How to Make Lifelong Learning a Reality: Implications for the Planning of Educational Provision in Australia

“Lifelong learning” has become one of the most frequently used terms in education and training circle s in the late 1990s. Policy documents at national, state and institutional levels are increasingly being framed from a lifelong learning perspective. At international level lifelong learning has been adopted as the key organising concept in the education and training programs of the European Union (1995), the OECD (1996) and UNESCO (1996). In Australia recent reports on the future shape of higher education (West, 1998) and the national strategy for vocational education and training (ANTA, 1998) have been framed in terms of the need for cont inual learning over the life span.