Organisation and Policy: Influencing Public Policy: Archive

Realising The Learning Age

A NIACE Response to the Government Green Paper
Published: July 1998.

(This document also contains a substantive appendix "Adult Guidance and the Learning Age")

1. The NIACE response to The Learning Age consultation:

University for Industry

2. NIACE recognises the powerful potential of the major initiatives announced in the Green Paper to contribute to the achievement of the vision, and to extend and widen participation in learning. The University for Industry will be able to draw on the experience of broadcasting in mobilising people to take up learning (e.g. the BBC's 'Computers Don't Bite' and 'Family Literacy' campaigns), as well as exploiting the potential of the new technologies. It will also benefit from developments in the creation of local learning centres, and from the experience of national guidance helplines. Its success will, we believe, rely on its effective development of the role of learning broker - matching need and aspiration with supply of learning opportunities.

Individual Learning Accounts

3. Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs) have the potential to stimulate increased investment in learning by individuals, employers and the state, and offer a mechanism for state support to be differentially weighted in favour of under-represented groups. At their best they should offer a wider population the benefits that well run and supported Employee Development Schemes offer to many people at work.

Credit

4. The Learning Age makes proposals which are in effect moves to create parallel credit frameworks for further and higher education. NIACE recognises the practical inhibitions to moving immediately to creating a unified credit framework for lifelong learning. However, the Institute believes that the creation of such a framework is essential if a learning society is to be achieved, and need to study incrementally and discontinuously. Since most adults need to fit their learning into busy lives credit fits naturally with unitisation of study.

Kennedy

5. NIACE welcomes, too, the endorsement of the recommendations of the Kennedy Report, Learning Works, with its recommendation that for participation to be widened new learners need a concentration of resources to support them in acquiring the confidence and capacity to learn independently. NIACE strongly supports Kennedy's proposals for a New Learning Pathway.

Integration

6. These proposals are inter-linked. Each we believe, relies on the others for the vision in The Learning Age of a society where individuals and communities are able to make use of learning opportunities throughout their lives to foster economic prosperity, and social cohesion, and to enable personal and community development to be realised. The development of the University for Industry as a national tool for stimulating demand, and matching need with supply, backed by ILAs, as a mechanism for supporting individuals, and ideally groups, to resource their learning; where study can be pursued in bite-sized chunks, with credit accumulated over time, and in different places, backed by responsive and supportive providers, resourced adequately to secure progress for learners is, we believe, achievable.

Guidance

7. However, the new initiatives all rely on learners and potential learners having access to guidance and advice. NIACE welcome the establishment of Learning Direct, for which we argued for some years, and to link it to the University for Industry. Nevertheless for UfI to succeed, the national phone line will not be enough. NIACE regrets the failure of the Green Paper to clearly allocate responsibility for the creation and resourcing of a coherent network of local advice and guidance provision for adults, either as part of UfI or by another means. We consider the location of responsibility for co-ordinating networks in Stephen McNair's appendix on guidance, and argue UfI could play such a role, as long as it is developed as a broad inclusive institution, along the lines we argue in this paper. NIACE also regrets the failure to recognise the importance of fostering 'barefoot guidance' skills among opinion-formers in communities, and among supervisors and shop stewards in the workplace.

Division and Exclusion: Widening Participation

8. There is a danger that the same initiatives that might lead to a more inclusive society where everyone feels able and confident to learn, could be developed in a way that increases the learning divide that characterises Britain now. Short term pressures, and the real need for skills for industrial competitiveness in international markets may lead the UfI to focus too narrowly on a skills based curriculum. The practical challenges to be overcome in introducing ILAs may make them more accessible to people already comfortable and experienced as adult learners - reinforcing the exclusion of those who do not have access to learning opportunities now. The delicacy of inter-agency negotiations on credit and qualifications may leave us without the necessary framework for an inclusive, user-friendly system, and financial pressure on providers may deny learners the support needed to follow recruitment with improved retention and achievement.

9. NIACE is excited by the possibilities the Green Paper suggests, but we believe that the Government missed an opportunity to sketch out how its grand design would work. Had it done so, we believe the paper would inevitably have recognised the dangers of reinforcing the exclusion of those who have benefited least from post-school education and training. Whilst the paper explores welcome practical steps to be taken to raise standards of achievement, and to revitalise Britain's skills, it has little to say in detail about how learning that fosters citizenship, or respects and celebrates cultural diversity can be developed.

