WEA computing classes in the East Midlands were features on Channel 4 News recently. The item looked at the decline in places for adult learners on ICT (Information, Communication, Technology) and the difficulty this presents for learners and providers.
The video is just over three minutes and puts the case for growth in ICT in the interests of learners very effectively.
The ongoing Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning has published another Thematic paper. This one, written by John Field from the Centre for Research in Lifelong Learning at the University of Stirling. It is a really timely case for standing back and asking more about what education is for.
You can get the full report from the IFFL website click here.
The report ends with 13 key points. In summary, (with author's italics) these are:
adult learning is likely to be particularly
effective in enhancing the wellbeing of our most vulnerable citizens.
Professionals in adult learning may need to align themselves with other
services and campaigning bodies that are concerned with well-being.
We need to tackle the persistent gap between
medical and other approaches to wellbeing and we need
much closer alignment between interventions designed to cure or limit the
damages of mental ill-health, and those designed to promote positive
flourishing throughout life
There are important examples of public health
bodies that acknowledge the important role of learning in improving health
outcomes, including mental health outcomes.
Organisations providing adult learning should
consider how to
promote well-being more effectively.
Teaching approaches should actively seek to
promote well-being.
While this may involve therapeutic interventions for those who are most
vulnerable to poor mental health,
it must also involve taking account of the ways in which adults’ biographies
interact with learning environments.
Work plays a central role in most people’s lives,
and is critical to their well-being. The entire workforce requires skills,
resilience and flexibility to cope and thrive in the changing landscape of work.
there is a strong case for looking at a new learning life balance for employees
Organisations providing adult learning also need
to consider the well-being
of their workers.
Learning providers and policy-makers need to
develop agreed
approaches to Measurement of well being
a lifelong learning system that takes well-being
as its primarypurpose is likely to differ significantly from present
models.
Governments, employers and public institutions on their own can make individual action possible, but individual behaviour is also required – and indeed can, if duplicated across entire societies, help to shift the priorities and goals of the other actors.
The first Education and Strategy Conference successfully brought together over 40 WEA tutor organisers and tutors from across the English regions and Scotland to share their views on the operation and future direction of the WEA. The conference was held on held 20 and 21 May in Sheffield.
This is Claire Nussey's note of the event that also appears in 'WEA News'.
The opening speech 'What is to be done?' was given by Professor Frank Coffield, Emeritus Professor of Education at the Institute of Education at the University of London.
Professor Coffield gave a lively and provocative talk on ways to develop and improve learning and teaching and provided his thoughts on what action needs to be taken by the government, senior managers in further education, tutors and students to help achieve this.
A key point of the speech was that that these are not separate groups - they must work together to improve teaching and learning. Professor Coffield used examples from his experience of teaching in FE where senior managers in FE, tutors and learners regularly sit round a table to discuss key issues together. Professor Coffield also talked about developing a partnership between tutors and learners - that they learn should from each other. For example, feedback on work should help the learner know what they have done well and where they could improve but should also help the tutor plan what they teach next.
The speech was a fantastic opening for the rest of the conference, which focused on some of the WEA’s new strategic priorities. Workshops over the two days included Sustainability and Climate Change where tutors and tutor organisers shared interesting examples of how issues around sustainability are being introduced into many different subjects.
Other workshops included looked at what is happening in the classroom – how to develop effective learning relationships between tutors and learners; how field staff support and work with tutors; time-management and how do we meet the needs of students with mental health issues.
As key themes throughout the workshops were communication and sharing ideas This has always been a complex matter in the WEA with its dispersed provision. A workshop on the development of Moodle was very relevant. Moodle is like an internet site with a password where WEA tutors can download WEA documents and information and share ideas with each other for teaching.
The conference provided a great opportunity for tutor organisers and tutors to meet colleagues from other regions and share their experience of what helps to develop good learning and teaching and how improvements could be made.
The conference generated lots of suggestions for improvement around communication, engagement and ideas for the classroom between tutor organisers and tutors. Many agreed to keep in contact with each other by e-mail and phone. Those attending agreed that the conference should become an annual event, with a clear focus on looking at the progress which has been made on the actions and issues that were raised at the previous conference.
The Cabinet reshuffle led to the move of John Denham from the Department of Innovation Universities & Skills to the Department of Communities & Local Government. In a less publicised development, DIUS itself has been merged with BERR (The Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform). This places Lord Mandelson, a pivotal figure in the current cabinet, in charge of post 19 education in England (see 'Guardian' article).
DIUS was short lived and a number of people had anticipated that it might change or be closer linked with industry after the next election. This move indicates the government's view that skills and training and the role of universities are important to the recovery of the economy.
