Job Description – AEA Project Officer

Active Minds, Still Learning 2024: the role and duties of the Project Officer

1 The Association for Education and Ageing

Founded in 1985, the Association for Education and Ageing (AEA) is an international membership organisation. Its concern has been learning in later life, aiming to advance knowledge, improve practice and contribute to the development of policy. Through AEA, professionals, volunteers, academics, researchers, tutors, policy-makers and older people have worked together. In 2024 we will be working with the Ransackers Association to deliver a small project investigating older people’s experience of learning. We want to build a new association led by a diverse network of older learners active in a wide range of settings. We now seek to contract a dedicated Project Officer to work with us for 5 hours a week for up to 48 weeks at £25 an hour.

2 Active Minds, Still Learning 24 – AEA’s Lottery Project in England

In 2019 AEA was awarded £9,600 by the National Lottery’s Awards for All programme to carry out a small national research programme. This will take the form of an enquiry among older learners into the benefits of learning in later life and their implications for practice development. It is intended the project will draw on the themes of well-being and memory and connect with the recent expansion of older people’s involvement with learning online.

AEA will work with and support providers and users of education services and learning opportunities from a wide variety of settings. We hope to lay the foundations of a broad community of practice within which AEA’s members and affiliates can go on to exchange ideas and experience. The award was made at a time when later life learning has fallen outside the scope of public policy and when participation (which has since revived a little) was at its lowest ever, according to the Adult Participation in Learning Survey.

The award was for a project originally entitled Learning, Well-being and Older People. AEA’s late chair, Professor Keith Percy, contacted the Lottery during the lockdown and explained that (as with many such projects) we would be making a delayed start, which was accepted. We have subsequently revised the aims of the original application and more recently revised the budget.

3 Introducing Active Minds, Still Learning 24

With an election on the way there’s talk about restoring adult education. But the processes and dynamics of learning in later life are not in the frame. When it does come up learners and teachers alike tend to highlight enjoyment and well-being, social contact and the benefits for health. There’s often a nod to retraining and employability. Meanwhile the success of U3A sometimes gives the impression life-long learning for older people is a problem solved. Nothing to do with society, the practice of democracy or the business of government. Just a thing we can all sort out for ourselves.

We want to start to change all this. Through Active Minds Still Learning 24 we’ll link up groups of older people who want to think about their experience of learning, get to understand it better and share it with others. A learning activity can be very loosely defined: it could mean a study group, a training course, an exercise class or a group of activists. The focus could be on retraining, on learning to write or communicate better, on setting out to understand a subject or learn a language, on trying to influence what happens in a neighbourhood or just on helping pass the time, meet people and maintain one’s confidence. Members might pay a fee or attend for free. It could be at a college, be part of a U3A branch, take place in a day centre or residential home or be quite informal. But whatever the type or purpose of the activity those involved would need to be comfortable with the idea they’re learning something, happy to contribute to a wider conversation.

Any regular group can be part of Active Minds Still Learning 24. We’ll need a contact – a tutor, a facilitator or perhaps just a confident spokesperson – who can take responsibility for making reports and sharing any findings. This person will commit to working with our Project Officer on the basic exercises and discussion points we ask all the groups to try out. So Active Minds, Still Learning 24 will be an adventure. It will run for about a year, keeping in touch online and will hold one in-person conference in London for group representatives. By the end Active Minds. Still Learning 24 may not feel much like where we started out. Learning about learning should be full of surprises! But we hope once its complete we’ll have the nucleus of a network. We think older learners need to be part of a wider conversation, able to challenge educators and support would-be learners who’ve given up, find it all too difficult or have something stuck in the past like an unhappy time at school.

4 Project management duties – Active Minds Still Learning

This role is accountable to the Chair and the post-holder will have the support of the trustee development team and a project advisory group.

1. to convene, support and document the proceedings of the AEA Active Minds Still Learning 24 development project
2. in collaboration with the trustee development team recruit the local project leads and their colleagues
3. to establish the roster of participating projects which reflect a diversity of backgrounds, learning purposes and experiences of education
4. to support the project leads and their colleagues to identify activities, carry them out and report on them
5. to act to ensure that participating groups complete their work on schedule
6. to receive all reports – which may be in written form (including hard copy) or audio or video recordings – and file them on a shared drive
7. to be responsible for the project website
8. to engage participants and the AEA team in the interpretation and analysis of findings to make interim reports
9. to consult to determine the location and format of a national seminar event held in London
10. to convene and manage (with input from the development team) the national seminar and any other events to be held online
11. to convene up to two preparatory and/or follow up meetings where relevant and necessary
12. to produce a final report
13. to advise on the prospects for an ongoing community of interest
14. to ensure the dissemination of findings including online and social media reporting
15. to administer and record all relevant financial transactions

5 The secretarial role of the Project Officer

AEA is a small association, which has been responsible for the thrice-yearly International Journal of Education and Ageing. Membership has declined and the Executive is about to consult on winding up the charity. The Project Officer will support the chair and trustees conduct the necessary business to meet the requirements of charitable status during this time. AEA intends to launch a new organisation in collaboration with the Ransackers Association.

6 Secretarial duties of the Project Officer

1. to liaise with the Chair regarding notice of trustee meetings, agenda and minutes
2. to take minutes of executive committee meetings four times in the project year and at an Annual General Meeting
3. to act as a liaison point for the Association with external bodies appropriate to Active Minds, Still Learning 24

The application process will begin with an informal phone conversation with the Chair, John Miles. Contact johnmiles68@yahoo.co.uk or text 07817 424356