locally and were open late afternoon and evening (when compulsory school, which functioned in the morning with the young, was finished).

However, the CTPs did not have autonomy in managing ALE programmes because they were dependent on the formal education system: the director and the operatives were the principal and the teachers that came from primary or middle schools of the territory. According to the population target attending, CTPs offered basic courses split into two training offers: computer and digital skills courses, language (English, German) courses, and arts for Italian adults; Italian literacy for immigrant adults. CTPs transformed their educational mandate in evening schools for low-skilled adults or for illiterate immigrants who needed to obtain the green card to stay or work in the country. In the new and different context, the ‘historical’ reparative meaning of ALE, restricted to basic competences in education or in training, is confirmed in Italy (Gallina, 2000).

This trend was also evident when, in 2012, CPTs were transformed into Provincial Centres of Instruction for Adults (CPIAs), which would be operational in the national territory from 2014. The educational objectives linked to cultural, personal and social improvement of adults got lost in the main purpose: the organization of language courses to develop functional literacy both for Italian and immigrant adults.

CPIA courses are now organized nationwide, even in prisons, and integrated with the formal educational system, with specifically assigned teachers. Their goal is the achievement of a school certificate (ISCED 2 and ISCED 3 levels)¹⁶ or a professional qualification. CPIAs can be considered the national policy response to the PIAAC-OECD survey warning that Italian adults were the worst in literacy and in numeracy among countries participating in the study (ISFOL, 2014). CPIAs represent the first actual recognition of the Italian government that adults need specific education, with dedicated spaces or teaching methods, accompanied by trained professionals committed to this purpose. Therefore, CPIAs’ activities are mainly addressed to the high numbers of foreigners who work and live in Italy but do not know the language appropriately and are poorly integrated into the social and professional contexts. Furthermore, some CPIA projects are specifically committed to tackling the problem of early school leavers, which in Italy has reached one of the highest percentages of European countries (Biasin, 2018; EU/EACEA/Eurydice, 2016; European Commission/EACEA/Eurydice, 2016). New forms of illiteracy are now addressed by CPIAs with the social goal of offering educational opportunities to support new forms of citizenship, those facing economic instability, migrations of newcomers and asylum seekers, and the social crisis that affects the country (Tarozzi et al., 2013).

Discussion on the realization of the right of adults to education in Portugal and in Italy

The historical contextualization of the ALE policy agenda presented above underlines the different policy measures adopted to address the common issue of the high percentage of adults with a low-qualification educational profile living in the two countries. Table 3, comparing policy agendas from a chronological standpoint, displays the range of ALE measures implemented since the beginning of democracy periods.

Table 3.

Comparative ALE policy agendas (democratic regimes) in Portugal and Italy.

Portugal	Period	Italy
	1947	Emergency schools for illiterate adults
	1951	UNLA Centres of Culture for Lifelong Education
	1973	‘150 hours’ law
National literacy plan for basic education for adults	1979
Second chance / recurrent education for adults	1986
	1997	Permanent territorial Centres for Education and Training in Adulthood (CTPs)
Knowing Plus programme	1999–2006
New Opportunities programme	2006–2012
	2012–2014	Provincial Centres of Instruction for Adults (CPIAs)
Qualify programme	2016

Portugal has focused on ALE mainly through programmes dedicated to the purpose of increasing the level of basic and secondary education as well as the professional qualifications of low-skilled adults. In this context adults were considered as the active working part of the population who needed specific strategies to increase their key competences, professional skills and communicative capacities for civic participation. Therefore, since the Lisbon Agenda, three policy programmes have created a nationwide network of specialized ALE centres, where most of the ALE practices are offered. A characteristic mark of those measures has been the focus on RPL.

Italy has addressed the problem of low-qualified adults by focusing attention on the setting-up of structures, facilities and legislative recommendations on ALE. Since the advent of democracy, measures are characterized by a central state organization, managing ALE as a reparative form of education provided for adults who did not complete mandatory instruction. However, ALE has tended to be conceived as a strategy restricted to some narrow groups of the population, like immigrants who need Italian language courses. This calls for specific centres of instruction, located in the national territory. Since the 1990s, EU recommendations have been the cornerstone for the creation of ALE measures resulting in the foundation (and the main thrust) of the national institution dedicated to ALE (first the CTPs and now the CPIAs).

