News & Commentary
News & Commentary
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January 2026
January 2026
Why adult education – and our democracy – needs social clubs
Jonny Gordon Farleigh
Jonny Gordon Farleigh
As the education gap has widened, so too has the distance between citizens and meaningful participation in civil society. Yet debates about democratic breakdown rarely connect educational inequality to the loss of confidence and capacity to act collectively, or other concerns, such as vulnerability to disinformation. Looking to social history – when some of the most effective and equitable forms of adult education thrived in informal spaces like Working Men’s Clubs – offers vital lessons for how learning, politics, and community might be re-embedded in everyday life today.
A brief history of adult education
For much of history, adult education was not primarily about meeting the technical demands of the economy. Instead, it was rooted in moral development, collective self-improvement, and the cultivation of democratic citizenship. Education was understood as a social good – something that strengthened communities and civil society as much as individual economic prospects.
In Britain, organised adult education began to take shape in the late eighteenth century. Early “adult schools” were closely associated with non-conformist religious movements, which promoted literacy so that working people could read the Bible and participate more fully in religious life. Literacy here was both spiritual and civic: a means of moral formation and collective participation.
By the early nineteenth century, adult education increasingly reflected the pressures and possibilities of industrialisation. The first Mechanics’ Institute, founded in Edinburgh in 1821, was designed to provide scientific and technical education to skilled workers. These institutes spread rapidly across Britain, offering lectures, libraries, and classes in subjects ranging from engineering to political economy. Alongside them, mutual improvement societies and reading groups – often self-organised by workers themselves – exploded as spaces for debate, discussion, and shared learning.
The mid-nineteenth century saw a more explicit link between adult education and democratic reform. In 1854, the Working Men’s College was founded by Christian Socialists who believed education was essential to social justice and political agency. Learning was not simply about personal advancement, but about equipping working people to participate in public life as citizens who could build political power.
This tradition reached a national scale with the founding of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) in 1903. Established to widen access to university-level education for working adults excluded from formal schooling, the WEA embedded adult education within communities, trade unions, and voluntary associations. Its mission was explicitly democratic: education as a foundation for active citizenship, collective organisation, and social change.
By the mid-twentieth century, adult education formed a significant part of Britain’s civic infrastructure. In a 1960 parliamentary debate, MPs noted that the WEA and similar voluntary organisations supported around 84,000 adult learners across the UK, most of them working adults studying part-time and voluntarily. These were not marginal activities, but a central feature of a vibrant civil society.
The creation of the Open University (OU) in the late 1960s marked another turning point. Designed as a “university of the air,” it sought to democratise access to higher education through remote and flexible study. While the OU dramatically expanded opportunities for many, it also reflected a gradual shift away from place-based, collective learning towards more individualised and formalised models of adult education.
Taken together, this history reveals a crucial lesson: adult education has been most inclusive and politically consequential when it has been embedded in everyday social life – in clubs, institutes, and other types of community associations – rather than confined to formal institutions alone. And, most critically, it reached adults who did not see themselves as “learners”, but who were curious, capable, and engaged when education felt relevant.
“Debates about democratic breakdown rarely connect educational inequality to the loss of confidence and capacity to act collectively, or other concerns, such as vulnerability to disinformation.”
Adult education in Britain’s social clubs
Britain’s social clubs – which numbered more than 4,000 at their peak – once played a central role in adult education. From the late nineteenth century, reformers such as Henry Solly, founder of the Club & Institute Union, championed the idea of “rational recreation”: the belief that learning is most effective when it is part of social life, rather than confined to formal educational institutions. Clubs were conceived not simply as leisure spaces, but as environments where intellectual curiosity, political discussion, and collective mobility could take place.
From the mid-nineteenth century into the early twentieth, working men’s clubs often functioned as informal learning spaces. Many maintained lending libraries and reading rooms, hosted self-organised lectures and discussion circles, and welcomed visiting speakers from universities, political parties, and cultural societies. As the social historian Ken Worpole notes, these venues regularly held “weekly discussions and lectures on political and social questions.” Charles Booth, reflecting on his survey Life and Labour of the People in London, captured their broader significance: “to many more club life is an education.”
