ABSTRACT
Why do the missing learners continue to be missing? In shorthand terms the answer is that there is a mismatch all round. It is not just the obvious mismatch between adults and how they would benefit if they learned on the one hand, and cold, dreary buildings, uncongenial fellow learners, and, even worse, uncongenial teachers on the other. Nor is it just a curriculum which does not mesh with people’s preoccupations. More than that there are far-reaching mismatch features which reach down into society. And they are not only the obvious sociological factors. There are far deeper psychological, pedagogical as well as institutional mismatches which run right through any way of looking at lifelong learning for the majority. And they create a serious range of obstacles to the admirably high aspirations of recent government policies.