How these two different policy agendas and mandates have affected the realization of the right of adults to education in the two countries is what Tomaševski’s model applied to ALE reveals. The 4A model considers availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability as factors with different substantive evidence and these are used in this article as a framework for discussion.

When the RPL was introduced in Portugal as public provision, the levels of school certification of the adult population were very low. According to public data of the National Statistical Institute, in 2001 in a population of 4,892,000 active adults, 8.9% had no instruction, 33.9% had only four years of basic education, 21.4% had six years of basic education, 14.6% had nine years of basic education, and just 12% had the secondary education level of instruction. Data revealed that 69.9% of literate active adults had not completed basic education but had diverse professional and life experience nonetheless.

With the transformation of CTPs into CPIAs, ALE was finally recognized as a specific part of the formal education system, with self-governing management separate from schools, but its aims were once more restricted to adult literacy. Now the mission of CPIAs is strictly directed at some target audiences, such as low-qualified adults, early school leavers and, particularly, illiterate immigrants. Current ALE is conceived as a form of reparation or compensative learning addressed to those who have interrupted (or did not have) regular education. This trend was noticed in the aftermath of the PIAAC-OECD survey Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (ISFOL, 2014). Data showed that Italy was in the last position, 24th of 24 country participants in the study on adult literacy competence, underlining the unresolved problems in this field.¹⁷ Levels of performance were distributed unequally as geographic results detailed great variations between the five autonomous macro-regions of Italy. From the data it is clear that as age goes up, average scores in literacy go down, especially in the eldest cohort of 55- to 65-year-olds.

Thus, according to the above (short) current statistical panorama a key similarity between Portugal and Italy clearly emerges: a low-qualified person is the shared profile for an ageing national adult population, and this reaches a significantly high number in both contexts. Against this backdrop, in this section of the article we intend to draw attention to the possible ways through which those two policy agendas (with concrete RPL programmes in Portugal and concrete CTP and CPIA measures in Italy) realized the right of adults to education, according with the adapted framework of the 4A model.

Availability of ALE

By targeting vulnerable adults with low or no qualifications, the RPL policy in Portugal, according to its main pedagogical scope, has regarded the right of adults to education as a path of social justice. The main expression of this has been the innovative characteristics of Portuguese practices of RPL, which have been strongly connected to validation activities. In the content of all three ALE policy measures analysed, the methodological processes seek to give social value to experiential learning, reinforcing (self- and hetero-) recognition of adults’ experiences. In this framework, providing counselling and guidance to low-skilled adults has been a major priority. Professionals (as adult educators) were trained by national public initiatives to engage in the RPL processes and pedagogical practices. Thus, in the Portuguese case there is evidence of availability, in terms of trained educators’ criteria, and it represents an effective contribution to the promotion of social inclusion by means of personalized support provided before, during and after validation (Barros, 2011).

Indeed, since the creation of this educational modality, Portuguese adult learners can go through an RPL process by two main routes, which can be followed in a separate (single certification) or in an integrated way (double certification): (a) the academic process – aiming at improving the qualification levels of adults who do not have basic or secondary education certificates; (b) the vocational process – for adults who do not have formal qualifications in their occupational areas to improve their professional qualification levels.

In Italy, ALE has been available to a limited extent. Indeed, for the first time, its provision was guaranteed to workers as a right in a contracted job at the end of the 1970s, yet only at the end of the 1990s did it become mandatory at a national level. The delay in developing national ALE policies impacted the criterion of availability in terms of geographical distribution and of total provision of different types of ALE practices available to Italian adults, which remain within a narrow scope. The CPIAs, established in 2012, are now associated in a national network (RIDAP; Italian Network for the Instruction of Adults and Lifelong Learning) in order to overcome the CTP isolation and to coordinate shared actions and activities at a national level.

Accessibility of ALE

Portugal has a low-income social context, so it is also important to highlight that there has been no cost for learners. RPL can even be organized in an itinerant way, with adult educators doing sessions in local associations, recreational clubs, parish boardrooms, etc. with the intention of helping populations with accessibility problems, with fewer resources or with other limitations operating as barriers. Further, a specific system of guidance for immigrants has been developed, intended to be culturally sensitive and to go beyond access, promoting an inclusive climate and building networks for successful enrolment levels (Thapliyal et al., 2013). That specific measure was implemented in cooperation with the High Commissariat for Migrations in national and regional centres of support for immigrants. In recent years, foreign workers with low qualifications arriving in the country have used the RPL to upgrade their qualifications (Góis, 2019).