Crucially, these settings lowered the psychological and cultural barriers that often accompany formal education. Learning took place among peers, in familiar surroundings, and on terms shaped by members themselves. For many working-class adults, clubs provided the confidence, networks, and political literacy that enabled them to move into public roles – as councillors, magistrates, trade union officials, MPs, and community leaders.
Over the course of the twentieth century, however, this educational function was gradually displaced. Worpole argues that from the 1900s onwards, commercial entertainment – particularly the promotion of music hall and later mass leisure – began to crowd out organised educational activity within clubs. At the same time, the expansion of compulsory and post-compulsory formal schooling shifted learning into institutions increasingly separate from social and community life.
This shift did not make clubs less valuable: learning became something that happened elsewhere, in places that many working adults increasingly experienced as unfamiliar, intimidating, or irrelevant.
Adult education exclusion
Today, adult education faces a persistent participation problem. According to OECD data, adults from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds participate much less in adult learning than those from advantaged backgrounds. Only about 28% of adults with a low-status background participate, versus 52% from high-status backgrounds.
Learners most likely to be missing from provision are also those most likely to use social clubs: working or lower-middle-class adults, people with lower-than-average levels of formal education, and residents of economically deprived areas. While robust national data on social club membership is limited, these venues remain embedded in precisely the communities adult education struggles to reach.
“For funders and civil society organisations concerned with participation, equity, and long-term democratic resilience, social clubs represent a largely overlooked asset – and their members a persistently underserved demographic.”
Adult education and democratic renewal
We already know that adult education holds significant democratic potential. Just as we understand the costs of its absence: a society with fewer civic skills, lower confidence in collective action, and weaker democratic participation, we also know it counters disinformation, builds social trust, and supports people to respond collectively to the increasingly visible impacts of the climate crisis, and other economic and social issues.
Reintroducing adult education into social clubs offers a practical way to rebuild this capacity. But it means embedding learning within existing cultural and social activity; supporting informal, short, and relational forms of education; funding partnerships between adult education providers and member-owned community institutions.
For funders and civil society organisations concerned with participation, equity, and long-term democratic resilience, social clubs represent a largely overlooked asset – and their members a persistently underserved demographic. These spaces are trusted, familiar, and socially embedded. They reach adults who may not identify as “learners,” but who are curious, capable, and deeply engaged when education feels relevant and rooted in everyday life.
The provocation for civil society and funders interested in these areas is: if we are serious about renewing democratic participation and reducing social division, we must invest not only in what people learn, but in where learning happens. That’s why adult education needs social clubs.
Jonny Gordon-Farleigh is the co-director of the Centre for Democratic Business, and works on its 21st Century Social Club initiative to protect and revitalise Britain’s social clubs for a new generation.
As the education gap has widened, so too has the distance between citizens and meaningful participation in civil society. Yet debates about democratic breakdown rarely connect educational inequality to the loss of confidence and capacity to act collectively, or other concerns, such as vulnerability to disinformation. Looking to social history – when some of the most effective and equitable forms of adult education thrived in informal spaces like Working Men’s Clubs – offers vital lessons for how learning, politics, and community might be re-embedded in everyday life today.
A brief history of adult education
For much of history, adult education was not primarily about meeting the technical demands of the economy. Instead, it was rooted in moral development, collective self-improvement, and the cultivation of democratic citizenship. Education was understood as a social good – something that strengthened communities and civil society as much as individual economic prospects.
In Britain, organised adult education began to take shape in the late eighteenth century. Early “adult schools” were closely associated with non-conformist religious movements, which promoted literacy so that working people could read the Bible and participate more fully in religious life. Literacy here was both spiritual and civic: a means of moral formation and collective participation.
By the early nineteenth century, adult education increasingly reflected the pressures and possibilities of industrialisation. The first Mechanics’ Institute, founded in Edinburgh in 1821, was designed to provide scientific and technical education to skilled workers. These institutes spread rapidly across Britain, offering lectures, libraries, and classes in subjects ranging from engineering to political economy. Alongside them, mutual improvement societies and reading groups – often self-organised by workers themselves – exploded as spaces for debate, discussion, and shared learning.