10. The Learning Age has almost nothing to say on the different challenges facing the country in meeting the learning aspirations of people living in its inner cities, or its rural communities, although these will significantly affect the delivery of UfI; it has little to say about the contribution to be made to the achievement of the vision by Britain's black communities; or about the challenges facing people with learning difficulties in securing an adult curriculum that will support them in exercising their rights and duties as citizens in an informed way. It does not say enough about the learning needs of older people.

11. It is not sufficiently clear about the central role of the local authority in securing provision to address such needs, or of the vital and imaginative role voluntary associations can play in meeting them innovatively. There is, as a result, something of a gap between the vision in David Blunkett's foreword, and in the initial chapter of the paper, and the detailed measures proposed in the following sections of the paper.

12. More importantly, it is because the different needs of different groups are not adequately recognised, that there is a danger that the short-term developments of the paper's big ideas will not be sufficiently inclusive, and may not deliver opportunities to those the Government wishes to support. It is, in our view, essential that UfI has a brief to widen participation as well as to build skills in small and medium sized enterprises; that pilots for the introduction of Individual Learning Accounts include under-represented groups; and that moves to put greater choice in the hands of learners are accompanied by measures to secure stable, confident and skilled supply in LEAs, in colleges, in universities, and in the voluntary and private sectors.

New Technology

13. NIACE recognises that the Green Paper contains the most positive statement by any government about the use of new technologies to support learning, but is concerned that the paper does not fully answer how provision can be scaled up, to implement and deliver learning through the use of new technologies. Most of the adult population are not confident users of information and communication technology (ICT), and have doubts about its relevance for them. Most teachers and trainers need support to use ICT effectively with learners. Most open and distance learning materials are currently paper based, and the firms with skills in developing computer based learning materials lack the resources for short-term substantial growth. In addition, we need to know more about how to deliver quality learning materials to a wide range of learners through telecommunications.

Creativity, Culture, Citizenship and the Collective

14. David Blunkett's foreword to The Learning Age captures the intimacy of the connection between creativity, learning, social movements and economic regeneration in his celebration of Victorian working people's ingenuity in using learning to create new social forms. For the Government's vision to be realised, policy must be developed which creates the conditions for that intimacy to be renewed.

15. There is much to build on as the European Year of Lifelong Learning showed and Adult Learners' Week demonstrates each year - from the development and management of employee development programmes by Ford and its unions; the alliance of Tetley's brewery and a local college in Leeds to make pubs a site of learning; from the explosive growth of Universities of the Third Age to Northern College's short course programme; from Castleford Women's Centre to UNISON's Return to Learn scheme.

16. Yet much more remains to be done to foster active citizenship. The Green Paper concentrates on individual aspiration at the expense of what we learn together. It gives too little priority to the important role voluntary organisations can play in the evolution of a learning society. Voluntary bodies like the WEA, the National Federation of Women's Institutes and the Pre-School Learning Alliance have proud records in creating and sustaining new forms of learning. But so, too, do the development agencies and environmental groups that have pioneered approaches to sustainable development to take just one example. In 1919, the Board of Adult Education of the Ministry of Reconstruction recognised the important role of voluntary agencies in its distinguished report. It argued:

"In a modern community voluntary organisation must always occupy a prominent place. The free association of individuals is a normal process in civilised society, and one which arises from the inevitable inadequacy of State and municipal organisation. It is not primarily a result of defective public organisation; it grows out of the existence of human needs which the state and municipality cannot satisfy. Voluntary organisations, whatever their purpose, are fundamentally similar in their nature, in that they unite for a definite point of view, a common outlook, and a common purpose which gives it a corporate spirit of its own. This corporate spirit is, perhaps, the most valuable basis for group study. It is to be found in trade unions, adult schools, co-operative societies and other bodies. Voluntary organisations, consequently, form the best nucleus for adult classes."

17. The Government recognises some of this in its decision to establish the Trade Union Learning Fund and the Adult and Community Learning Fund. Yet there is a clear need for further work on how best voluntary bodies, backed by colleges, LEAs and universities can contribute to revitalising learning for active citizenship.

Voluntary Sector

18. Voluntary agencies have an important role in inter-agency collaboration. Voluntary agencies like SKILL and MENCAP play a vital role in helping health, social services and education agencies to collaborate effectively to meet the needs of adults with learning difficulties, and agencies like CHANGE give voice to the experience of learners. Parallel collaborative planning has been achieved through Single Regeneration budget initiatives, and City Challenge programmes in local communities. NIACE welcomes the emergence of these approaches in the Better Government for Older People programme, and in the work of the Social Exclusion Unit and commends DfEE to explore shared strategies with DFID, DETR, the Health Department and the Home Office. It is important to remember that in partnerships instigated by public bodies an equal voice needs to be secured for voluntary sector participants.

