A National Quality Improvement Body (NQIB) for the Learning and Skills Sector in England

A NIACE response to the Department for Education & Skills Consultation
Published: February 2005

Introduction

1. The National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) is pleased, in responding to this consultation, to endorse strongly the principle that responsibility for quality improvement in publicly-funded learning and skills provision should lie primarily with providers (paragraph 1.4 of the consultation document). We believe that the role of the new body must be to help providers of all kinds to take forward their own strategies to improve their performance and provision of opportunities for learning and skills acquisition. We also endorse the aspiration to streamline and rationalise the improvement and accountability system in learning and skills so that it is more coherent and effective in ensuring the needs of learners are better met.

2. NIACE works to encourage more and different adults to engage in learning of all kinds. It is an independent non-governmental organisation and registered charity. Its corporate and individual members come from all sectors concerned with adult learning and include FE colleges; universities; local authority and voluntary and community learning providers; work-based learning providers; churches; broadcasters, employers and unions. NIACE is currently the only organisation to have a formal voluntary sector compact agreement with the Department for Education and Skills.

Concerns

3. Overall NIACE has a number of reservations about the general direction taken in the consultation document which, we believe, has not yet articulated a clear and compelling vision of how the NQIB will add value.

4. In particular we are unconvinced that the paper gives enough consideration to how the new body will sit alongside the statutory Adult Learning Inspectorate (especially its activities to raise standards through its Excalibur initiative) and alongside OFSTED. Similarly, how NQIB will complement the Lifelong Learning UK sector skills council and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority are insufficiently considered. Finally, the ways in which it will engage with the wider range of national intermediary bodies in the sector (including ourselves) need to be explored in more detail.

5. Despite the document’s statement of intent to work with, rather than upon, providers we have little sense of the ways in which NQIB will give providers the sense of “ownership” which will be necessary if it is to succeed.

6. On a more basic, organisational level, it is not clear which functions or elements of other agencies will transfer to the new body.

7. NIACE has been reassured to some extent by conversations with the Learning and Skills Development Agency (Andrew Thomson) about the separation proposed between NQIB and the development arm of the Learning and Skills Development Agency. We have confidence in this arrangement.

8. We remain unsure how the Government’s understandable aspirations for the sector are to be aligned with and balanced by robust field-led and field-focussed agenda setting which is more likely to be attuned to the immediate needs of learners and employers. This needs to be better explained and disseminated. The state’s interventions in quality improvement have sometimes had a limited effect because of ‘initiative-itis’. Government needs to acknowledge more readily that lasting culture change takes time to settle and that patience will be needed to embed improvements in classroom, workshop and laboratory practice.

Conclusion

9. NIACE is ready to elaborate upon any aspect of this response and remains committed to working constructively with any new body, regardless of its shape and remit. Please contact Alan.Tuckett@niace.org.uk  in the first instance.

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