WEA Education Blog

FE and Skills in 2020: a social productivity approach

I'm copying below the key messages from an LSIS commissioned report undertaken by the RSA on the future of FE and Skills. The executive summary of the report is here: Download LSIS FE & Skills 2020 Exec Summary

Caroline Mager from LSIS says:

"The report proposes that the sector faces a choice between ‘sleepwalking into a dangerous future’ or grasping the potential of a ‘social productivity alternative’.  The report describes these two futures as:

• One in which financial pressures encourage a culture of retrenchment, where market mechanisms  and current relationships with citizens prevail and where the sector becomes a marginalised service pushed and pulled by more powerful local players;
• Another more collaborative, networked, and socially productive future based on the concept of social productivity where colleges and providers are incubators of social value and hubs for service integration; where further education serves the needs of learners through being a creative partner in local growth and service reform agendas.

The concept of ‘social productivity’ was introduced by the 2020 Public Services Commission which argued that whilst the Beveridge model has served Britain well,  60 years on it is time for a fundamental reassessment of public services.  It called for a shift from ‘public services as a deliverer of social security, to a new culture of social productivity’ that ‘puts engagement, co-production and civic responsibility at the heart of public services. …  This means focusing … on how the confluence of citizen agency, civil society and the state can collaboratively create the right conditions to improve social and economic outcomes.’

The report elaborates 5 directions of development implied by this approach which it illustrates as follows:

1. Incubate social value – ie

• Return adult education to the centre of FE’s mission – promoting lifelong skills and learning
• Become the ‘skills for society’ incubators – providing the skills to create the Big Society
• Be the local social enterprise hubs – offering skills & training for social entrepreneurship

1. Network local growth – ie

• Become the R&D centres for Local Enterprise Partnerships – providing the raw material for local growth
• Catalyse local small & medium enterprise (SME) networks – becoming a local business hub
• Establish area-based curricula – more in tune with the needs of local enterprise

1. Drive public service integration - ie

• Become case managers for young adults – managing transition for those at risk
• Build capacity for community commissioning – driving local integrated public service models
• Become integrated service hubs -  sharing functions and expertise & generating efficiencies

1. Re-set citizen engagement – ie

• Personalise across the range of FE services – through better market segmentation
• Make space for civic association – helping to catalyse local democratic activity
• Become an education bank for the community – offering resources for citizen engagement

1. Create platforms for open learning – ie

• Invest in digital learning – to develop remote, personalised learning pathways
• Develop ‘mix and match’ learning modules – tailored to diverse needs
• Offer peer-to-peer learning and entrepreneurial training provision – opening up formal structures

As well as setting out these long-term directions, the report identifies short-term actions that should be explored:

• Sizing up the barriers to social productivity:
  to step up to this new role and to incubate social value and network local growth, tangible changes in provision, regulation and accountability are implied.  We need to develop strategies for bringing about these changes in order to create a realistic operating framework.
• Accounting for social value:
  Creating an applied methodology to determine and measure social value would unlock the potential of new accountability structures and governance frameworks.  This could build on nascent work to measure social value, community wellness and well-being to create tangible, workable methodologies.
• Modelling social productivity in practice:
  To understand the reality of social productivity in this sector, we need to explore practicalities – for example how social network analysis, co-creation and more collaborative relationship between colleges, citizens, businesses and other public services would influence service design and transform services.

We hope the report will stimulate discussion and empower the sector to determine the future it desires.  If there is appetite for the future outlined in this report, or elements of it, LSIS will support the sector to develop a route map and strategy to achieve it.

In LSIS we therefore look forward to engaging in discussions, receiving comments and feedback on this report and understanding what it means for both those leading organisations in the sector and for LSIS itself in supporting your continuing development."

 

Membership, volunteering and WEA

The second day of the WEA's annual Education & Strategy conference covered a number of issues: the impact of WEA provision in communities across the country, how our partner - the Coop - is developing its membership and how we can learn from the success of the Community Learning Champions initiative and integrate it into ongoing volunteering in the WEA. I'd recommend the Coop's 'Join our Revolution' website. The videos on the Community Learning Champions site here is really worth visiting.

The conference was really enjoyable. At the end everyone said one thing they will do from what came out of the event and one thing the WEA should do. I look forward to hearing how these go - and to seeing if the WEA can act on some of these ideas.