There was also a specific RPL procedure for the disabled, although only for the basic-level certification, in the inclusive RPL centres. A specific methodological guide, with a non-discriminatory focus, was created for practitioners to develop the RPL process for disabled candidates, oriented to specific disabilities: mental disability, sensorial disability, blindness and deafness, neurological diseases, mental health, and learning difficulties. Therefore, the way the RPL agenda has been developing in the context of the three ALE measures allowed for the consolidation of practices that explore cultural (immigrants) and psychological (disabilities) proximity with heterogeneous adults.

Thus, one of the most highlighted criteria of the adequacy of accessibility coverage has been the participatory levels obtained in RPL, which has been of great interest to policy-makers and critical researchers. Indeed, according to the National Council of Education, in 2010 there were more than one million adults enrolled in RPL processes and 386,463 already certified. Between 2005 and 2012 the national network of ALE centres offering RPL practices expanded to over 500 units nationwide and over 12,000 adult educators were acting in this system, working during the day and in the evenings (CNE, 2011).

Concerning the accessibility of ALE in Italy, starting from the motivations to their establishment, CTPs and CPIAs are generally focused on open access to all adults of the territory without discrimination (Marescotti, 2014). Nowadays, the inclusion and the participation of adults – both Italians and non-Italians – are two main aims of the CPIAs. CPIAs try to remove cultural and social barriers, offering free education for all. The CPIA mandate is characterized by being an open place of meeting and mediation between cultures, accessible to all those who wish to improve their qualifications and level of education. CPIAs’ governance perspective aims to integrate multiple levels of intervention: national, regional and local, facilitating access to ALE. New strategies are currently implemented through CPIAs to encourage the raising of adult education levels, the consolidation of key competences for lifelong learning, and networking with local stakeholders to bring together actors, sectors and cultures with the aim of expanding the ALE offer in the country. The main focus is to improve the ALE acceptability in the country.

Acceptability of ALE

Acceptability of ALE is an attribute that can be found in the Portuguese RPL policy because (a) the above-mentioned characteristics of the practices allow relevance to be reported by adult learners and practitioners in several published studies about the field (Couceiro, 2002); and (b) the process is high quality, involving a carefully designed national chart of quality working as a framework for RPL (DEB, 1997). Acceptability also comes from the methodology and its results, focused on the needs and the interests of adults, which remain at the centre of the Portuguese RPL processes.

In Italy, after the closing of the CTPs in 2012, a national report assessing the 15-year experience was published by the Ministry of Education (MIUR, 2013). The data were very useful in evaluating the CTP experience and its impact nationwide; its strengths and its weaknesses when CPIAs were established as a new national ALE measure. The report involved 84.6% (1,150) of Italian CTPs and provides a quantitative representation of the adult education system, describing some important aspects of the educational and training provision.¹⁸ Data show that more than half of CTPs’ activities were focused on literacy courses for the Italian and non-Italian population. Thus, the acceptability of the CTP measure in Italy was strictly connected to a need for compulsory education and basic skills.

When the CTPs were introduced in Italy in 1997, they were the first national policy specifically addressed to adults; they recommended a different vision of ALE concerning illiteracy. According to a lifelong education perspective, ALE was considered in its social and cultural dimensions, according to quality criteria looking for personal improvement and professional development of individuals.

However, the above vision was not implemented due to the lack of specific investment to raise the level of basic skills amongst Italian adults (native and migrants). One example is the outstanding issue of the RPL policies. Unlike Portugal, Italy does not have a national system or formalized processes of RPL addressed to low-skilled adults or adults with a professional career and experience who want to improve their education or training (Biasin and Chianese, 2018).

Adaptability of ALE

In the Portuguese case, the main methodology used in RPL processes comprises several phases, each being based on a balance of competences and a biographic approach. Consequently, the best practices of RPL meet the adaptability criteria for adults with low schooling levels but high professional and life experience. Indeed, that attribute has been recognized in academic research literature and ALE policy reports for the methodological paths conducted in accordance with the specific rhythms and circumstances of each adult, and for giving rise to a portfolio developed in a permanently accompanied way by specialized trained educators (Cavaco, 2018; Pires, 2016).

