The Rowntree Legacy: Adult Education and Lifelong Learning

The promotion of adult education was a passionate interest of Joseph and one to which he devoted himself throughout his life. The Adult School movement and the Rowntree contribution to it is a key part of their legacy. Joseph wrote the introduction to The Story of York Adult Schools by F J Gillman in 1907.

Towards the end of his life, Joseph also supported the Educational Settlements Association, founded in 1920. The settlements had wider ambitions than adult schools and, from a Rowntree perspective, their aim was to provide political, social and civic education for newly enfranchised members of the working classes.

The Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust gave substantial financial backing to this movement in the forty years after 1909 when Arnold Rowntree helped to create two settlements in York and Leeds. Education as a process of ‘lifelong learning’ is a current issue today in a fast moving world where skills need to be continually updated.