WEA Education & Strategy Conference first day

Here in Sheffield the first day of the annual WEA Education & Strategy Conference is closing ahead of dinner. I'm attaching a pdf of Prof. Bob Fryer's excellent opening presentation is attached: 'Promises and Problems of Adult and Lifelong Learning  Download Promises & problems of lifelong learning May 2011.

Lively discussion amongst participants continued when we considered a WEA approach to teaching and learning through examples from NW region on integrating ideas from the 'Spirit Level' into Art classes.

WEA Education & Strategy Conference in Adult Learners' Week

Looking foward to next week's Education & Strategy Conference. This is the third year in a row we've brought WEA tutors and field staff to Sheffield to meet and share ideas around the WEA's work. Each time we start off with a provocative keynote speaker. This time Prof. Bob Fryer.

We've had a pre-conf survey running for those coming and the views of those who attended earlier ones. Interesting points coming out to help break the ice really fast.

Quality in Informal Adult Community Learning

I attended another roundtable event in the IACL review this week. This one was on Quality and Workforce Development. At the start, Stuart Edwards from BIS gave a summary of the issues that were emerging across the whole review as follows:

• Does there need to be a national framework?
• If so, how can things be as devolved as possible to decision making by local people?
• How can local infrastructure be resourced?
• How can spaces be opened to self activity in communities?
• How can outreach and activity of Community Learning Champions be fostered?
• The importance of Care, Guidance and Support - particularly the role of volunteers and how to make information highly accessible to would be learners.
• How can impact be reported?
• How do we engage a broader range of organisations to reach people?
• How do we make it cost effective and get the resource into delivery?
• How do we ensure quality without bureaucracy?
• How can we get a transparent, flexible, responsive and locally accountable infrastructure?
• Can we fund short term innovative work like was done through the Transformation Fund?
• How can we prioritise funding to disadvantagesd and disengaged people and communities whilst maintaining inclusive participation for social cohesion where those who can pay should pay?
• Can providers link together and link budgets together to get a 'multiplier' effect from the £210 million?
• Can we 'grasp the nettle carefully' around the current historic distribution of the £210 million across England?
• How can we make space for new organisations?

As before, we worked in groups around tables. On my table, the main points around Quality were:

• RARPA has been important in ACL but now we need a radical development of it around impact and more collective or community outcomes. These need to drive curriculum design.
• We could relook at General Learning Outcomes or a bank of agreed benefits of learning such as those from Social Investment Outcome Research.

• IACL should be inspected but this could be on a continuing basis with individual inspectors joining local or area staff (perhaps in peer development groups) on very short notice visits to see what's going on that day. This could provide information for ongoing thematic reports but, if serious issues were identified, trigger full inspections if needed. We felt this would be much cheaper and help Inspectors learn more about IACL.
• The learner voice still needs to be critical in quality. We recognised the difficulties of that at governance level but there were good examples from providers that could be shared
• Self Assessment and Improvement Planning remains critical but we must simplify it, own it, make it more immediate and feel less directed by the Common Inspection Framework in its design

On Workforce Development my table suggested:

• Maintaining PTLLS but adding a second stage with selected DTLLS units to make an IACL qualfication
• Learning from the Higher Education Academy approach with mentoring, observation, teaching, reflective journal and validation
• Recovering CPD as a valuable reflective activity for teachers rather than a bureaucratic/compliance activity.

Progression in Informal Adult Community Learning

The Informal Adult Community Learning (IACL) roundtable on ‘Progression’ met at Central Hall, Westminster on 17th March.This was one in a series that Pete Caldwell (WEA West Midlands Director) has written on here.

There was a lot of agreement on ways forward, although sometimes we had to make sure we weren’t just thinking in old ways (setting up provider partnerships, etc.) rather than finding ways that learners and communities can co-produce learning and shape the use of public funds to meet local need. We all wanted the latter but realised we still are too anxious to anticipate and appease what we think are the demands of the old gods of Public Service Agreement targets, Inspection and funding audit.

Clearly, government – and the Treasury in particular – wants evidence of progression to justify its protection of the £210 million Adult Safeguarded Learning fund. The discussions I was in centred around:

• how to evidence progression in a way that changed/developed processes in the classroom rather than adding to them
• ensuring that evidence we seek from learners is of value to them (not just to the Treasury) and they can share in it and help improve things
• whether longstanding and respected research such as the Institute of Education ‘Wider Benefits of Learning’ questions could be integrated into providers surveys and self assessment
• how to move away from the limitations of RARPA to something that showed the impact of learning both for individuals and communities.

