Organisation and Policy: Influencing Public Policy: Archive

Coherence and diversity

Adult Learners, structure and funding for Post-16 Education and Training in England

A  NIACE Response
Published: April 1999.

 

  1. This response is submitted by NIACE, the national organisation for adult learning in England and Wales. NIACE is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. Its membership covers a full range of organisations making provision for adult learning – among them colleges, universities, local authorities, voluntary organisations, broadcasters, Training and Enterprise Councils, private sector bodies and trade unions.
  2. NIACE warmly welcomed the vision of a learning society set out by the Secretary of State in the preface to The Learning Age. It recognised the complexity of adults’ learning goals and the diversity of approaches needed to satisfy them. Yet no-one could argue that the melange of funding and organisational arrangements currently in place for education and training post-16 offer a coherent learning offer to existing learners. Nor do they offer an adequate platform for reaching groups currently under-represented. As a result NIACE welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the Secretary of State’s post-16 review.
  3. The issues confronting the review are complex. It needs to engage the energies, and draw on the contributions of all who have a part to play in preparing young people for higher education and for initial labour market entry. The review needs to secure parity of esteem and equitable resourcing for vocational and academic studies. It needs to support and stimulate learning in and for the workplace. It also needs to foster learning that enables communities and the individuals who live in them to achieve their cultural and aesthetic aspirations, and to encourage informed, active citizenship. A key task is to engage disaffected groups in learning.
  4. The review will need to wrestle with the need to ensure that national, regional and local priorities can be accommodated in a coherent system delivered through a diversity of mechanisms. It will need to address national skills needs, regional development priorities, and the aspirations of local communities. It will need, too, to secure democratic accountability, and to make sure that limited public funding is allocated transparently.
  5. In adopting a Lifelong Learning policy framework, the Government has already recognised there is an intimate relationship between learning at different ages – adults gaining confidence as learners have a positive impact on their children’s performance in pre-schools and school alike. The Government has also recognised the importance in fostering progression routes across and between sectors. However, much remains to be done to create coherent pathways backed by credit accumulation and transfer across further and higher education.
  6. Whilst the primary focus of the review will need to be on the learning supported through publicly funded education and training, it will also need to take account of employers’ investment in learning in the workplace, and of the contribution to the creation of a learning society made by private sector training bodies, health and social services agencies, libraries, museums and arts bodies, economic regeneration agencies, tourism departments, and, critically, by voluntary sector agencies.
  7. NIACE recognises the need to secure coherent equitable arrangements for 16-19 education but is not commenting on these in this submission. However, we believe our proposals are consistent with securing equitable treatment for 16-19 year olds.
  8. NIACE believes that the challenge is to create a system that offers 3 coherent foci – on learning in the workplace; learning in formal education, and on community based learning.
  9. Through much of the 1980s and the 1990s Government policy has prioritised support for education and training for economic prosperity. The expansion of higher education, the creation of Training and Enterprise Councils, and the reorganisation of further and higher education in 1992 were all undertaken with this in mind. National Targets were adopted and revised, and the current Government’s New Deal initiatives all shared a similar goal – of transforming the UK labour force into a skilled, flexible, learning workforce.
  10. At the same time, other learning goals have received little or no attention: community based learning designed to strengthen the capacity of communities and of individuals alike and supported by LEAs and voluntary organisations has seen a marked diminution of investment over the last ten years, despite recent and welcome stimulus by the Government.
  11. Whilst the majority of large firms undertake significant levels of training and support for work-based learning, small and tiny firms in many economic sectors do not, and there has been an overall shift away from large to small and tiny firms.
  12. Whilst progress has been made in increasing the proportion of qualified young people and adults, the National Targets for Education and Training set in 1991 and revised in 1995 have not been achieved, and successive surveys of the adult population show that the learning divide has widened between those who recognise the importance of learning and regularly participate in learning, and those who see education and training as something for other people.
  13. NIACE has warmly welcomed a number of initiatives the Government has taken to address the challenge of widening participation and securing a high quality service, among them:
bulletthe commitment to create the University for Industry;
bulletthe major expansion of funding for further and higher education, each linked to widening participation;
bulletthe requirement for LEAs to prepare and publish Lifelong Learning Development Plans;
bulletthe audit of LEA adult education services;
bulletthe introduction of a national free telephone advice service, Learning Direct;
bulletthe award of £50 million for local guidance initiatives;
bulletexpansion of Access funds, and the opening in access to loans for low-waged part-time students in higher education;
bulletthe creation of the Adult and Community Learning Fund;
bulletthe introduction of union learning funds;
bulletthe successful introduction of New Deal;
bulletthe award of New Opportunities Fund money to support infrastructural development for community based learning centres, linking adults to the Learning Grid;
bulletextension of employer tax relief;
bulletthe commitment of additional resources for basic skills work;
bulletstrengthening and widening the remit of the Investors in People programme;
bulletthe establishment of a National Skills Task Force;
bulletthe establishment of Lifelong Learning Partnerships.
  1. At the same time we have been concerned that the Government’s measures to secure parity of esteem for vocational and academic studies for young people, through the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority may have the unintended consequence of narrowing rather than widening participation for adults. Many adults rely on flexible routes to accreditation, drawing on experiential learning. If these are put at risk, learning opportunities will diminish for these learners. NIACE is wholly committed to high standards of service in education, but believes strongly that qualifications, whilst important, can only be one important proxy, but not the sole proxy for high quality learning programmes.
