I think your definitions will be really useful for people – I do hope though, that people in both the formal and informal sectors will continue to see all types of education as evolving though. Certainly I think the formal education sector needs to adapt quite rapidly to provide people with the skills and qualities they’ll need for life – this doesn’t just apply to schools either – how many University courses still place a massive emphasis on old theories and historical learning to the detriment of equipping people with actual skills they’ll need in their professions – for example how much youth worker training includes things like management, organisation, budgeting, using technology, practical activity skills & ideas etc. ?

For the informal sector I think in many ways they should be much more ‘cutting edge’, much more experimental and taking advantage of the freedom from fixed curriculum’s etc. – and yet what we see if anything is a trend towards adapting a fixed curriculum, and emphasis on accreditation & so on. I’d much rather see the informal education sector as a creative hub looking to feed its successes into the formal education sector – but the relationship doesn’t seem to work this way currently – in fact often it feels as though they’re almost in competition albeit that the informal sector is considered the smaller petulant distant cousin!