The Italian CPIA programmes are adaptable to all adults, specifically promoting intercultural dialogue and social equality. These great values are supported by an educational tradition of openness and tolerance that usually characterizes the country and inspires its educational programmes. The challenge for CPIAs is now to consider ALE no longer as a reparative or inferior educational path compared with the other forms of education or training, but as a way of restoring value and dignity to adult learners. All this requires greater flexibility and adaptability by the Italian formal system to the learning needs of adults within a lifelong learning perspective.

Concluding remarks

The objective of this article has been achieved as it has demonstrated, through an analysis of the availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of policy measures, how the Portuguese and Italian governments have realized the right of adults to education. The two questions of our study were also answered. The first question, which asked how Portuguese and Italian policy agendas have taken into account education for adults in the last century, was addressed in detail, and a chronological list of ALE measures was presented and discussed. The evidence that ALE has been associated with the fight against illiteracy during both dictatorship regimes emerged as an important similarity and helps to explain the high percentage of low-qualified adults during the democratic regimes, which results in a limited demand for further and higher education in recent times in both countries. This fact echoes the need to spread a vision of educational policy and governance as a vehicle to promote the human right to literacy and ALE as something more than mere alphabetization and free basic education for all.

The second question of the study, which asked whether those national measures have realized the right of adults to education, obtained a satisfactory answer, although it still requires more research in order to encompass voices and perceptions from outside the formal texts of policy documents. Indeed, the adoption of the 4As in ALE policy analysis highlighted the connections between the level, the form and the content of social rights through ALE availability and accessibility, while the public awareness of social and educational justice can be better understood by means of ALE acceptability and adaptability.

In Portugal, there is evidence to show that ALE policy measures have been present in the educational policy agenda in both the dictatorship and democratic regimes, yet with different levels of discursive priorities, ideological approaches and effective implementation through time. Despite that, in the last two decades specific measures have consistently put the subject under legislative consideration and large-scale implementation occurred, mainly through the provision of RPL practices. Those practices unveiled tensions and contradictions concerning the role of ALE, and a debate is currently under way¹⁹ as to whether and how educators should be involved in the formulation, planning and implementation of ALE in Portugal, and what paradigmatic approach (lifelong education or lifelong learning policy priorities) will better serve the interests of low-qualified adults and an increasing ageing population. Despite the relevance of that debate, this was not the focus of this article. Here we analysed a broader subject in order to apprehend how the right of adults to education has been under consideration by governments, assuming that (a) the right to ALE should be beyond questions of ideology; and (b) it requires a permanent critical and vigilant attention to violations or deprivations, particularly of those most vulnerable.

Concrete criteria for each of the elements of the 4A model applied to the field of ALE have been used as a lens. From the discussion of the results we can conclude that the realization of the right of adults to education by the Portuguese state has been successfully achieved. Indeed, analysis of the three ALE policy measures translates the government’s obligation to make education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable mainly through RPL practices. Taking the metaphor of the ‘in and against the state’ movement we can support the Portuguese national public RPL policy agenda, yet at the same time criticize the recent trends which indicate the adoption of the politics of measurement in the field of ALE, mainly supported by a rationale of outcomes-based assessments in the RPL system.

In Italy, ALE has been mostly perceived as a marginal issue. This article intends to draw attention to the need to overcome that situation. It is important to have CTP/CPIA centres as the first example of a governmental measure dedicated to ALE; however, more investment is needed in order to make the right of adults to education a real and widespread reality available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable for all, instead of practically reducing the agenda to mere language courses for immigrant adults. Further content is needed and other vulnerable publics should be targeted.

In this article, the adoption of the 4As in ALE policy analysis highlighted several differences and similarities between the Portuguese and Italian cases.

Concerning availability of ALE, the main difference between Portugal and Italy seems to be the degree of investment by national public initiatives in the adult educators’ professional training. In Portugal, providing counselling and guidance to low-skilled adults has been a major priority. In Italy, the CPIAs should improve the total provision of different types of ALE practices available to Italian adults. A similarity between those countries has been found concerning the attribute of availability in terms of the geographical distribution criterion.

Concerning accessibility of ALE, the main difference between Portugal and Italy seems to be the degree of investment by national public initiatives in dealing with psychological aspects (disabilities) and increasing proximity with heterogeneous adults. However, both countries have ALE measures allowing for the consolidation of free public practices that explore cultural (immigrants) proximity, focused on open access to all adults without discrimination.