  2. NIACE also expressed disappointment that The Learning Age did not go further and adopt the recommendations of the Fryer Committee’s Workplace Learning Task Group, which recommended the adoption of a minimum legislative framework for workplace learning, drawing on the experience of Health and Safety at Work legislation, to encourage partnership for learning at work.
  3. NIACE has highlighted in evidence to the Select Committee the lack of coherence in quality assurance arrangements affecting adults as learners, and has argued for a single independent inspectorate covering community based, work-based, and further education sector provision. We want to reinforce that recommendation to the review.
  4. A major continuing weakness in securing lifelong learning for all has been the vulnerability of provision in LEA secured provision ("non-schedule 2" in the inelegant language of the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act) and the absence of clear Government guidance on minimum levels needed to secure adequate facilities for further education for adults outside of the remit given to the FEFC. This continues to affect learning opportunities for millions of existing and potential adult learners.
  5. NIACE recognises the major increase in participation secured since the incorporation of colleges in 1992, and the flair of much of the FEFC’s work in supporting adult achievement. However, in our judgement the Council has not succeeded in adapting its systems, focused as they are on academic and vocational qualifications to secure comparable growth and development across the full curriculum range of the distinctive remit of the designated bodies - institutions within the FE sector, with a different remit from that enshrined in schedule 2. The London adult colleges, the long-term residential colleges, and the Workers’ Educational Association have grown, but the Council has tended to strengthen their schedule 2 work at the expense of their other activities. The review will want to secure improved capacity to support a diversity of missions, in order that the complexity of learning goals recognised in the preface to The Learning Age can be achieved.
  6. We were concerned that in the development of Lifelong Learning Partnerships, the Local Government Association, the Further Education Funding Council and the Training and Enterprise National Council focused initially on the needs of 16-19 year olds, and only when a protocol to that end had been agreed, extended discussions to lifelong learning. Adults share many needs in common with younger learners, but the experience they bring to learning, their purpose in studying, their modes of study, and learning contexts are more complex. We believe these need to be taken account of from the beginning.
  7. Much of the Government’s discussion of lifelong learning has recognised the ways in which further and higher education form a single system. A significant body of higher education is delivered in further education settings. Higher education institutions deliver further education, and make an important contribution to community based learning. NIACE has argued, along with many others, for the construction of a single coherent unitised credit and accumulation system for further and higher education – yet many current developments tend to sharpen sectoral boundaries. It will be important for the review to take account of the contribution to be made by universities and colleges of higher education at local, regional and national level.
  8. NIACE welcomed the Moser Committee report’s stimulus for greater investment to be made in basic skills. We welcome in particular initiatives to support basic skills in the workplace and in informal community settings. However, we believe that developments in implementing the report must also take into account the basic skills needs of adults with learning difficulties, of those for whom English is an additional language, and of those people who need basic skills support whilst pursuing other studies.
  9. Whilst NIACE recognises the aspirations of the Government in introducing Individual Learning Accounts (ILAs), we are concerned that accounts may be taken up most easily by already engaged learners. We are yet to be convinced that ILAs can play a major and effective role in widening participation.
  10. Following our experience in Adult Learners’ Week NIACE argued for some years for the introduction of a free telephone advice service for adults. The introduction of Learning Direct has successfully demonstrated the scale of that demand. NIACE welcomes the expansion of the service, and the recognition that its effectiveness depends upon the availability of a comprehensive network of local guidance services, covering all of the contexts in which adults as well as young people learn. A comprehensive guidance strategy is essential to the effective development of a learning society, drawing on dedicated specialist services, but also on effective mentoring and ‘barefoot’ guidance work by colleagues, friends and employers.
  11. Much of NIACE’s work in the 1990s has been concerned with the promotion of learning opportunities to adults. We are convinced that motivation and promotion are key components in an adult curriculum. Whilst the University for Industry and broadcasters have a lead to play in extending participation, agencies of all sorts will need to give priority to promotion. NIACE and its partners, like the Campaign for Learning will continue to support them.
  12. Overall in recent developments in lifelong learning policy, we recognise a tension between moves to secure coherence and common standards and those to contest social exclusion by widening participation, retention and achievement. We believe it is essential that the review recognises the importance of both policy aims.
  13. Finally, we are concerned that youth service provision and youth work more generally, and voluntary sector provision are regularly omitted from policy planning for post-compulsory education and training. In part, this is because significant areas of youth work affect pre-16 provision. As in other areas of lifelong learning policy, tidy boundaries are not easily drawn. However, youth work makes a major contribution to countering social exclusion by bringing disaffected young people back into learning, and by supporting more formal provision in making successful provision for them. Youth work needs to have a distinctive focus, but needs to be an integral part of lifelong learning strategies.
  14. The voluntary sector, too, has a distinctive contribution to make to lifelong learning. The role of the Workers’ Educational Association, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, the University of the Third Age, and the Pre-School Learning Alliance as direct providers is readily recognisable. But millions of people learn informally through participation in voluntary associations of all sorts, and many receive training in management and practical skills through such participation. Voluntary bodies have a particularly important role in engaging hard to reach communities, and a wealth of successful experience to share. Too often, voluntary bodies find it difficult to secure parity of voice in partnership planning for lifelong learning The review will want to secure their effective participation.
  15. NIACE hopes that each of these concerns can be addressed in the arrangements adopted as a result of the review.