The mid-nineteenth century saw a more explicit link between adult education and democratic reform. In 1854, the Working Men’s College was founded by Christian Socialists who believed education was essential to social justice and political agency. Learning was not simply about personal advancement, but about equipping working people to participate in public life as citizens who could build political power.
This tradition reached a national scale with the founding of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) in 1903. Established to widen access to university-level education for working adults excluded from formal schooling, the WEA embedded adult education within communities, trade unions, and voluntary associations. Its mission was explicitly democratic: education as a foundation for active citizenship, collective organisation, and social change.
By the mid-twentieth century, adult education formed a significant part of Britain’s civic infrastructure. In a 1960 parliamentary debate, MPs noted that the WEA and similar voluntary organisations supported around 84,000 adult learners across the UK, most of them working adults studying part-time and voluntarily. These were not marginal activities, but a central feature of a vibrant civil society.
The creation of the Open University (OU) in the late 1960s marked another turning point. Designed as a “university of the air,” it sought to democratise access to higher education through remote and flexible study. While the OU dramatically expanded opportunities for many, it also reflected a gradual shift away from place-based, collective learning towards more individualised and formalised models of adult education.
Taken together, this history reveals a crucial lesson: adult education has been most inclusive and politically consequential when it has been embedded in everyday social life – in clubs, institutes, and other types of community associations – rather than confined to formal institutions alone. And, most critically, it reached adults who did not see themselves as “learners”, but who were curious, capable, and engaged when education felt relevant.
“Debates about democratic breakdown rarely connect educational inequality to the loss of confidence and capacity to act collectively, or other concerns, such as vulnerability to disinformation.”
Adult education in Britain’s social clubs
Britain’s social clubs – which numbered more than 4,000 at their peak – once played a central role in adult education. From the late nineteenth century, reformers such as Henry Solly, founder of the Club & Institute Union, championed the idea of “rational recreation”: the belief that learning is most effective when it is part of social life, rather than confined to formal educational institutions. Clubs were conceived not simply as leisure spaces, but as environments where intellectual curiosity, political discussion, and collective mobility could take place.
From the mid-nineteenth century into the early twentieth, working men’s clubs often functioned as informal learning spaces. Many maintained lending libraries and reading rooms, hosted self-organised lectures and discussion circles, and welcomed visiting speakers from universities, political parties, and cultural societies. As the social historian Ken Worpole notes, these venues regularly held “weekly discussions and lectures on political and social questions.” Charles Booth, reflecting on his survey Life and Labour of the People in London, captured their broader significance: “to many more club life is an education.”
Crucially, these settings lowered the psychological and cultural barriers that often accompany formal education. Learning took place among peers, in familiar surroundings, and on terms shaped by members themselves. For many working-class adults, clubs provided the confidence, networks, and political literacy that enabled them to move into public roles – as councillors, magistrates, trade union officials, MPs, and community leaders.
Over the course of the twentieth century, however, this educational function was gradually displaced. Worpole argues that from the 1900s onwards, commercial entertainment – particularly the promotion of music hall and later mass leisure – began to crowd out organised educational activity within clubs. At the same time, the expansion of compulsory and post-compulsory formal schooling shifted learning into institutions increasingly separate from social and community life.
This shift did not make clubs less valuable: learning became something that happened elsewhere, in places that many working adults increasingly experienced as unfamiliar, intimidating, or irrelevant.
Adult education exclusion
Today, adult education faces a persistent participation problem. According to OECD data, adults from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds participate much less in adult learning than those from advantaged backgrounds. Only about 28% of adults with a low-status background participate, versus 52% from high-status backgrounds.
Learners most likely to be missing from provision are also those most likely to use social clubs: working or lower-middle-class adults, people with lower-than-average levels of formal education, and residents of economically deprived areas. While robust national data on social club membership is limited, these venues remain embedded in precisely the communities adult education struggles to reach.
“For funders and civil society organisations concerned with participation, equity, and long-term democratic resilience, social clubs represent a largely overlooked asset – and their members a persistently underserved demographic.”
Adult education and democratic renewal
We already know that adult education holds significant democratic potential. Just as we understand the costs of its absence: a society with fewer civic skills, lower confidence in collective action, and weaker democratic participation, we also know it counters disinformation, builds social trust, and supports people to respond collectively to the increasingly visible impacts of the climate crisis, and other economic and social issues.
