WEA Education Blog

Successful CALL Lobby of Parliament

The CALL (Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning) lobby of Parliament was very successful today. There were hundreds of people involved including a very large range of students and a big WEA element.

 It’s been years since I’ve been on a Parliamentary Lobby. It is a fascinating experience and it is quite encouraging that there is still a system where, when enough people are concerned about something, they can raise these issues collectively within Parliament itself. After the lobby we all piled into a Committee Room in the Commons and heard (thankfully) brief speeches from a range of people including Trade Unions, the Women’s Institute, the Muslim Council and various others. An NUS speaker talked of a ‘broken and distorted’ system that is out of our hands and damaged by ‘bureaucratic tinkering’. She called for a ‘curriculum based on learning rather than qualifying’.

Richard Bolsin, the WEA General Secretary, was joint chair of the meeting. Unfortunately, two of the main CALL organisers, Ann Walker from the WEA and Paul Mackney (the CALL campaign coordinator) were unwell and couldn’t attend.

Towards the end a number of MPs spoke including David Blunkett who quoted his own foreword to the 1999 White Paper ‘The Learning Age':

“Learning enables people to play a full part in their community and strengthens the family, the neighbourhood and consequently the nation. It helps us fulfil our potential and opens doors to a love of music, art and literature. That is why we value learning for its own sake and are encouraging adults to enter and re-enter learning at every point of their lives as parents, at work and as citizens.”

Gordon Marsden, who is sponsoring the Early Day Motion, strongly welcomed the campaign and hoped that it would help adults to “learn more, enthuse more and communicate with each other” to overcome the ‘atomisation’ of the modern age. As reported in a previous post, the Shadow Skills Minister, David Willetts also endorsed informal adult learning, saying: “We mustn’t have a funding structure that restricts opportunities to people solely for a defined range of paper qualifications." He said he ‘completely agreed’ with David Blunkett’s quotation from the foreword to The Learning Age.

John Denham, the Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, joined the meeting and spoke for 10 minutes before taking questions. It’s always difficult for ministers in these situations coming into a meeting that’s well underway, speaking when they haven’t heard the debate so far and accompanied by their little entourage of young staff furiously scanning the audience for policy clues. Had he been there for all the discussions he would have heard many valuable contributions that were well received. Of course, had he been there the dynamic would have been different. So, unfortunately he hadn’t heard about the difference ESOL makes to people and communities and the practical problems currently faced with this provision or in part-time adult learning overall in FE and HE. He hadn’t heard about the impact of rising fees on people with modest incomes or the difficultly for adults in taking on full or long courses.

In his speech he promised the imminent White Paper would be a “renewed birth to informal learning”. However, he then repeated his frequently used comment that ‘holiday Spanish’ was something that could no longer be a priority for public funding. This provoked a couple of angry questions from some in the audience who felt it overlooked the issues being discussed and the balance of funding for adult education compared to other government priorities. It was clear that the Secretary of State wasn't pleased with this exchange and was not very happy as he left the meeting - although he had been very positive about CALL at the start of his speech. A pity really as several speakers had been positive about his efforts before he arrived. Nevertheless, he must have seen the strength of feeling there is on the CALL campaign issues – even if he felt uncomfortable about how some people expressed it. Perhaps now one of his aides will suggest that the ‘holiday Spanish’ jibe be rested.

On the way home I checked and the WEA taught 14 Holiday Spanish courses in 2007-08 with 141 students enrolled. Three of these courses were targeted for adults with mental health difficulties. Overall, holiday Spanish made up only 0.14% of WEA provision that year.

The new White Paper may tell, I suppose. At the end of the meeting, after John Denham had left, Bob Fryer argued that, before publication, the Secretary of State would be best to test the content of that document against the celebrated Blunkett foreword of over a decade ago.

Conservatives challenge to 'paper qualifications'

Today has seen a bit of a media onslaught from David Willetts, the Shadow Skills Secretary, around the falling numbers of adults in education. This is an interesting development of the Opposition's policy over recent months and comes less than two weeks before the CALL Lobby of Parliament (see previous blog entry).

You can see his 3 minute interview with the BBC, click here - just count the times he refers (with little enthusiasm) to 'paper qualifications'. 

Are his points fair? From the experience in my family and others I know, I think the comments he makes on adults with learning difficulties is hard to refute. On falling ICT classes, I've looked at the WEA's figures. In 2005-06 we ran 1,511 non-accredited short ICT classes. Last year we ran 1,056 - a fall of 30% over three years.

It does seem possible, leaving aside the views of the different political parties, that the certainties of 'Full Qualifications' as a central element in Leitch is under challenge because of the fall in adult participation. This is now being combined with concerns to find flexible ways to use education and training to respond to the impact of the recession on individuals.