    16. Proposals
  16. Over the last ten years the priority for NIACE’s work has been to make the system learner-centred. Too often, in our view, debates about structure lead to a focus on institutional coherence at the expense of flexibility and responsiveness for learners. Unusually for NIACE, the focus of these proposals is on institutional structures. Nevertheless, we believe our advice is consistent with our concerns over the last decade. What is needed is an education and training system responsive to the complexity of adults’ learning purposes, and one able to deliver through a variety of modes, at different times. We need a system that recognises the variety and richness of experience adults bring to study, and recognises that most will need to fit learning alongside other demands on time. We need a system offering coherent and diverse progression routes.
  17. To that end, NIACE recommends that clear responsibility for planning/regulating and for financing should be established at national, regional and local level to secure overall improved provision for post-compulsory education, and to secure adequate provision for:
    1. learning in and for the workplace
      ;
    2. learning in and through formally organised further education and training;
    3. community based learning.

      These 3 foci are not neatly separated in terms of learners, purpose or mode of learning but they do involve different, in overlapping providers, partnerships and interests.
  1. NIACE believes the principle of subsidiarity should apply, for planning, regulation and financing – leaving funding decisions to be taken at the level nearest to users consistent with practicability and effectiveness.
  2. NIACE believes that post-compulsory education and training work best when effective checks and balances are between national policy priorities and more local priorities. Government, backed by an electoral mandate, has the proper duty to identify national priorities. Local government, again with accountability to its electorate, has a distinctive role in ensuring that the plurality of public services locally contribute to policy. There is a proper and creative tension between their priorities, and those of users, employers, unions, voluntary bodies and institutional providers. All should be reflected at each tier of planning and decision making. NIACE is committed to the view that effective partnerships can secure a proper diversity of learning programmes.
  3. NIACE is committed to the view that there should be a single independent inspectorate operating across work-related education and training, further, adult and community education to secure quality, to share good practice, and as an engine for improvement. We commend the role of HMI in Wales in securing a coherent overview of quality assurance whilst operating within the distinctive review regimes applying to community education, further education and training, and recommend the creation of a lifelong learning inspectorate.

    4. A combined and independent inspectorate should, in our view, operate a new, modularised quality assurance and inspection framework which can be adjusted and tailored to fit the different contexts of post-16 education and training.

  4. NIACE believes that the Secretary of State should establish a national Lifelong Learning Strategic Planning Council (LLSPC) to secure effective oversight of lifelong learning policy, through planning and regulation, advised by sub-committees for:
    1. learning in and for the workplace
    2. learning in and through formally organised further education and training post-16
    3. community based learning.