Reintroducing adult education into social clubs offers a practical way to rebuild this capacity. But it means embedding learning within existing cultural and social activity; supporting informal, short, and relational forms of education; funding partnerships between adult education providers and member-owned community institutions.
For funders and civil society organisations concerned with participation, equity, and long-term democratic resilience, social clubs represent a largely overlooked asset – and their members a persistently underserved demographic. These spaces are trusted, familiar, and socially embedded. They reach adults who may not identify as “learners,” but who are curious, capable, and deeply engaged when education feels relevant and rooted in everyday life.
The provocation for civil society and funders interested in these areas is: if we are serious about renewing democratic participation and reducing social division, we must invest not only in what people learn, but in where learning happens. That’s why adult education needs social clubs.
Jonny Gordon-Farleigh is the co-director of the Centre for Democratic Business, and works on its 21st Century Social Club initiative to protect and revitalise Britain’s social clubs for a new generation.
As the education gap has widened, so too has the distance between citizens and meaningful participation in civil society. Yet debates about democratic breakdown rarely connect educational inequality to the loss of confidence and capacity to act collectively, or other concerns, such as vulnerability to disinformation. Looking to social history – when some of the most effective and equitable forms of adult education thrived in informal spaces like Working Men’s Clubs – offers vital lessons for how learning, politics, and community might be re-embedded in everyday life today.
A brief history of adult education
For much of history, adult education was not primarily about meeting the technical demands of the economy. Instead, it was rooted in moral development, collective self-improvement, and the cultivation of democratic citizenship. Education was understood as a social good – something that strengthened communities and civil society as much as individual economic prospects.
In Britain, organised adult education began to take shape in the late eighteenth century. Early “adult schools” were closely associated with non-conformist religious movements, which promoted literacy so that working people could read the Bible and participate more fully in religious life. Literacy here was both spiritual and civic: a means of moral formation and collective participation.
By the early nineteenth century, adult education increasingly reflected the pressures and possibilities of industrialisation. The first Mechanics’ Institute, founded in Edinburgh in 1821, was designed to provide scientific and technical education to skilled workers. These institutes spread rapidly across Britain, offering lectures, libraries, and classes in subjects ranging from engineering to political economy. Alongside them, mutual improvement societies and reading groups – often self-organised by workers themselves – exploded as spaces for debate, discussion, and shared learning.
The mid-nineteenth century saw a more explicit link between adult education and democratic reform. In 1854, the Working Men’s College was founded by Christian Socialists who believed education was essential to social justice and political agency. Learning was not simply about personal advancement, but about equipping working people to participate in public life as citizens who could build political power.
This tradition reached a national scale with the founding of the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA) in 1903. Established to widen access to university-level education for working adults excluded from formal schooling, the WEA embedded adult education within communities, trade unions, and voluntary associations. Its mission was explicitly democratic: education as a foundation for active citizenship, collective organisation, and social change.
By the mid-twentieth century, adult education formed a significant part of Britain’s civic infrastructure. In a 1960 parliamentary debate, MPs noted that the WEA and similar voluntary organisations supported around 84,000 adult learners across the UK, most of them working adults studying part-time and voluntarily. These were not marginal activities, but a central feature of a vibrant civil society.
The creation of the Open University (OU) in the late 1960s marked another turning point. Designed as a “university of the air,” it sought to democratise access to higher education through remote and flexible study. While the OU dramatically expanded opportunities for many, it also reflected a gradual shift away from place-based, collective learning towards more individualised and formalised models of adult education.
Taken together, this history reveals a crucial lesson: adult education has been most inclusive and politically consequential when it has been embedded in everyday social life – in clubs, institutes, and other types of community associations – rather than confined to formal institutions alone. And, most critically, it reached adults who did not see themselves as “learners”, but who were curious, capable, and engaged when education felt relevant.
“Debates about democratic breakdown rarely connect educational inequality to the loss of confidence and capacity to act collectively, or other concerns, such as vulnerability to disinformation.”
