More, Different and Better

You have to be careful when you talk about red lights or red cards, but that’s just what our audience at the AoC’s annual conference thought of attempts to enable more innovation in adult further education.

Thanks to our friends at the AoC we were back at their annual conference where two years ago we put forward the idea of an inquiry into the role of colleges in engaging with local communities. This time last year, at the same event, Baroness Sharp launched her report of the inquiry. This year we were back to take stock of progress.

There were twenty recommendations in the report. These were about colleges being more accountable to the communities they served, showing more enterprising local leadership and designing curriculum alongside community partners, including employers. In return the government would stop micromanaging the system and allow providers the space to innovate.   

One of the great disappointments was that the main vehicle for this, an innovation code for colleges to use to draw down funding while they developed a more relevant adult curriculum alongside learners, was misinterpreted as working solely with employers. Other proposals made better progress at our well-attended event yesterday.

In terms of leadership, Maggie Galliers of Leicester College and current AoC President, outlined the work of the new leadership exchange, LSIS’s work on its Leading in the Community module, and college engagement with LEPs. When asked to rate progress as green, amber or red, nearly all the audience gave it an amber or ‘some progress, but not on target’ to achieve the vision in the Sharp report.

Next came accountability, where ex-AoC President, Chris Morecroft, talked about the work he led on the book Thinking Outside the College, which recommended an explicit public value statement by all colleges. This would show clearly what the college offered to local communities and how they could hold the college to account. Our audience was divided in terms of progress on accountability: an even split amber-red.

Curriculum was a passionate issue on the commission led by Sally Dicketts of Oxford and Cherwell Valley College. Sally reminded us of how adults learn and of the role of adult educators to train communities to take charge of their own learning, and to work with current innovations like Community Learning Trusts. She expressed a concern about initial teacher training not having enough in it on curriculum design, outreach strategies and working with learners as co-designers. This, as all speakers pointed out, meant there were serious CPD challenges ahead for the profession. Overall the rating was again amber-red.

A single vote on the innovation code alone was 50% red, 25% amber with a remarkable number of abstentions.

We then heard from three colleges that had done great work on making the new freedoms work for local communities. These were City and Islington, South Devon, and Liverpool Community College. All were working closely with their local authority. All had strong, visionary leadership and a determination to work with groups, even if it meant costing more. These were colleges not taking the easy route, colleges with their own local vision that did not slavishly follow the latest whim of more distant planners, but stuck to their guns…and principles.

It was refreshing that innovation in curriculum design and working with communities in those areas would not be shown the red light. I feel if we can follow their example across the country, we won’t go far wrong.

Mark Ravenhall worked on Baroness Sharp’s Independent Inquiry into Colleges in their Communities from 2010-11. The Inquiry Commissioners will meet in February 2013 in the House of Lords to report on progress.