      Its core task should be to secure effective participation, retention and achievement in learning activities in post-compulsory lifelong learning, and the achievement of national targets. It would have a particular responsibility for widening participation. The Council would include in membership the University for Industry; the Skills Task Force, with whom it would liase in identifying skills’ needs; and the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, whom the Council would advise on strategic objectives for a qualifications system to meet the needs of the 21st century. Broadcasters, higher education bodies, national training organisations, local government and national associations would also have a role on the Council.
  1. In the proposals outlined below three principal public funding streams for education and training activity under the areas of the DfEE are identified:
    1. the largest would be delivered through a reconstituted Further Education and Training Council
    2. the second would involve hypothecated funding for LEAs secured following approval by Local Learning Partnerships by DfEE authorisation of the use of RSG funding
    3. the third would be commissioned by the Employment Service to deliver explicit labour market related programmes like New Deal.

Alternative options for securing the three funding streams through a single national funding mechanism, operating distinct funding programmes are considered, but we recommend strongly the adoption of the model outlined here.

Other major tranches of public and private funding contribute to post-16 provision – including employer-financed work place learning, individuals’ investment, DTI competitiveness funding, Agenda 2000 budgets and other European Commission funding streams and funding from higher education funding councils, as well as funding secured through other national and local sources of funding. Many of these are decided at regional or sub-regional level.

  1. It is axiomatic that colleges, adult centres, voluntary organisations, firms and private sector training bodies should all be able to apply for funding under each of the 3 policy streams where they can show a capacity to meet need not already met with other funds. All providers accepting public funds would need to ensure that provision was articulated with other education and training offers, to ensure that learners have access to coherent progression routes and all would need to satisfy quality thresholds.
  2. NIACE proposes that a reconstituted National Council for Further Education and Training (NCFET) should have a remit for:
  1. funding learning programmes leading to the achievement of the specific lifelong learning targets relating to NVQs and Investors in People in the National Targets for Education and Training (NCFET)
  2. widening participation and achievement
  3. guidance and curriculum support for Employment Service commissioned programmes, and securing gateways to other learning opportunities
  4. promoting and supporting the Investors in People programme
  5. funding basic skills programmes, including those offered in workplaces and the community
  6. funding Individual Learning Accounts.

Whilst the national funding body will need to retain funding for national initiatives, and for nationally delivered programmes, it would delegate the bulk of its funding for allocation by formally established and constituted regional lifelong learning development partnerships on the advice of local forums. The Council would ensure that regional offices of the NCFET could host regional forums, and service them. It would take advice from, and participate in the Lifelong Learning Strategic Planning Council.

  1. Strategic planning for significant areas of further education and work-related training need to be done regionally and sub-regionally. The need to plan strategically, at regional level was recognised in the 1992 Further and Higher Education Act, although regional offices of the FEFC have had more of a limited role than originally envisaged. Regionalism has been given a fresh impetus with the establishment of Regional Development Agencies and in some areas effective regional assemblies; and by the shift in European Union funding to a regional level. Regional Lifelong Learning Partnerships (RLLPs) serviced by the NCFET, will be need to secure effective liaison with the work of RDAs, but will need to operate as legally constituted free-standing bodies. They will need to take an overview of the balance and focus of further education and training offered, and will need to intervene to address regional skills shortages. They will have to secure effective mechanisms to support initiatives which do not fit tidily within local learning partnership boundaries, and liase with the University for Industry to promote employer investment in lifelong learning, and to increase and widen participation. The Regional Lifelong Learning Partnerships will need to work with the following remit:
  1. reviewing the work of constituent local lifelong learning partnerships and to identify significant gaps in provision
  2. allocating further education and training funds, within the remit agreed by the National Body, on recommendations from local learning partnerships, and in the light of regional skills needs
  3. acting as liaison for European Commission regional funding for learning related Agenda 2000 funds, and other EU regional funding impacting on education and training
  4. liasing with Regional Development Agencies to secure effective regional planning for skills and lifelong learning
  5. advising the national funding body and the national strategic planning body as appropriate
  6. liasing with the University for Industry
  7. liasing with regional Higher Education initiatives.

