Learning for Longevity

Do we need to re-think learning?

Although I worked in secondary schools for most of my teaching career, I’ve also dipped my toes into adult learning, designing and running introductory psychology courses under the umbrella of ‘learning for pleasure.’ Over the past few years my interests have moved away from formal education and towards learning more generally.

My most recent book, Smarter: Lessons from the New Science of Learning, is about learning, rather than education. This includes learning in later life, an area I believe is going to play a key role in future educational discussions. Global populations are changing, and how we approach learning needs to change with them.

I don’t consider myself a futurist, and I don’t believe anyone can predict the future with any accuracy (I’m still waiting for my flying car!). In the 1950s and 1960s, much of the conversation concerning the future included notions of overpopulation and how the world could deal with the inevitability of scarcer resources. Whether the world’s population has peaked is a matter of some debate, yet some policies (most notably, China’s one-child ruling) have proved a little misguided. While we might have worried about overpopulation 60 years ago, South Korea is now dealing with population collapse, as its total fertility rate (TFR) now stands at less the one child per woman of child-bearing age.

The UK’s TFR hit 1.41 in 2024, nowhere near that of South Korea but below the so-called replacement rate of 2.1 required to maintain a stable population. From 2026, we will see deaths consistently exceed births. In 2024, the number of people in the UK aged sixty and over stood at 19.5 percent, still a long way off the 33 percent considered the tipping point where it’s thought the fundamental structure of society must change if it’s to survive. A long way off, for sure, but heading in that direction.

For several years now, population growth in the UK has come from immigration, but some predictions suggest that net migration could reach zero by the end of this year.

The consequences of a falling birthrate have perhaps been over-exaggerated in some sectors of the media. A more pressing problem relates to the ageing population. As we get older, most of us will rely more heavily on sectors within health and social care, systems that are already under immense strain. But it’s not just our bodies that are going to require greater attention; it’s also our minds.

While teaching and learning the young remains the obvious long-term goal of education, I’m also going to make the argument for an increasing need for lifelong education, all the way into old age. This isn’t just a matter of extended working lives and economic productivity (who wants to be working at 80?), it’s also about making older age better in terms of our daily capabilities and cognitive capacities.

Life expectancy in a useful measure of the health of a population, but what percentage of those years are spent in good health? Healthy Life Expectancy (HLE) represents the number of years a person can expect to live in good health. HLE has been declining in the UK since the mid-2010s. For males this figure stands at 60.7, while females are slightly higher at 60.9. There are regional differences, however, and in Scotland the figures are 59.1 and 58.4 respectively.

So, a man in the UK will probably spend about 60.7 years of his total lifespan feeling ‘good’ or ‘very good’, but these years might not always occur consecutively.

But what does all this have to do with learning?

Education and cognitive capacity.

A 2024 study found that each additional year of education can reduce mortality risk by around 2 percent. Essentially, the better educated we are, the longer we live. As we learn, we build a cognitive reserve, a mental capacity that can delay the onset of dementia and more general cognitive decline. Learning can protect our brain, although different types of learning are going to influence longevity in different ways. We know, for example, that learning a new language or a musical instrument (at any age) can protect the brain from decline, while learning about how to remain healthy in later life can provide us with the knowledge and understanding to keep us physically healthy and mentally sharp into later life. When we improve our health literacy, we are better able to understand and act upon health advice and make better lifestyle choices.

Active ageing.

While few people would expect to be running a marathon when they’re 80 (although some do!), understanding that increasing physical activity and ‘functional fitness’ (the ability to lift, balance, and remain relatively flexible), act as a kind of physical pension plan, allowing us to maintain independent in later life.

Regional inequalities.

UK life expectancy data reveals a gloomy picture of inequality and predictions of how long people will live. Those living in the most affluent areas of the country can live much longer than those in the poorest (anything up to a ten years difference). If health outcomes are, in part, related to education, then those areas of the country with lower levels of education will also have lower life expectancy. If we, as a country, are serious about lifelong learning, we need to take these differences into account, providing a system of education for all.

Increasingly, I think, lifelong learning and learning for longevity will play a much bigger role in conversations around education and learning, an area that has often remained neglected by policymakers. The UK government has already introduced the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), beginning in the academic year 2026/2027, offering loans to people of all ages who wish to engage in further study and training. While their priority might be to keep us oldies more economically active, there are many other reasons to keep learning.