The Bureaucracy Review Group Annual Report 2004
A NIACE Response
Published: August 2004
Thank you for the opportunity to respond to the Annual Report of the Bureaucracy Review Group. This response comes from NIACE, the national organisation for adult learning whose mission is to improve opportunities and the quality of opportunities for adults in learning and particularly those who have been at a disadvantage in the system.
We thoroughly support the work of the Review Group as we are in favour of the devotion of resources rather to the education and training of learners than to the administration of systems. We absolutely support the commitment to enhancing trust within the system and empowering staff to use their judgement and discretion, evidencing a belief in their professionalism.
With regard to the specific chapters of the Annual Report we would support the notion that there needs to be a clear understanding of the different roles that national organisations play. NIACE would be included in this category of organisation and we hope that our focus on the learner and their experience gives us a particular role in the range of organisations that support learning. We support the ambition to reduce LSC's performance review process into a single annual review, integrated with inspection and accreditation. We believe that the energy that providers put into this kind of exercise can mean that the focus is off the provision of learning for considerable periods and would like to reduce this to a minimum. We also believe that while it is important that local needs are met and considered in the development of education and training, the local development of policies should be avoided at all cost. We believe that there is a real danger in the LSC's current structure that management is ever present and that providers are never free to exercise their own appropriate discretion. We also feel that the decisions about what is devolved to local LSCs and what is not is often far from clear both to local providers and indeed to ourselves. We would like more clarity about what is national policy and what areas are open to local discretion.
With regard to funding flows, we support the integration into fewer streams. However, for some kinds of adult learning, we are aware that there are real dangers in not protecting particular parts of the education and training landscape, particularly in the face of strong government targets. Thus we have supported and would continue to support the safeguarding of particular kinds of adult learning in order to secure access for all and a retention, perhaps at a reduced rate, of learning for personal development, citizenship and the development of communities. We believe that plan led funding is to be encouraged and we support the spreading of this to all kinds of providers including those in adult and community learning as soon as possible.
We regard the reduction of bureaucracy in relation to qualifications as most important and consider this is essential in the light of a forthcoming credit system which is likely to make more qualifications and parts of qualifications available to providers. It is important if this is not going to become unduly bureaucratic to have good systems in place to make sure that learners get what they want in terms of qualifications and providers are not over burdened with bureaucratic requirements in this area.
