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What do you want to learn?” the teacher asks his new student in Willy Russell’s play and film Educating Rita about the Open University –50 years old this spring. “Everything,” she replies.

Perhaps the OU’s most famous student Sir Lenny Henry, one of nearly a million who have graduated from it since 1969, epitomises its achievement.

“Once you start learning,” he says, “you can’t stop wanting to learn.”

He has gone on to do a Masters degree and a PhD while maintaining his successful career in comedy and the theatre.

My first job was as a part-time tutor to some of the Open University’s first students.

(Image: Sunday Mirror)

So in a fairly minor role I had the privilege of being present at the OU’s creation – and over those 50 years I have marvelled at its success as more and more second chance learners from all backgrounds have seen their dreams come true.

It was the 1960s brainchild of Harold Wilson and its midwife was Jennie Lee, who achieved for universal education what her husband Aneurin Bevan did for universal health care with the NHS.

In the past we had encouraged only some of the talents of some of the people.

Now, in this new generation, the Open University could encourage all of the talents of all of the people.

When I hosted a celebration for its 40th anniversary at No10 Wilson’s widow Mary and her son Robin, then an OU mathematics professor, were our leading guests.

(Image: Getty)

But Cabinet papers I have seen for the first time show that in 1970 the OU was almost strangled at birth – by a Treasury demand that it be axed to send a message about the importance of austerity.

A public spending cut by the Conservatives was fought off by – rather interestingly – Margaret Thatcher, who told her Cabinet colleagues the Open University offered good cut-price education and warned of possible demonstrations by disappointed thousands if the institution was scrapped.

When the OU began, men formed 70% of the intake but since the mid-1990s women have primarily become the majority.

In recent years it has done more to break down social class as well as gender barriers and live down a contention that it was the second degree university – not, as originally intended, the second chance one.

Today one third of new students there possess nowhere near the standard university entry qualifications – having at best one A-level and usually far less.

And just as intake has changed, technology underpinning the OU has been transformed too, away from the analogue world of BBC2 wee small hours lectures and materials sent out via Royal Mail.

It has now moved to the world of open digital platforms, cloud computing, gaming theory and online courses – facing dozens of fast-moving competitors, often with far greater resources.

More and more people will in future inevitably switch between careers and have to up-skill during their working lives.

(Image: PA)

But surprisingly, mature student numbers, over-21 undergraduate entrants to English universities, are down from 360,000 just 10 years ago to 170,000 now.

It means that over the past five years a total of almost one million fewer mature students have been going through university. This had led to some critics reprising the “more means worse” argument.

In the early 1960s when only 5% of the 18-21 age group went to university there was, they accept, a pent-up demand for that level of education.

Now, with 40% of the age group going on to higher education, they argue that what’s left is “the pool of tapped untalent”.

The facts on the ground look very different. The Sutton Trust attributes at least 40% of the overall fall in mature student numbers to tuition fees.

Indeed, while Open University numbers in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have held up, England – with a part-time fee of £2,500 – has seen a 59% fall in part-time mature student admissions to the OU.

I always opposed up-front tuition fees and favoured a graduate tax. But for the financial crisis of 2008, we might have got there. Our desire was always to encourage life-long, post-school education.

We also introduced individual learning accounts so at any stage in their lives adults could take up educational opportunities – and, of course, we had educational maintenance allowances for all aged over 16 so we could persuade young people from low-income families to stay on in education.

I believe a future government could bring these initiatives together with a simpler solution – a lifetime education grant funded by a graduate tax.

Every adult would be able to cash in on a grant at any time for any study and any course.

Also, to ensure maximum flexibility and offer maximum opportunity, they would be able to accumulate credits for a recognised degree not just from the OU but from courses at any accredited institution all over the world.

Thus we could make a reality of what we call life-long, recurrent or permanent education.

In Educating Rita, Russell had in mind not only his own experience – leaving school at 15, becoming a hairdresser and doing evening classes – but the millions of women who never had the chance to fulfil their potential yet who, via the OU, could bridge the gap between what they were and what they had it in themselves to become.

In delivering these chances, Britain and the Open University could again lead the world.