WEA Education Blog

Teaching, Learning & Assessment + Leadership, Management & Governance

At last week's LSIS Strategy Day the Council and Board heard from Sue Pember (BIS), Geoff Russell (soon to retired CEO of Skills Funding Agency) and Lorna Fitzjohn (Ofsted). There was a lot their short presentation had in common and I'd sum it up as 'Freedom with results - with speedy intervention if no results'. The FE sector is being given more freedom but interventions around concerns will quickly lead to notice of withdrawal of funding.

The meeting came shortly after the renewed 'satisfactory is not satisfactory' debate as Michael Wilshaw proposes 'Improvement Required' as its replacement. Lorna Fitzjohn drew out some points from the 2011 Chief Inspector's report. In particular the number of serially 'satisfactory' providers. The new expression may be intended to get governing bodies to act. She reported that 'satisfactory providers' often have very poor action planning, ill-informed governance, principals who don't know enough about learners. Again she urged self critical self assessment designed for the provider, showing they know their own work and are taking improvement actions.

There were no inspections in the year reported where teaching and learning was outstanding and this was critical to why so few providers were outstanding overall. Sue Pember had also commented on governance saying: "The new role of governance is crucial. We need governors who can really govern and manage performance of institutions." 

Effectively, between them, the emphasis could be summed up as Teaching, Learning & Assessment (TL&A) combined with Leadership, Management & Governance (LM&G) - all within the 'new freedoms'. 

It's a big turn around from the last 10-15 years of complaince and centralised planning. They seemed to be asking whether providers were ready. Lorna said that in 'satisfactory' providers, when compared to School Heads, FE leaders are 'managerial pre-occupied - not thinking enough about teaching and learners'. 

Lorna's presentation is available here:  Download Presentation - OFSTED

LSIS - now giving resources to providers

I attended my first meeting of the LSIS (Learning & Skills Improvement Service) Council on 15th October in London. Ruth Silver and Graham Hoyle led the meeting and the new LSIS Chief Executive, David Collins, outlined some of the new direction for the organisation.

LSIS has been given a much reduced budget but, within that, there was good news that, soon, the resource for providers will be allocated into Provider Accounts according to the number of Full Time Equivalent learners they have. This will mean the WEA can access some support resources without the tiresome explanations of why we're not like an FE college. In addition, the services to providers look clearer and you can rate each of them through the website. The Leadership toolkits, including Adult & Community Learning are now free and providers can have free quality 'health checks' two years after inspection from LSIS nine Regional Development Partners. The online Safeguarding Training was presented and several members of the Council indicated that this is a welcome resource.

All these seemed an improvement on what we'd seen earlier when I feared LSIS was captured by General FE and Workbased Learning providers. Finally, the new (elected) Council will be different for LSIS management to work with as the end of the session indicated when a number of people on the Council insisted that sessions need to involve them more in the discussion and less in receiving information.

Key Self Assessment judgements recommended to Trustees

The WEA's Annual Self Assessment process had led to a report to the Trustees on 1st October which has identified the Association's strengths and areas which need improvement along with three key strategic areas. As ever, the report has drawn on many contributions and sets of evidence. It has specific judgements and recommended grades on each area of curriculum and it includes extracts of feedback from students, tutors and partners. 

I will pick up some of the individual issues and curriculum judgement after the Trustee meeting and I hope to set up some discussions with WEA tutors around these to supplement activities in regions and locally.

You can open the report by clicking here: Download csar_report_to_amtactrustees_010908.doc

Key Strengths:

• Strong leadership of a very large, diverse and complex organisation
• Strong advocacy and delivery of responsive curriculum for adults and communities across

  England

• Good development of learners’ skills and knowledge
• Excellent partnerships
• Good performance management to promote improvement
• Excellent contribution by volunteers across the organisation

 Key Areas for improvement (Weaknesses): 

• Insufficient progress in using Educational Strands to lead to a coherent offer
• Inadequate formal arrangements to monitor learners’ progression
• Accredited success rates below sector average in some Curriculum Management Areas due to low achievement rates (82%)
• Under-developed arrangements to monitor and report learners’ success on non-accredited courses
• Not enough systematic communication and sharing of good practice between regions
• Few strategies to include and engage men in learning

 Key Issues recommended for inclusion in Association Strategic Plan: 

1.     Determine curriculum balance in relation to WEA mission, State priorities and wider government issues (including skills, qualification and foundation learning tier)

2.     Improve systematic communication and sharing of good practice across the organisation

3.     Diversification of funding including changes in contracting and associated standards

 

What's a SAIP?

I'm back at home tonight after completing this term's round of SAIPs across the country. We set up Self Assessment & Improvement Panels a couple of years ago. Each term, three WEA regions in the north, centre and south of England meet with me to review progress with improvement actions, identify issues and share approaches to priority areas of work. The meetings involve the regional directors and the regional nominees in each case and me.
It's always a pretty tiring trip around the country but it is really valuable to me in finding out what's working and what's not, trying out ideas and hearing about problems (some of which I've created!).
It's good to have a smallish meeting of seven and, with the development of WEAMIS reporting, we can use data to explore the evidence behind some of the issues or raise questions that might be harder to find otherwise. In today's meeting in Leeds we were joined by two regional committee officers as observers.
Each round is based on an agenda set by the Education Board and each round is summarised as an in-year review report to AMT.
This week's visits (on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday in London, Birmingham and Leeds) have been very encouraging. I really liked one comment that the data we use now 'takes us where it hurts'. I was also fascinated by the range of ways regions are using the Educational Strands with colleagues to develop curriculum planning within their local and regional circumstances.
Of course, inevitably some of the discussion turned to the imminent visit of colleagues from Ofsted. I was delighted with the way adjacent regions are working together to manage another very complex inspection - and their insistence that I should relax. As if!
Nevertheless, whilst they may not quite fit the QIA vision of peer review (and how hard has it been for the WEA to get into those in the FE landscape of diverse providers and consultants!), I think there's a lot to be proud about the way these  termly meetings have driven self assessment and improvement in the WEA and I thank the colleagues involved this week for their hospitality.

What Ofsted is saying about Adult Education

Last March the Adult Learning Inspectorate became part of Ofsted. It will be Ofsted that undertakes the next Inspection of WEA provision (due any time from March 2008 onward).

Ofsted will examine the work of the WEA as part of Adult and Community Learning (ACL). The Chief Inspector's Annual Report for2006-07 was published in October and only devoted seven paragraphs to ACL. You can see them here: Download CIAR0607ACL.doc

The next Inspection of the WEA will look closely at our own assessment of our strengths and areas for improvement. These are still being finalised and next Monday we will have these tested by an external panel before recommending them to Trustees for publication.  At the moment, our judgements are:

 

Strengths:

· Long-standing and effective partnerships that provide learning opportunities for adults from marginalised and disadvantaged communities (LM1)

· Good quality teaching and learning underpinned by an effective and developing Quality Improvement Framework (LM2)

· Strong advocacy and continuing delivery of adult provision across

England

through effective leadership at all levels including significant voluntary involvement (LM3)

 

Areas for improvement:

· Inadequate monitoring of learner progression (LM4)

· Accredited success rates below sector average in some Curriculum Management Areas (LM5)

· Inadequate reporting arrangements to support consistent implementation of tutor and staff qualifications, Continuing Professional Development and Equality & Diversity strategies (LM6)

 

I will confirm these and other key points of our self-assessment after that but I thought you might want to see how the Inspectorate sees provision similar to ours and to compare  our provisional assessment to those points.