However, David Willetts didn't leave it there. He also said:
"Learning also brings health and community benefits that can reduce the pressure on public spending in other areas."

We'll have to see how this debate develops.

CALL and the Lobby of Parliament

The Campaigning Alliance for Lifelong Learning (CALL) is lobbying Parliament on 25th February. Across the country the WEA is organising around this event and involved in local discussions on the campaign.

Ann Walker, the WEA's Regional Director for Yorkshire Humber, has a leading role for the WEA in CALL. She has prepared a powerpoint presentation which you can get here to make the case for adult learning. It also includes details of the lobby and how you can contact your MP around Early Day Motion 533 supporting the campaign.

Tutors and Students meet as equals

Raymond William's famous open letter to WEA tutors back in 1961 is appended to the WEA's tutor handbook. You can read it here (Download Raymond Williams an open letter to WEA tutors). One paragraph in the letter refers to:

"the claim that, in the WEA, tutors and students meet as equals. Of course the tutor knows his own discipline better, and wants to help the students to learn it, but he may not know how his dis­cipline looks to people outside it, may not know the gaps between academic thinking and actual experience among many people; he may not know when, in the pressure of experience, a new discipline has to be created."

That expression - 'in the WEA, tutors and students meet as equals' - seems as important now as ever to me. If we respect adults and their voluntary interest in learning then that equality must be central in our work. What does it mean in the 21st Century WEA?

I was interested to read research summary called 'Inside the Black Box' (click here to read it). This publication, from 2001 by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam from King's College London School of Education, looks hard at what formative assessment means in school teaching. It is also centred on fairness and the importance of the relationship between teacher and pupils. It says:

“In this paper, the term ‘assessment’ refers to all those activities undertaken by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes ‘formative assessment’ when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet the needs.”

The report sees the managerial role of assessments as presenting difficulties:

“• Teachers’ feedback to pupils often seems to serve social and managerial functions, often at the expense of the learning functions.

• Teachers are often able to predict pupils' results on external tests—because their own tests imitate them—but at the same time they know too little about their pupils’ learning needs.

• The collection of marks to fill up records is given greater priority than the analysis of pupils’ work to discern learning needs; furthermore, some teachers pay no attention to the assessment records of previous teachers of their pupils.”

This (eight years ago) is an important caution around the purpose of learning and assessment and still seems as problematic as ever. We can see it in qualifications and in assessing non-accredited courses.

We spend a lot of time in the WEA monitoring our provision to be sure we don't exclude adults from our courses. We have good evidence of equality of opportunity and fairness in terms of who participates in our provision, but what about fairness in our relations between tutors and students? That can't be considered through management or monitoring. It has to be explored by tutors individually and, perhaps better, together.

I will be writing to the WEA Tutor Network to see if we can set up a 'Meet as Equals' project to learn how tutors make real this commitment in their teaching now. I think we have a lot to learn from each other and hope as many colleagues will want to get involved in this over the next few months.

Two new jobs in Bristol with the WEA

We have two new strategy officer jobs being advertised at the moment. Here's the ad text:

Are you ready to influence policy development and make a positive contribution to the work of England's largest adult education provider?

Could you work closely with the Director of Education & Strategy to drive improvement, build relationships and promote innovation across the country? We are looking for two creative and skilled individuals who will work collaboratively to develop our work and continue our mission.

 

The Workers’ Educational Association is a national adult education charity working in all nine English Regions and Scotland with over 70,000

part-time learners a year. It is committed to promoting and delivering education for adults throughout their lives as part of an educated democracy.

 

Strategic Policy Officer (Education & Strategy),

Bristol

Starting Salary £30,946

 

With

• Excellent skills in research and policy development/management
  
• Current knowledge and experience of developing and managing policy implementation within the fields of post-16 Education or Social Policy

To provide a policy development, coordination and research service to support quality improvement in the WEA across England.

 

Strategic Relationships Officer (Education & Strategy),

Bristol

Starting Salary £30,946

• With current knowledge and experience of Client, Relationship and Partnership management
• Excellent quantitative and qualitative social science research skills, including questionnaire design and analysis, interview and focus group skills
• Experience and imagination in using Web 2.0 for networking

To lead the coordination, development and operation of the WEA’s Stakeholder Involvement Strategy and provide a high quality service to maintain and develop external relationships and national/multi-regional partnerships across England.

We recognise continuing inequalities in education and welcome applications from groups under-represented in our workforce and from diverse backgrounds.

 

More information click here  or call 0117-916-6504

 

Closing date for applications 18th February. Interviews in week of 2nd March

 

Charity No. 1112775