Entitled to Learn? The Construction of the Older Learner in England's Lifelong Learning Entitlement

England's Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE) will replace existing student finance arrangements with a single loan-based funding architecture spanning regulated qualification levels 4-6 across further and higher education provision. It is presented as an inclusive, flexible response to skills shortages and economic change. This paper asks what learner that entitlement imagines. Drawing on a focused critical discourse analysis of six core policy texts, the study applies Fairclough's three-dimensional model through the accessible four-phase procedure developed by Cummings et al. (2020).

Three constructions are identified: the lifelong learner as employable, as self-managing, and as conditionally legitimate — the latter expressed most sharply in an age-60 cap on tuition-loan eligibility within a "lifelong" entitlement. In contrast with the evidence base on older adults' learning and health, which centres intrinsic, social and salutogenic value (Narushima et al., 2013; Schoultz et al., 2020), the LLE renders precisely those registers unintelligible. 

Using Fraser's (2008) account of justice, the paper argues that this misrecognition is coupled with a distributive harm carried by the same repayment architecture, falling hardest on the most disadvantaged older learners. The analysis offers an age-responsive reframing for education providers and positions itself as the first, textual phase of a wider research programme. The paper will be presented at the 55th Annual Conference of the British Society of Gerontology.