Arts and Crafts

19. Another area for connectedness in government thinking, to support the realisation of The Learning Age is in the field of the arts and the encouragement of creativity. In practice, local adult education services have long combined a variety of roles to support participation in and appreciation of the arts. Like the Medicis, LEAs have acted as patrons who help to create conditions for practising artists to do their own work by offering some financial security through part-time teaching. Classes in the arts and crafts offer learners the chance to develop as practitioners, and liberal studies foster an appreciation of the moral, spiritual, and aesthetic challenges great art confronts us with. It is no accident that the Arts Council, like the British Film Institute, grew out of NIACE: the arts have a central role in the learning we do to make sense of our lives and to express ourselves fully. Yet such work has been squeezed through the 1990s. It needs encouragement.

Broadcasting

20. The curriculum range of studies which encourage critical understanding, active citizenship and a lively engagement with difference is immense. It finds expression nowhere so well as in broadcasting. The UK retains an intelligent, wide-ranging and inclusive public broadcasting milieu - which plays a leading role in informing understanding of public affairs, in stimulating curiosity and extending access to the arts and sciences. This inheritance grew out of the obligations on all broadcasters, which held until the 1990 Broadcasting Act, to educate, inform and entertain. The obligation to educate was removed from independent television franchise holders in 1990. Yet terrestrial television has a continuing and unparalleled capacity to promote participation, as e.g. 'Computers Don't Bite' and Adult Learners' Week. NIACE is convinced that all terrestrial broadcasters need to be accountable (after the event) for the contribution they make to the cultural changes necessary to achieve the learning society. We are convinced too, that motivation is a key to success in that change, and that the broadcasters have a vital role in motivating people to participate.

Citizenship

21. NIACE recognises that technological and social change are having a significant impact on our understanding of our relations with each other, and with the state. As much of our lives becomes increasingly private, we see declining levels of formal participation in voting and in other communal activities. The process of constitutional change the Government has instigated needs revitalised tools for the expression of democracy - in different ways focus groups measure what people think whilst deliberative polling and liberal adult education in their different ways foster people's learning about public policy, and the role they might play in it. NIACE believes the Government should make a commitment to adult citizenship education to complement the work of the Crick Committee - to engage people in remaking the forms of active democracy.

22. What is needed overall is a strategy to support learning for cultural change: change that respects and celebrates difference; that supports the articulation of the hopes of people currently marginalised, and that delights in creativity. If the major initiatives the Government introduces adopt that strategy then they really will make a difference.

Finance

23. None of this can be achieved without money. NIACE welcomes the commitment in the Comprehensive Spending Review to secure greater investment in education. We endorse the view of the finance and funding task force of the National Advisory Group for Continuing Education and Lifelong Learning that 'the most pressing need for greater public investment lies with those who benefited least from initial education, and are currently not participating.' We agree that 'to meet their needs will require a further shift in the balance of public investment,' to be balanced by an increase in other funding streams.

24. The experience of the Government in its introduction of the New Deal illustrates the challenge. The introduction of a Gateway preparatory study period for New Deal for young people has been widely welcomed. Yet the 25+ New Deal, which targets people out of the labour force for extended periods, and overwhelmingly the least qualified and educationally confident, has no such preparatory period, apparently because of cost pressures. There is plenty of experience of how to contest social exclusion successfully - but it does not come cheap.

25. New money is needed, but new money alone will not meet the scale of the challenge. An active learning culture will need to draw on our communal capacity to generate resources (of hope, energy and imagination, as well as of cash) to make possible the tasks beyond the reach of the public purse. To return to David Blunkett's foreword, it was the release of the imagination of the people that fuelled the municipal flowering of the Victorian era. A key challenge for The Learning Age is to unlock the key to our imaginations now.

26. The Learning Age poses considerable challenges to existing practice. Nevertheless, its proposals represent the first clear and comprehensive statement of Government commitment to lifelong learning, and NIACE will support work to realise its vision.

27. Turning to more detailed measures, NIACE :

28. What was previously available only to the few can, in the century ahead, be something which is enjoyed and taken advantage of by the many - David Blunkett. NIACE believes that if this vision is to be realised, the Government needs to address a number of key issues. In particular:

NIACE recognises this last proposal cannot be achieved until the Government and the Local Government Association agree a mechanism to identify clearly the adult education element in standard spending assessment allocations. The purpose of the proposals is not to secure a neat and tidy set of requirements for each LEA, but a framework responsive to local need whilst securing a minimum platform of provision.

