WEA Education Blog

LSIS on FE and the financial crisis - cool on Leitch?

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’."

RARPA and inspection, whatever next?

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.

Continuing education at universities under further threat

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 Learning Revolution' White Paper launched

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, Morley, Hillcroft, Ruskin, Fircroft and Northern College.

Overall, around 80% of their provision consists of informal adult learning. SDIs are funded directly by the Learning and Skills Council. Going forward we want to explore further the ways in which they will make a significant and demonstrable contribution to local partnerships and deliver the informal adult learning vision in return for public funding. For example, in addition to their own provision, SDIs will contribute to the new vision for informal adult learning by sharing their spaces, their expertise and their resources with other providers, including self-organised learning groups. The range of activity could include: 

• 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 Raymond Williams Foundation

I've written a number of times on Raymond Williams and whether his influence on the WEA has application in the 21st Century. The Raymond Williams Foundation is a new initiative that will be of interest to anyone wanting to explore this further. The Raymond Williams Foundation (RWF) was launched in November 2008, following 20 years as the much smaller Raymond Williams Memorial Fund (RWMF). RWMF helped organise annual WEA Raymond Williams residential courses at the Wedgwood Memorial College. This year's course in May on Keywords will again fill the College.

The RWF has substantial funds and a growing membership committed to adult education, especially WEA social and political education.

For more information on the Foundation click here  

 

Does membership matter?

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.