The work of NIACE’s Regional Development Officers involves working with
regional and local organisations and partnerships on strategies to implement
policy for adult learners across England. We do this in a variety of ways:
Through representation on groups developing regional and
local strategies.
By acting as a critical friend to organisations and
partnerships developing strategies, contributing to and commenting on drafts.
Through commissioned pieces of work, which help
organisations and partnerships to develop strategies.
By facilitating groups of practitioners to think through
the implementation of strategies.
By evaluating the impact of strategies and supporting
regional and local organisations and partnerships to learn from experience.
We aim to ensure that our contributions to strategy development,
implementation and evaluation are based on understanding and experience of what
works for adults learning. We are particularly keen to contribute to and learn
from discussions currently underway within NIACE about listening to learners’
voices in strategy development.
Some of the key strategies we are engaging with currently include:
Regional Economic Strategies (Regional Development Agency).
Frameworks for Regional Employment and Skills Action
(Regional Skills Partnerships).
Regional Skills for Life strategies.
Regional and local LSC strategies for adult learning,
workforce development, quality improvement, widening participation, equality
and diversity, working with the voluntary / community sector.
Regional strategies to support the Testbed Learning
Communities initiative.
Learning and health strategies.
Learning and culture strategies.
In addition to supporting the development, implementation and evaluation of
strategies to implement adult learning policy, we use our work in this area to
identify barriers within current adult learning policy and seek to influence
change through our advocacy work, both regionally and nationally.