The regional partnership should maintain sub-committees to advise it on:

  1. learning in and for the workplace
  2. learning in formally organised further education and training
  3. community based learning.
  1. Legally constituted Local Lifelong Learning Partnerships, based broadly on the existing pattern should have a regulatory and advisory function:
  1. approving Lifelong Learning Development Plans and youth service plans from local education authorities for recommendation to DfEE for the release of hypothecated funding
  2. undertaking needs analysis and setting participation targets, (including those for widening participation) ensuring that the broad shape and scope of further education programme offers meet local needs, and recommending them for funding by regional lifelong learning forums
  3. reviewing the operation of learning in and for the workplace, including the effectiveness of workplace learning plans, liasing with enterprise development initiatives, and advising regional lifelong learning partnerships
  4. reviewing provision to secure coherence, adequacy and sufficiency of provision for learners and effective progression routes
  5. liaison with local University for Industry hub(s) for promotion and motivation
  6. approving plans for local advice and guidance networks, and allocating guidance funding
  7. allocating, where appropriate, development funding (e.g. where appropriate, Individual Learning Accounts)
  8. allocating discretionary awards for student support, and transport
  9. responsibility for securing proper arrangements for managing transition, and securing opportunities for adults with learning difficulties and/or disabilities.

To secure appropriate engagement of the wide diversity of agencies with an interest in lifelong learning, partnerships should maintain sub-committees:

  1. for learning in and for the workplace – with strong employer and employee representation, as well as other agencies with an interest in the skills agenda
  2. for the formally organised and enhanced further education sector – including providers, users, local authorities, employers and employees, and higher education
  3. for community based learning – including LEA adult and youth sector representatives, and councillors, voluntary and community education agencies, colleges, arts, libraries and museum service representatives, schools, and of course service users.

Sub-committees should draw from a wide range of agencies to secure informed choice, in addition to having Lifelong Learning Partnership members in attendance. Local Lifelong Learning Partnerships should be co-ordinated by a local authority in membership and serviced by its staff.

  1. Despite the growth in regional initiatives, however, many decisions affecting post-school education and training need to be taken at a sub-regional level, which better reflects a ‘travel to learn’ or ‘travel to work’ level, but beyond the scope of individual lifelong learning partnerships. NIACE believes it would be unhelpful to be too prescriptive about the size of sub-regional groupings. We believe that, as in current developments in primary health care, local learning partnerships – which in any case in urban areas will usually cover more than one LEA area – can be trusted to make coalitions to form appropriate sub-regional partnerships, to which regional lifelong learning partnerships can delegate responsibilities. We do not see such sub-regional groupings replacing the needs for RLLPs, but as effective vehicles for securing decisions sensitive to learners.
  2. Local, regional and national tiers in this structure must inform, influence and be informed and influenced by each of the other tiers.
  3. NIACE is strongly committed to the role of local government in lifelong learning – through its direct duty to secure adequate provision and through the learning it supports through arts, libraries and museums work, through its social services, housing and economic regeneration activities as well as through education. Local government has the capacity for the joining-up of policy across a range of service areas necessary for community regeneration. Local authorities are major employers, and through economic development and regeneration programmes make a major contribution to industrial and business success and the learning that underpins it. We are convinced that effective strategies for widening participation and achievement rely on the effective engagement of multi-purpose local democratic bodies. However, that engagement must be effective.
  4. Whilst we welcome the Government’s initiative in calling for lifelong learning development plans and youth action plans from LEAs, we believe funding for adult, youth and community education budgets has been too fragile, and that unacceptable variations in funding between areas has been supported. This is vividly illustrated, despite its methodological flaws, in the 1999 Audit Commission review of local authority performance indicators. As a result we believe that authorities should prepare lifelong learning development plans, which on approval by Local Lifelong Learning Partnerships, would release hypothecated funding for adult, youth and community education activities. Authorities would continue to receive money via the Standard Spending Assessment, but only have authorisation to release hypothecated funds following receipt of a letter of approval from DfEE. That letter would be triggered following the Local Lifelong Learning Partnerships approval. NIACE recommends that the remit of community education services should be to secure the newly adopted participation target for all sections of their communities for which a statutory duty to secure should be strengthened.
  1. We also believe that Lifelong Learning Development Plans should be broadened to include youth action plans, which recognise the distinct contribution youth work can make, but also secure its integral role in lifelong learning policy and delivery. Too often youth policy is marginalised in post-16 planning, in part because much youth work affects younger learners, but in part because informal learning is too easily discounted in labour-market led lifelong learning planning.
  2. The division in function we propose between further and community education, unlike that of the 1992 Act is not based on artificial and inappropriate curriculum distinctions. It recognises the importance of skills and qualifications, and the ladders leading to them in the remit of the further education and training remit, and the need for inter-sectoral liaison, family learning, provision for older people, and community capacity building in the participation remit of community education. There will be a close articulation of interests between the two remits, but they will have the potential to support both increased individual achievement, and the diversity of learning goals envisaged by the Secretary of State in the preface to The Learning Age. To achieve that vision and to widen participation will, however, mean significantly increased investment in LEA services to secure a minimum per capita investment of the average of the upper quartile of current authority investment.
  3. The voluntary sector has a key role to play in achieving success in widening participation and achievement. In addition to major providers like the Workers’ Educational Association, Pre-School Learning Alliance and the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, thousands of voluntary organisations contribute to lifelong learning policy through their work – though their primary purpose may not be educational. Partnerships will need to show how they will liase effectively with the voluntary sector, and secure voluntary sector representation on it.
  4. Further education colleges will in many cases need to strengthen capacity to relate to learning in the workplace. They will also need to have tougher strategic planning requirements placed on them, to show how they are meeting needs, and how they are consulting.
  5. Earlier in this paper we stressed the importance of securing the engagement of all workplaces in lifelong learning. As an Investor in People itself, NIACE recognises the value of the programme in engaging all workers in developing their own learning skills within the framework of their enterprise’s business development needs. However, we wish to endorse the NAGCELL Workplace Learning Task Group recommendations that there should be a minimum statutory framework for workplace learning, comprising 2 key elements:
  1. Policy Statements produced by the employer setting out a commitment to workplace learning, and to how it might best be supported
  2. Learning Committees with equal representation from employers and trade unions with responsibility for developing and monitoring progress to achieving the objectives of the Policy Statement.