Concerning acceptability of ALE, the main difference between Portugal and Italy seems to be the degree of investment by national public initiatives in creating and implementing a national chart of quality framework able to guide practitioners. Reports on the relevance of ALE practices are available in Portugal, through which evidence on the attribute of acceptability is better highlighted, for example concerning the criterion of focusing practices on the needs and the interests of adults. For Italy, a narrow vision of ALE concerning illiteracy tends to be the mainstream, although calls are increasing to enlarge the scope according to a lifelong education perspective.

Concerning adaptability of ALE, the main difference between Portugal and Italy seems to be the considerable investment in flexible methodologies used in RPL in Portugal, contrasting with the absence of a national measure for RPL in Italy. Although present in discursive policy documents in both countries, the implementation of methodological paths conducted in accordance with the specific rhythms and circumstances of each adult needs to be continuously improved in both cases.

Consequently, we believe that, based on the results of the two national cases studied, this article has made it clearer that the right to education can only be guaranteed when educational offers are available to all with a non-discriminatory scope; when they are affordable universally; when the obstacles (economic, cultural, structural, gender, etc.) have been removed for the access, enjoyment and use of all heterogeneous adults of our complex societies; and, finally, when the ALE public practices are adequate and relevant not only to the educational needs of the groups they are aimed at, but also to their desires, interests and aspirations of learning, adopting a humanistic path for ALE policy building and monitoring.

To conclude, some recommendations for ALE governance arising from the analysis of our main results are provided because a challenge remains in the 21st century: to improve the situation and the qualification of low-skilled adults through the right to ALE.

In accordance with their specific conditions, governing structures and constitutional provisions, the Portuguese and Italian states should develop further comprehensive, inclusive and integrated policies for ALE taking the approach of human rights as a framework for policy. This entails promoting the real implementation of ALE policy as a long-term investment, beyond short-term political parties’ power squabbles in order to ensure availability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of ALE as the prime duty-bearer of the governments of each country. That route is important also to prevent social risks in financial austerity crises (Coelho et al., 2010). This approach can allow for the improvement of the formal system of education to incorporate the adults’ learning experience developed outside the formal system. It can also increase opportunities for improvement in their professional careers, in life projects and for engagement in continuous education and training processes during their life course. Thus, the performance of national states in this subject should be kept under regular public observation and the involvement of non-governmental and non-profit civil society organizations in monitoring that process is highly recommended.

In Portugal, the governmental social responsibility must withstand the temptation of governing by numbers and protect ALE as a field which needs flexible management to allow practices to be developed with transformative methodologies and an open scope. In Italy, the governmental social responsibility must increase investment in ALE at different levels: building policy guidelines based on the 4A attributes for Italian ALE development and implementation, creating RPL measures with a quality framework, paying attention to training of adult educators to build capacity for dealing with different methodologies targeting heterogeneous adults as learners, improving Italian training systems for active adults, etc.

Finally, we believe that the more ALE is considered a key policy issue in promoting citizenship, the more possible it will be for adult individuals to have an active and responsible participation in society as human beings with rights and obligations.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biographies

Rosanna Barros has a PhD in Education from the University of Minho and is adjunct professor at the University of Algarve. Since 2017 she has been associate convenor of the ESREA Research Network on Policy Studies in Adult Education () and is presently leading various research projects with either national or international funding. She is a member of the Scientific and Editorial Board of several periodicals, both at national and international levels. She has published numerous books, chapters and indexed articles in the following areas: Lifelong Education, Social Pedagogy-Education and Public Policies in the Education of Adults and Elderly People.

Chiara Biasin is associate professor in the department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education and Applied Psychology at the University of Padua. She received the Diplôme Européen d’Etudes Approfondies in Théorie des Formes en Sciences de l’Éducation from the University of Strasbourg and holds a PhD in Pedagogy and Educational Sciences from the University of Padua. She has been honorary senior research associate at the Institute of Education, University College London, and has taught the Master Européen de Recherche en Sciences de l’Education programme at Rouen University. She is chair of the degree course in Educational Sciences at the University of Padua. Her research interests focus on adult education, lifelong and continuing education, vocational training, adult learning and life-course transitions.

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