WEA Education Blog

Celebrating the Oakfield animators in Liverpool

I was lucky to be invited to attend the premiere of a short animated film at the FACT centre in Liverpool on Friday. The film, made in a WEA project involving a partnership with the care provider, United Response and Mersey Rail, was screened in the cinema in front of an audience of friends, family, workers and the film makers themselves – from the Oakfields Day Centre in Anfield. The film makers received a red carpet reception and the audience enjoyed both the current film – 'From Oakfiends to Ironmen’ see it here along with fascinating short documentaries on how the film, and an earlier one, had been made - see here.

For me, it was the combination of enjoying the film on a big screen with an enthusiastic audience plus the insight into the process that the ‘behind the scenes’ films gave that made this such a celebration of success.

The group are now moving onto a project working with bus staff to look at how access to bus services for adults with learning difficulties can be improved. Another animation is planned.

 Now, back to thinking how to comply with regulators’ requirements that individual achievement data is neatly recorded in non-accredited learning!

WEA on Trafalgar Square fourth plinth

It’s a couple of weeks ago now but I want to congratulate Chris Sharman for getting onto the fourth ‘plinth’ on the first day. Chris is a great advocate of the WEA and really took the initiative in a way which got the WEA into the national newspapers. So, this year, we can say that WEA art has been exhibited in the highest profile way. Apart from that, I love her comment that ‘adult learning make your brain tingle’.

WEA ICT provision on Channel 4 News

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.

WEA in Ofsted annual report magazine

As mentioned in a previous entry, Ofsted's magazine for Adult Learning - 'Talisman'  has a summary of Adult & Community Learning Provision which includes the following article (written by us!) on the WEA. I thought it would be worth copying here at the end of 2008:

"The WEA is Britain’s largest voluntary sector provider of adult learning, reaching 70,000 individual learners in England each year, plus a further 10,000 or more in Scotland. We organise courses in local venues in hundreds of communities through the shared values of our volunteers and staff. Much of our funding comes from a single contract across England with the Learning and Skills Council, which we manage through allocating targets amongst our nine regions (coterminous with the Government Regions) and monitoring performance.

Our provision

The best quick way to describe our provision, which includes a vast range of course subjects across the country, is through our three educational strands. Every WEA course in England its in one of these three strands, through which we plan to meet the intentions of learners and the different contexts within which they make their choices about joining courses.

 §         Second Chance to Learn: this is about adults with ‘few if any educational qualifications’ and helping them gain nationally recognised qualifications. Thus it will range from ‘first steps’ to – potentially – an Access to Higher Education Certificate.

 §         Community Involvement (46% of provision): this is about helping adults achieve a wider range of outcomes through purposeful education. These include improved health and well-being, better communication skills in situations like signing and lip reading, extending volunteering in schools, activism in unions and other roles and the capacity to take part in community activity etc. Again there is an emphasis on disadvantaged students but using a wider definition that includes health, social, economic and other factors.

 §         Cultural Studies (36% of provision): this strand is designed to attract all adults with a ‘love of learning’ who want to develop an understanding of a subject for ‘its own sake’ and wish to be involved in the planning and delivery of the provision.

 Self-assessment, inspection and improvement

The WEA in England is inspected as one provider - leading to large inspection teams. Over the last four years we have developed a peer network of educational managers who work together to lead self-assessment and improvement. This arose from the organisation and support needs of inspection but soon developed a continuing value to the WEA. Self-assessment and inspection can be costly and complex compared to single-site or single-city providers. We use teleconferencing extensively to manage the communications involved and the Ofsted team used our teleconference system for end of day 'meetings', with inspectors calling in from up to six locations. 

As we have improved our work over the years, we have come to value this networked management approach. We supplement this with standard data and performance measures and have improved our work by focusing on key strategic or systemic improvement objectives. We have found that identifying the right big improvement issue and then working as a team on actions needed is more effective than creating very detailed, centralised plans. This is particularly important given capacity issues created by increasing regulatory demands often designed around full-time young learners on full-time qualifications.

 The WEA is a highly responsive provider of adult learning. Our partnership working is extensive and almost second nature. We are a committed mission based organisation, but we want to be judged by external standards too. We are proud that the impetus of external inspection combined with the fantastic commitment of staff, tutors and volunteers means we continue to improve our provision and remain a distinctive provider and non-conformist voice for adult education in a period of great turbulence and uncertainty."

WEA North West - Culture of Arts event

Last night there were about 250 people in attendance in one of the   best-known shopping malls in

Liverpool

. 10 WEA learners from our Culture of Fashion course in Newton Le Willows had designed and created outfits from clothes they had bought in  a second-hand shop. Our learners whose ages ranged from 54 to 77, modelled their designs on the catwalk like professional models. After they had modelled their own designs, they also modelled a series of outfits from Marks and Spencer.

The event was part of the WEA North West's Culture of Arts - a programme that aims to create a series of interrelated arts activities to explore the cultural diversity of

the city’s communities. You can visit their website here.

Its objectives are to celebrate the diversity of people's lives and encourage involvement in the arts, focusing primarily on those groups with no or limited engagement in community art based projects.

 

 

WEA News

The latest edition of WEA news (click here to see) - Download wea_news_17.pdf - majors on the Ofsted inspection but includes a number of other interesting articles. Distribution of the 'News' is limited but it is always available electronically at the WEA's website.

Please pass it on to colleagues and students who may be interested.

Paperwork, paperwork

Many people will have seen the article on the WEA in the Guardian on 15th April. You can read it here.

In it, Mike Baker suggests that the government may be suffocating adult education and illustrates this by extensive comments on the WEA.

It's a welcome, if surprising, article and a fascinating series of responses in the accompanying blog.

We need to look at this and think carefully. The current evidence is that (despite what some journalists seem to think) the WEA is an organisation which works within the community and in many communities and brings in a high proportion of adults returning to education each year (about 50%). Moreover, it works with some of the most marginalised and disadvantaged communities in the country and the LSC's own data shows that. We can't do that without public funding and the learners in these courses are less likely to be vocal on this issue.

At the same time we want to continue to run provision for everyone and with fair fees that recognise ability to pay. It is likely that the WEA is now the biggest provider of Humanities education outside of schools and universities in England.

The WEA and comprehensive education have a long relationship and we need to reinforce the case for educational opportunities for all adults, without ghettoes or clubs. WEA tutors, students, volunteers and staff know that; their commitment to the principles of the Association continue to be evident - not least in the recent Ofsted report. We can't do this without public funding and, at the moment, that comes largely from the Learning & Skills Council. We need to fight for that money and, at the same time, fight for a sensible regulation of its use which supports high quality learning and access for all.

Adults re-engaging

Did you see the recent 'Guardian' article by Alan Tuckett, the Director of NIACE, which illustrates the value of adult education to many people facing change or challenge in their lives? (click here to read)  It reinforces what we all know - that adult education can change lives and that adults have many intentions in attending classes and what they study can lead to many outcomes. It's good to see the case for these classes being put in the context of very significant reduction in opportunities for adults in the last two years and the likelihood of this continuing next year.