It should consider a number of curriculum initiatives, among them:

Whilst The Learning Age makes a strong general case for learning opportunities to be available to all, it is weaker in NIACE's view on the specific barriers to be overcome for different groups if the system is to be really accessible.

Developing a positive and inclusive response to the ageing population is a major policy challenge in all areas of Government, and calls for a coherent response to the learning needs of those in the later stages of their working lives as well as those who have fully or partially retired. On grounds of equity they deserve more attention than The Learning Age recognises, since this is the group who benefited least from initial education, and who participate least in learning now. Furthermore, education can enable older people to make a more active contribution to society, and can reduce the costs of health and welfare services by stimulating them both intellectually and physically. We welcome the contribution DfEE is currently making to the Better Government for Older People initiative, but believe that more needs to be done. NIACE's Older and Bolder advisory group is submitting a detailed response on the specific issues in this field, with recommendations for action.

NIACE urges the Government to ensure that widening participation and higher standards are pursued hand in hand, and that its policies on lifelong learning cover learning at all ages. Work is needed to improve the dialogue between its schools and post-schools work.

International Experience

29. Finally, there is little in the paper that recognises Britain's place as a member of a global community. The EU, OECD and UNESCO have all highlighted the importance of lifelong learning, many countries are currently engaged in policy debates on this issue, and several EU members have recently published policy papers on it. The UK is an effective and active contributor to transnational debates, as it demonstrated recently during its Presidency of the EU, and could benefit from active sharing of ideas and experience. NIACE urges the Department to ensure that policy development in the UK is informed by the best of international practice.

Appendix 1

Adult Guidance and the Learning Age

The absence of clear proposals for developing adult guidance about learning and work is the most conspicuous gap in The Learning Age.

This is particularly unfortunate in view of the general trend towards a more individualised labour market. It is also inconsistent with the broad thrust of The Learning Age towards using market processes to shape the education and training system.

Major Issues

There are four major issues to be resolved:

Definitions

In its early documents, the national Guidance Council proposed that a distinction should be drawn between Information and Advice, which should be publicly funded, and Guidance, which might be charged for. However, the boundary between the two is not clear or agreed. At a recent NICEC seminar on ILAs, the idea that guidance should be more closely allied to teaching - seeing it as a process delivered through teaching (group guidance) or as a form of teaching (the tutorial process). If this were adopted guidance could be funded through the mainstream funding channels of FE and HE. This would be consistent with the FEFC funding model, and some current practice, but raises issues about impartiality, and in depth guidance/counselling for the (relatively small) proportion of people who need this before approaching an educational institution or agency.

Local Networks

Despite the availability of Learning Direct, most information and advice enquiries are likely to continue to be handled locally, and will require knowledge of local circumstances, informal resources, and close feedback loops into local and regional providers of education and training. Since the publication of The Challenge of Change by UDACE in 1985 there had been widespread support in the profession for a model of delivery based on multi agency networks, to facilitate intelligence gathering, referral and responsiveness to different client needs. However, the mechanisms for financing such networks have never been secure, few have managed to survive consistently over a long term.

While there is widespread support for the network model, it requires considerable mutual trust among agencies, and a clear structure for handling finances. The allocation of responsibility for this has never been clear. It has been argued that to secure trust and impartiality, the role of convening a network should rest with an agency not directly responsible for course provision. On these grounds the case has been argued, and models adopted, for giving the role to TECs, LEAs, Careers Companies or UfI.

The role fits reasonably with TECs, which are not providers, but their explicit focus on employment raises problems, especially where they interpret it narrowly. Much guidance will be about academic and non-vocational learning routes.

The Challenge of Change argued the case for LEAs, on ground of democratic accountability, but they were often seen as partial as the "owners" of the FE institutions. This is now less of a problem, since only a small part of FE remains in their hands, but it is not clear whether, in the new structure of local government, they would all be able to take on the role.

The role of the Careers Service in adult guidance has always been contentious. Government has been anxious to ring fence limited resources for the statutory clients, but some have ventured into extensive adult services, especially since they became Careers Companies. Some in the adult guidance world view them with suspicion because their roots are in guidance for young people, which is sometimes seen as a distinct territory.