NIACE further endorses the proposal that to give guidance to stakeholders Government produce a Code of Practice offering guidance to stakeholders on the development of plans, and on the resources available to support their activities. We believe this will highlight admirable existing practice, and do much to highlight the vital importance of the workplace in widening participation and achievement.

  1. Currently, the Employment Service manages a range of labour market related learning programmes. We are concerned that effective support for learners on these programmes is secured, whoever takes part in them. For this reason we see an enhanced remit for the further education and training funding body, and for colleges in supporting such work with guidance, curriculum and staff development. We propose that those explicit labour market related programmes currently offered by TECs should be located with the Employment Service to ensure coherence of planning.
  2. NIACE has had a long standing commitment to the value of employee development schemes. They illustrate a key feature of the modern economy – that learning how to learn is the core vocational skill, and investment in the general development and education of staff has positive economic benefits. We think that principle must be carried forward by partnerships.
  3. Some funding for workplace related training will inevitably be organised regionally and nationally by NTOs, and specialist providers. For this reason, and because strategic planning for skills needs to happen locally, regionally and nationally we recommend sub-committees of partnerships and the national council at all levels.
  4. An alternative to securing LEA funding via hypothecation, and Employment Services programmes through direct commission would be to deliver all three funding streams through the NCFET. This would involve stripping out funding from the Standard Spending Assessment, and ring-fencing it within the Council; and making similar arrangements for ES programmes. Whilst this would have the advantage of tidiness it would place unreasonable pressure on the Council to manage a range of diverse policy goals, backed by different funding mechanisms to secure diversity of outcomes. There would be a danger, already evident in the current FE system, that autonomous institutions would develop stronger relationships and accountabilities with the centre than with other local providers. On balance we do not recommend this approach. Should it be adopted, however, it will be essential for the 3 foci identified in this paper to be supported by discrete funding streams within the Council.
  5. The role of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority in securing robust qualifications will be a key to success in securing high standards of achievement. To succeed QCA will need to complement its work in harmonising 16-19 qualifications with work of similar dexterity to recognise the variety and complexity of adults’ learning achievements. NIACE recommends the development of a modular credit and accumulation system for further education, and its early harmonisation with that being developed in higher education.

    Timing
  6. The issues raised by the post-16 review are of fundamental importance. NIACE recognises the pressures on Government to provide a speedy response to the TEC Review, now significantly delayed, and the similar pressures resulting from the timetable necessary to secure any legislation.
  7. Nevertheless, the policy adopted by Government needs to command the widest possible consent. The speed of the current review inevitably excludes many with a potential interest from contributing.
  8. NIACE believes much would be gained from the early publication of a Government Green Paper on its proposals, followed by an active programme of discussion, and a White Paper commanding wide agreement. NIACE believes the lesson of ‘The Learning Age’ is that Green Papers are often more effective that White Papers in galvanising change, and to create a learning society, we have to take the time to involve and engage everyone.

 

Alan Tuckett
April 1999

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