Lifelong Learning Strategy

GMB's core purpose is that every GMB member should have the opportunity to discover and develop their talents and that is why having members accessing lifelong learning is part of their membership benefits.

Historically, the founder of GMB Will Thorne was assisted by his colleague and GMB's co-founder Eleanor Marx to improve his reading and writing more than a century ago.

From the very first the union took education seriously. It contested elections for School Boards – to get working people involved in education – even before it fought council and parliamentary elections. It ran night schools for Gas Workers who came to the class room straight from the furnaces, after 12 and 18 hour shifts; and it sponsored Socialist Sunday Schools for their children.

The union taught its members the skills and the ideas they needed. If Thorne was the first beneficiary, then hundreds of thousands of others have been helped with the insights and techniques needed to improve their own lives and to build the union, itself.

Over 100 years later, on 1st August 2016, the GMB launched the National Lifelong Learning Fund to coincide with the first meeting of the National Lifelong Learning Committee which was created in line with Congress Motion 74 in 2015.  This membership benefit is aimed at members who have recently lost their employment and need financial assistance to help up-skill and re-skill them.  However, any member who is eligible can apply for financial assistance to further their education and training.

Members with at least 53 weeks continuous membership are eligible to apply for funding towards a course of study.  There is an application process and you will need to complete the application form, which you can download from the Resources section.