UfI has the provision of information, advice and guidance in its remit. If UfI is to have a strong local presence (as implied by the funding of local networks under ADAPT UfI) then this function would sit very naturally with them. In some areas UfI consortia already include most or all of the agencies and individuals who one would wish to see in a network. As with TECs, there might be anxieties about the explicit focus on employment related learning, though UfI consortia might deliver services under other brands.

Databases

Learning Direct is in the process of assembling the most complex national database to support telephone advice. Some providers operate only at national level, and many can cope with producing data in appropriate formats. However, the level of local detail and the volatility of data means that a national database will always have difficulty keeping up with needs. The original proposals for Learning Direct prepared by the Guidance Council assumed the creation of local guidance networks which would complement the national service, providing a data gathering and validating function at local level, and might be the principal repository of local intelligence. In some regions networks already exist in a well developed state to do this, in others there is little in place. If this model were to be adopted there would need to be work on establishing consistent procedures for gathering and organising data, and for its exchange between neighbouring networks, and with Learning Direct nationally.

The principal problem with such models is always maintenance of volatile data, and the limited priority which providers are likely to give it (most recruitment to programmes does not happen through guidance agencies, and operating separate data management systems is not a high priority for providers in public or private sectors). An alternative model is to develop a Web based approach, under which common protocols are developed for presenting information about programmes on the World Wide Web, and agencies (including Learning Direct) can then access these direct. This is a more attractive model for data providers, since they have control over their own data input, yet it will be searchable at national level through common search procedures. This model would fit well with the development of UfI Learning Centres and the National Grid for Learning, which would provide local access for most people, and home access for many. The resource would be available, constantly updated, for professional guidance agencies, in much the same way as similar information is available to travel agents.

The difficulty with this model is, of course, the quality of the information, and its impartiality - education and training providers will wish to use their Websites as marketing tools. As always there is a trade off between availability and quality of information. The Web based option increases availability at the cost of impartiality, and requires client education in interpreting information, the central database model increases data quality and impartiality, but risks information not becoming available at all, and would require strong mechanisms to ensure that providers make information available.

Funding

Since guidance is the service which enables people to make informed decisions in the education and training market, there is a good case that it should not be charged for at all. If any charges are to be made for education and training it should be for the courses, rather than the guidance which enables people to choose the right course. In this way it contributes to individual motivation, to efficiency among providers (reduced drop out etc.), increased long term employability, and overcoming social exclusion.

Guidance development has been bedevilled for decades by short term funding. Projects have repeatedly demonstrated and established good practice and then collapsed when money ran out. Consistency of funding is essential to any adequate public service. Currently CSNA figures show a drop in TEC funding for adult guidance of 33% between 1997-8 and 1997-9, and a 6% drop in the local authority sum. There is real concern that services will disappear before the UfI structures are in place.

The Guidance Council reluctantly accepted the notion of a freely available front line service, with a charge for more extensive or specialised services. There is room to doubt whether this model will work in practice. Most of those most in need of extensive services are likely to be publicly funded anyway (long term unemployed, low incomes, redundant..). An alternative is to allow individuals to use some or all of their ILA to buy guidance, although there is no clear agreement about how such services might be priced.

Other Issues

Common branding

Guidance as a concept is not well understood (the Guidance Council are currently carrying out a market research study which examines this issue among others). It is important that a common identity is established for such services, so that promotion in one place reinforces that in another. The simplest approach would be to use the UfI brand, but there are questions about how the public at large will perceive the UfI brand, and whether the title will discourage some kinds of potential client.

Progress File

Logically, guidance processes interlock with the processes of reflection and recording, which the Progress File seeks to encourage. Developments ought to be consistent in the two fields.

Outreach

If guidance is to contribute to widening participation, it is important that guidance staff can go out into excluded communities to promote learning and offer advice in appropriate locations. Staffing levels need to recognise this.

"Barefoot Guidance"

Much guidance is provided not by guidance professionals but by managers, supervisors, trades union officers, and others in the community (inside and outside the workplace). Although such people cannot all be expected to have formal guidance qualifications, developing mechanisms to provide them with backup support and training, at a variety of levels, could be a very cost effective investment.

Quality

The quality of guidance services needs to be guaranteed, both in terms of the services provided and the qualifications of the staff involved. The Guidance Council has produced quality standards for services which can provide the basis for this, and ought to be mandatory on those offering services.

Guidance and curriculum

More explicit development of the links between the curriculum and guidance could be very cost effective. The provision of taster courses, of guidance modules within FE and HE institutions, outreach group sessions in community locations, and open days are all ways in which education and training providers are already offering kinds of "guidance" to individuals. Such models could benefit from more systematic development.

NIACE
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