Conceptual foundations for understanding and characterising adult learning systems: towards more comprehensive comparative reporting

Abstract Adult Learning Systems are now central to economic and social policy, yet most international monitoring continues to treat adult learning and education as a series of isolated participation events rather than as a coordinated system. We conceptualise Adult Learning Systems as national configurations of institutions, policies, financing arrangements, regulatory frameworks, and actors that shape who learns what, when, where, and how across the adult life course. To make these systems empirically tractable, we introduce the Demand–Supply–Coordination–Learning–Outcomes framework, a conceptual and analytical architecture that takes learning occurrences as its basic unit of analysis and organises information around five system functions. We show how the Demand–Supply–Coordination–Learning–Outcome framework can reorient comparative reporting from simple, generic indicators towards complex, purpose-specific information systems tailored to research, policy design, and multi-level coordination. Drawing on emerging examples of survey–administrative linkages, federated analytics, and digital skills passports, we outline a phased strategy for integrating existing and new data sources within this architecture. This reconceptualization places coordination and the valuation of outcomes at the heart of comparative reporting, offering a roadmap for building data infrastructures that can capture the equity, adaptability, and systemic dynamics of adult education and learning.