The pivotal role of the tutor was seen as key to progression: getting to know learners, providing them with feedback and encouragement, signposting, listening and explaining. The importance of integrating care, support and guidance (particularly when involving volunteers such as Community Learning Champions) into the design of curriculum/programme would be more holistic, far more cost effective and beneficial than remote, free-standing IAG based on the usual client/professional paradigm with its targets and checklists.

Instilling confidence, building on talents, widening horizons, encouraging raised expectations are often seen as the characteristics of elite education (well known to many in the Cabinet). So, if it’s good enough for High Society why isn’t it good enough for Big Society?

There were great examples – one from the YMCA – of how a curriculum designed around young adults (almost irrespective of subject) could be used to identify talent, access small sums of money and redesign programmes around what emerges in the relationship between tutor and learner.

Everyone was keen to avoid top down or centralised evidence capture (there were few warm words for the Framework for Excellence – in fact many cold ones). Similarly, the longstanding point was made by many that the Qualifications & Credit Framework’s potential is lost without unit funding for adults and this limits the possibilities in Adult Safeguarded Learning of seamlessly progressing learners into recognised qualifications.

Whilst recognising how difficult it is, everyone wanted provision to be coordinated across a local level to help progression in the widest sense. I don't think we went far enough, though, in how provision could be shaped more by learners and communities, how they would be involved in coordination and how participatory budgeting could help achieve locally agreed impact, outcomes and progression and save money.

I was pleased to see how much of a common view there was from colleagues in colleges, local authorities and the voluntary sector. The days of centralised tidiness dressed up as 'excellence' may have nominally passed but we need to really work on designing our own approach to progression that is locally focussed, considers learners intentions, identifies the impact of learning and gets a proper balance between the collective outcomes of a programme and the experience of individuals (especially vulnerable or disadvantaged) within it.

The 'Quality' round table comes soon and it will be crucial that the argument is taken further forward there to turn attention away from what funders and inspectors think learners need to what learners and communities want from their learning and how public funding can reasonably support that and get resources into teaching, learning and engaging.

Why and how adult learning and social movements connect

I was asked to respond to a presentation by Alan Tuckett at an event at the Institute for Education today in London. There were several presentations as part of the launch of the NIACE book 'Remaking Adult Learning'. I attach a .pdf of my presentation here: (Download Remaking Adult Learning). 

My main point was to look at how the 'Skills Agenda' as a central element of government attachment to globalisation inhibits the possibility of social movement engagement with formal adult learning. This is partly because the sector became defensive; partly because it became incorporated and particularly because the ideology and practice of 'skills' is so pervasive. I noted that the current Data Service statistical release shows that, in just four years, we have lost 470,000 adult learners in FE in exchange for a measly 3.5% improvement in success rates.

I can't see how we can expect social movements to engage with adult learning organisations until we turn our attention away from the State's demands and focus on communities and students. At the same time, we need to persuade the government that this work should receive funding. 

That will require a move away from the formula:

education = skills; skills = qualifications; qualifications = learning aims and learning aims lead to 'success'.

Not huge confidence in the audience that this could happen but, I think, general support that a turn toward communities and localities is what is needed.

Is John Hayes the nicest man in Parliament?

You might have thought so at the celebration event for Community Learning Champions (CLCs) in London today. The minister spoke to an audience of CLCs and supporting organisations and, as before, praised the role of informal adult community learning in 'changing life choices and life chances' and its impact on the 'common good'. 

He then watched one of the videos which has been produced to show the success of the scheme click here to view and seemed so moved that he stood and spoke unscripted of how the CLCs were changing expectations, building confidence and deliverying a sense of self-worth in communities across the country. He concluded by saying that we must keep this work going.

In a way his reaction was understandable: the project seems to have really struck a chord in all sorts of places - particularly in areas of disadvantage or within organisations meeting the needs of vulnerable people. The event heard the welcome news that LSIS (the Learning & Skills Improvement Service) has provided modest funding for next year to allow the maintenance of the national website, registration and badging scheme. Whilst this doesn't provide development money it is clear (despite my initial skepticism) that registration and badging has been key to the profile and networking of Champions.

