Well-Being and Happiness

Abstract

Public policy has only just started to engage with the wider role of learning in helping people fl ourish across as well as through their lives. In England, the Government has placed a legal duty on further education colleges to promote the social as well as the economic well-being of their local area, and the value of informal learning as contributing ‘hugely to the health and well-being of individuals and wider society’ is recognised in a recent White Paper (DIUS, 2009). But the focus on skills and employment has shifted public resources away from those types of learning that help to promote well-being, and policy has yet to engage fully with what we now know about the wider benefi ts of learning.