Adult education in Britain’s social clubs
Britain’s social clubs – which numbered more than 4,000 at their peak – once played a central role in adult education. From the late nineteenth century, reformers such as Henry Solly, founder of the Club & Institute Union, championed the idea of “rational recreation”: the belief that learning is most effective when it is part of social life, rather than confined to formal educational institutions. Clubs were conceived not simply as leisure spaces, but as environments where intellectual curiosity, political discussion, and collective mobility could take place.
From the mid-nineteenth century into the early twentieth, working men’s clubs often functioned as informal learning spaces. Many maintained lending libraries and reading rooms, hosted self-organised lectures and discussion circles, and welcomed visiting speakers from universities, political parties, and cultural societies. As the social historian Ken Worpole notes, these venues regularly held “weekly discussions and lectures on political and social questions.” Charles Booth, reflecting on his survey Life and Labour of the People in London, captured their broader significance: “to many more club life is an education.”
Crucially, these settings lowered the psychological and cultural barriers that often accompany formal education. Learning took place among peers, in familiar surroundings, and on terms shaped by members themselves. For many working-class adults, clubs provided the confidence, networks, and political literacy that enabled them to move into public roles – as councillors, magistrates, trade union officials, MPs, and community leaders.
Over the course of the twentieth century, however, this educational function was gradually displaced. Worpole argues that from the 1900s onwards, commercial entertainment – particularly the promotion of music hall and later mass leisure – began to crowd out organised educational activity within clubs. At the same time, the expansion of compulsory and post-compulsory formal schooling shifted learning into institutions increasingly separate from social and community life.
This shift did not make clubs less valuable: learning became something that happened elsewhere, in places that many working adults increasingly experienced as unfamiliar, intimidating, or irrelevant.
Adult education exclusion
Today, adult education faces a persistent participation problem. According to OECD data, adults from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds participate much less in adult learning than those from advantaged backgrounds. Only about 28% of adults with a low-status background participate, versus 52% from high-status backgrounds.
Learners most likely to be missing from provision are also those most likely to use social clubs: working or lower-middle-class adults, people with lower-than-average levels of formal education, and residents of economically deprived areas. While robust national data on social club membership is limited, these venues remain embedded in precisely the communities adult education struggles to reach.
“For funders and civil society organisations concerned with participation, equity, and long-term democratic resilience, social clubs represent a largely overlooked asset – and their members a persistently underserved demographic.”
Adult education and democratic renewal
We already know that adult education holds significant democratic potential. Just as we understand the costs of its absence: a society with fewer civic skills, lower confidence in collective action, and weaker democratic participation, we also know it counters disinformation, builds social trust, and supports people to respond collectively to the increasingly visible impacts of the climate crisis, and other economic and social issues.
Reintroducing adult education into social clubs offers a practical way to rebuild this capacity. But it means embedding learning within existing cultural and social activity; supporting informal, short, and relational forms of education; funding partnerships between adult education providers and member-owned community institutions.
For funders and civil society organisations concerned with participation, equity, and long-term democratic resilience, social clubs represent a largely overlooked asset – and their members a persistently underserved demographic. These spaces are trusted, familiar, and socially embedded. They reach adults who may not identify as “learners,” but who are curious, capable, and deeply engaged when education feels relevant and rooted in everyday life.
The provocation for civil society and funders interested in these areas is: if we are serious about renewing democratic participation and reducing social division, we must invest not only in what people learn, but in where learning happens. That’s why adult education needs social clubs.
Jonny Gordon-Farleigh is the co-director of the Centre for Democratic Business, and works on its 21st Century Social Club initiative to protect and revitalise Britain’s social clubs for a new generation.
The CfDB is a project of Stir to Action Ltd, a worker co-operative registered in England as a Company Limited by Guarantee. Company number 07951013
Our team is based in Dorset, London, and Manchester
Designed and built by Guillermo Ortego
You can subscribe to our newsletter here
The CfDB is a project of Stir to Action Ltd, a worker co-operative registered in England as a Company Limited by Guarantee. Company number 07951013
Our team is based in Dorset, London, and Manchester
Designed and built by Guillermo Ortego
You can subscribe to our newsletter here
The CfDB is a project of Stir to Action Ltd, a worker co-operative registered in England as a Company Limited by Guarantee. Company number 07951013
Our team is based in Dorset, London, and Manchester
Designed and built by Guillermo Ortego