The minister indicated that he expected the Review of Informal Adult Community Learning to draw on these developments. I think he is right, the Community Learning Champions model has managed to combine local innovation and diversity within a national framework and identity creating a vital 'off the peg' model for volunteering in Adult Community Learning. I was pleased that so many Champions spoke so warmly of the training course the WEA developed.

We must all make sure that this work is integrated into the review of IACL, keep the momentum up and move away from regarding this sort work as a tolerated subset of the Skills Agenda. Instead, it's clear that the minister supports what many of us want: communities take the lead.

What does Wolf report mean for Adult Education?

Just reading the Exec Summary and recommendations of the Wolf Report led me to wonder if there are implications for adult education.

As has been said, her report proposes:

• a radical simplification of the FE funding mechanism funding students not qualifications
• Much greater freedom for institutions to decide what they teach and a reduced role for government and quangos   
• Greater emphasis on a core vocational curriculum with Maths and English as central   
• Confirmation of a high quality vocational education route from 16 alongside apprenticeships and A levels 

It's pretty scathing on a number of fronts - particularly about the use of qualifications as a proxy for skills. Professor Wolf has been a long time critic of the vocational strategy since the Leitch Report and the ill-fated 'demand-led' approach of the last few years characterised by Train to Gain. This report argues that the current system has failed thousands of young people. Does that have anything to do with adult education? 

It certainly questions the notion that qualifications, in themselves, are the answer to anything. Moreover, it recommends funding for 16-18 year olds to be on a programme basis rather than by qualification or learning aim code. It withdraws any obligation for vocational qualifications for 16-18s to be in the Qualifications & Credit Framework (QCF) and it offers an entitlement to people who don't complete their education before 19 to have it credited when they are an adult (there is a rather optimistic suggestion that Unique Learner Numbers 'should make this straightforward'). 

The focus is much more about the whole programme, including valued qualifications and its impact. This includes the recommendation that local employers in the assessment and awarding process.

So, do the recommendations throw doubt on the post 19 funding system which is driven by learning aim codes entirely (from next August) within the QCF? Does it encourage thinking about whole programmes of education and training situated within local circumstances with well recognised qualifications embedded within them? Many have welcomed the recommendations to allow QTLS to be recognised in schools but, within these recommendations there must also be messages for adult learning around the purpose of learning programmes, where they fit in peoples lives, communities and workplaces and that qualifications mean nothing if they're not in a context where they can be applied or lead to progression.

 

‘Skills for Sustainable Growth’ and ‘A Simplified Further Education and Skills Funding System and Methodology’

John Hayes foreword to Skills for Sustainable Growth is very welcome. Learning should be about more than skills alone, should challenge orthodox assumptions and build a big society. I’m glad he says:

 “We need to recognise that formal vocational training is not appropriate or needed by everyone. To help create a ‘big society’, we need to empower communities to develop the informal life-long learning opportunities in which they want to participate.”

 This is excellent news from the point of view of informal adult education but, of course, the consultation is taking place in the context of the Comprehensive Spending Review and close scrutiny of every government budget. I think it is crucial that anyone interested in adult education looks at the consultation and responds to it quickly.

 The consultation talks about ‘local leadership’ - a broad guiding coalition engaging local authorities, employers, colleges and universities, civil society organisations and others. This should pool resources and avoid duplication. We need to emphasise that the voice and influence of organisations working below the level of these agencies – particularly in the voluntary and community sector – must be able to influence this local leadership.

 Because of this notion of ‘minimum contract size’ is crucial; any system needs to be accessible for voluntary and community organisations whose defining strength is often being small scale, local and innovative. This is part of the funding simplification proposals but we need to be sure that the big don’t squeeze out the small in any arrangement and that new providers can enter the system fairly and without excessive risk. The voluntary sector must be able to secure funding in an equitable way. I think we need to make sure that comes across in the consultation as it would help the minister’s vision.

 Equally, the welcome simplifications to contract could leave part-time adult learning vulnerable to loss of funding or subject to inappropriate requirements needed for formal vocational training. It is clear that this isn’t the intention but we need responses to reinforce the need to maintain a separate funding stream for informal lifelong learning as a small but really vital part of the FE budget and to use it to empower communities and help disadvantaged adults.

 Most of all, in times of austerity, we need a funding and policy framework that sustains adult learning, especially in the most disadvantaged communities. I hope many people will consider these issues and respond to the consultation to support John Hayes clear commitment to this work.