One question arising is around the implementation of 'The Learning Revolution' white paper recently published by DIUS. As Secretary of State, John Denham had taken a close personal interest in the development of this policy and the debates and definitions around 'Informal Adult Learning'. This policy has moved the argument around the purposes of education for adults and the role of all government departments in its promotion. It may be that his move to DCLG will allow him to continue his interest in this area. Either way, it will be important that the progress made over the year in articulating a wider vision than the Leitch report and one which sees education as key to developing individuals, communities and resilience in the face of change. The future as seen by Leitch preceded the financial crisis, the government is currently saying how important FE will be in getting people through the recession. The cross government agenda set out in the Learning Revolution needs to continue after John Denham's move.
LSIS, the Learning & Skills Improvement Service has produced a paper: 'The Financial Crisis and FE - stepping up to the challenge'. Download BriefGuidetoFEandthefinancialcrisis here (but note that it is 18 pages long!)
It has a section the Effects on Leitch agenda which has a rather valedictory tone:
"The Leitch agenda is the Government’s flagship policy on skills. It is based on the thesis that increasing the skills attainment of the population will increase productivity, skills attainment being measured by the proportion of the working-age population with qualifications. It also contends that employers and learners should determine the amount of provision in the system – only the courses they choose should receive public funding.
For the past couple of years, the Government has restricted public funding to courses that lead to full qualifications, to meet the Leitch measurements (even though many employers wanted smaller courses that did not lead to qualifications). In the autumn of 2008, the Government relaxed these rules, in an effort to support training and keep people employed during the crisis. Public funding can now be directed towards courses that do not lead to full qualifications.
In January 2009, the House of Commons select committee that oversees skills released a report highly critical of Leitch. It questioned whether there was sufficient evidence to argue that increasing skills really increased productivity, and whether qualifications really did indicate that a person possessed equivalent skills in a real sense. The report also criticised the machinery of government reforms, saying ‘the abolition of the LSC and the establishment of the Skills Funding Agency is likely to lead to considerable further disruption and the reward for this is as yet uncertain’. The report said of Train to Gain that it ‘will only achieve its aim of producing long-term improvements in competitiveness if its brokerage service is more closely tied to helping firms develop more ambitious business plans and more tightly linked to wider economic development and business improvement services’."
Recognising and Recording Progress and Achievement (RARPA) in non-accredited learning developed out of work established by the WEA in the 1990s called 'learning outcomes'. That dealt with the accusation that adult education, without the rigour of external qualifications, could be studied with no evidence of learning.
RARPA is based on a five stage process that covers basic good practice in teaching and learning. In recent years RARPA has become a condition for receiving public funding for non-accredited learning provision (see NIACE toolkit here). There is no doubt that the systematic implementation of the staged process as a standard has improved provision in the WEA. Not least because it helped some tutors develop and others to decide to leave.
However, along the way in wider policy terms it has become both marginalised from developmental discussion as the skills strategy has dominated and, at the same time, highly managerialised and integrated into the regulatory and funding compliance superstructure. It is clear now that the Ofsted is not completely happy with the arrangement. Over a year ago one lead inspector's view when briefing inspectors was reported as: "RARPA: it's not working, is it?"
One aspect of this is that the recording process and the use of that to create data and 'evidence' has become the main driver. Apparently, in a recent study on formative assessment, almost all tutors in non-accredited provision knew what RARPA was but many didn't know the Staged Process. This has two effects: one is it reduces the possibility of great teaching and learning, exchanging the best for the most compliant; second, it places summative assessment on a pedestal thus losing the first four stages and reinforces the State perspective of recent years that qualifications are all!
From this summer, this will be taken to the extreme where LSC funding Adult Safeguarded Learning provision will have to return individual 'achievement' data to the LSC so that comparative judgements can be made on non-accredited learning in inspection.
"Completion of achievement data [for non-accredited provision] will be voluntary from 2008/09 and a requirement from 2009/10." Ofsted guidelines for Adult & Community Learning Inspections.
This is really taking the whole issue of non-accredited learning rapidly in the wrong direction.
The key is in the classroom and the relationship between the tutor and the students as a group and individually. Proper, imaginative teaching and good formative assessment combined with respect and interest in students need to be central. Nothing new in that. The Black Report Download Blackbox exposed this danger in schools years ago:
"Teachers’ feedback to pupils often seems to serve social and managerial functions, often at the expense of the learning functions."
and
"The giving of marks and the grading functions are over-emphasised, while the giving of useful advice and the learning function are under-emphasised."
