The Higher Education Funding Council has announced it is providing more funds for a teaching and learning research programme looking at the achievement of learners across the board.

The Economic and Social Research Council's Teaching and Learning Research Programme will receive an extra £10.5 million over the next seven years to fund the third phase of its work, which will focus on post-compulsory education and lifelong learning, looking at the ways that learners experiences can be improved.

Projects in the first two phases of the programme have included a series of studies into improving incentives to learning in the workplace, learning in the first three years of postgraduate employment and learning how to learn - in classrooms, schools and networks.

Those involved with the study, based at Cardiff University School of Social Sciences, will shortly be launching a consultation process involving researchers, practitioners, policy-makers and other potential users of the research to determine the priorities for the new programme of research. The new programme will start this autumn, with the projects themselves running for up to five years from 2003.

For further information about the current programme visit