adult education

The provision of further or continuing educational opportunities for people over the minimum school-leaving age; also known as continuing education. Frequently this takes place in institutions specially set up to cater for mature learners, but it is also common for schools and colleges and other centres of learning to be used. A wide network of providers exists. In addition to the formal opportunities offered by institutions, there are numerous informal sources of adult education, such as broadcast programmes on radio and television, as well as correspondence and distance-learning courses, for people who wish to or must learn at home or as part of their job.

Adult education is the practice of teaching and educating adults.

Educating adults differs from educating children in several ways. One of the most important differences is that adults have accumulated knowledge and experience which can either add value to a learning experience or hinder it.

Another important difference is that adults frequently must apply their knowledge in some practical fashion in order to learn effectively; One example, common in the 1990s, was the proliferation of computer training courses in which adults (not children or adolescents), most of whom were office workers, could enroll. Because the abstractions governing the user's interactions with a PC were so new, many people who had been working white-collar jobs for ten years or more eventually took such training courses, either at their own whim (to gain computer skills and thus earn higher pay) or at the behest of their managers.

In the United States, a more general example is that of the high-school dropout who returns to school to complete general education requirements. A working adult is unlikely to have the freedom to simply quit their job and go "back to school" on a full-time basis. In the USA, the equivalent of the high school diploma earned by an adult through these programs is to pass the General Education Development (GED) test.

Another fast growing sector of adult education is English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), also referred to as English as a Second Language (ESL).