This month's NIACE events on reporting research into Formative Assessment reinforced the problematic gap that is emerging between issues in the classroom and the industrial harvesting of outcomes to inform inspection and account for funding. In that, good, straightforward teaching practice which includes effective questioning of students, appropriate feedback and self or peer assessment by students were shown to be key techniques to help people progress.
We need to get this back into the classroom. We need to see it as part of a process where the student is as important as the subject and the interaction between them, mediated by the tutor is the interesting bit. We don't need to offset reduced cost inspections by introducing statistically unreliable data - and put the cost of that on providers.
Maybe the new White Paper can give some hope. In theory the burgeoning industry of 'simplification', 'bureaucracy reduction' and 'self-regulation' should have prevented this; in fact it seems accelerating the vanillaisation of adult learning. We can't afford an inspection system that is reduced to the equivalent of a chap coming round to read the meter. A new commitment to informal adult learning should place the student at its heart and sweep away the managerialism and survelliance of the regulatory superstructure. Then let that be properly inspected - beyond a quick glance at a web-portal of meaningless achievement stats.
The position of continuing studies programmes in some English universities is under immediate threat. This is due to the 'ELQ' policy introduced by the government. A statement from Reading University says:
"In September 2007, the Government announced the withdrawal of funding for students who are studying for a Higher Education qualification that is equivalent to, or lower than, a qualification that they have already been awarded (ELQ). This impacts most heavily on the University's School of Continuing Education public programmes, which are predominantly 10 week part-time open courses, and the Certificate in Higher Education."
It's ironic that this news is coming out in Reading and a number of other universities as the government launches its White Paper the 'Learning Revolution' with a commitment to increasing access to learning and open up educational institutions to more people.
Students on Reading's threatened continuing education courses have begun to organise themselves and produced a 'Let's save our brains' website on their campaign. You can visit it here.
The long awaited White Paper on Informal Adult learning was published today by the Department of Innovation Universities and Skills. You can read it here
The DIUS website says:
"Government recognises the profound
importance of informal adult learning to people’s lives and our nation’s
well-being. Informal learning can help people gain personal satisfaction,
development and fulfilment. For the low skilled and with poor experiences of
formal education, informal learning can be an important stepping stone to
further learning, qualifications and more rewarding work. It can help keep
people mentally and physically active and independent into old age. It can also
bring people and communities together.
This strategy reaffirms cross-government commitment to informal learning and sets out how the Government will act as an enabler, capacity builder and connector to maximise the potential benefits. "
The WEA gets a couple of mentions and there is an important section recognising the role of the Specialist Designated Institutions - which includes the WEA. On these, the White Paper says:
"The expertise of Specialist Designated Institutions
enables them to play a central role in the new informal adult learning vision.
SDIs are a diverse group of distinctive institutions, recognised as centres of
excellence whose reputation and reach extends beyond their local areas. They
are City Lit, Mary Ward Centre, Working Men’s College, Workers’ Educational
Association, Marine Society College of the Sea,
• leading the way in the innovative use of technology
in learning and sharing content online, potentially through collaborations with
technology and media providers
• sharing with others their expertise in cross subsidising
between income generating activity and programmes to reach out to disadvantaged
groups
• enabling self-organised group leaders to share selected
CPD training opportunities
• opening up their spaces for self-organised learning"
The WEA is a membership organisation. Since last September, our new scheme has brought us over 20,000 members. We see membership as key to democracy in the WEA and that democracy (in all ways) is vital to education. But it isn't easy. Does our membership reflect our students or our provision? Is it well distributed across the country? Does it deliver the WEA's mission locally?
Matthew Taylor, the Chief Executive of the RSA, has written on this issue in his blog (click here) and this shows the WEA is not alone in seeing this as an important and tricky issue.
It has to be a key issue for the WEA. We know the level of concern about the loss of individual choice and influence in adult education and the disappearance of community learning opportunities. We need our members to feel confident about acting on this in all parts of the country. Some of them fear the WEA is 'captured' by the government and its funding policies, others are weary of the bureaucracy required to put on provision that is planned and organised by volunteers in partnership with tutors and staff. Equally, as Matthew Taylor says, how can we have a democratic membership without 'activist capture, cumbersome governance and stuffy inward looking cultures'?
We need to find a way that allows people to align themselves through membership to the WEA's commitment to adult education and addressing disadvantage. That needs to be something that can help them help the WEA make a difference to people's lives in many localities and communities and to continue to enjoy opportunities for serious informal education themselves. It isn't going to be easy but a refreshed membership cohort, the communication opportunities of the age and a determination around the WEA's reason to exist must be key to this work.
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