Latest News: April 2006

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The UK’s Largest Festival of Learning

The countdown has begun to the start of the largest festival of learning in the UK. Adult Learners’ Week - which runs from 20th – 26th May 2006 and is organised by the NIACE -  is an ideal opportunity for adults to consider how learning can transform their lives.

Thousands of events will be happening across the country in colleges, local shops and supermarkets, factories and businesses, libraries and museums, community centres and adult education colleges. These will give adults the opportunity to get a taste of learning at a time, a pace and place that suits them. Adult Learners’ Week in 2005 attracted over 50,000 adults to 10,000 different learning events. Details of what’s on offer this year is available from the online calendar of events at www.alw.org.uk/calendar

The Week is also the time when the achievements of adult learners – young and old and in all their diversity – are celebrated through the Adult Learners’ Week Awards. The adults NIACE celebrate are inspirational examples of how learning really does transform lives.

Rachel Thomson, Senior Campaigns Officer at NIACE, said:

“Each Adult Learners’ Week proves without question - through the stories of the outstanding learners we celebrate with our awards - that learning is good for you health, your confidence and your career. And these fascinating stories of learners really does inspire others to follow in their footsteps.”

She continued, “Whatever you want to achieve, learning can steer your life in the direction you want it to go in. With thousands of events taking place across the country, this is the perfect time to find out how learning could unlock the door to your future. To find out more about what’s on offer where you are during this year’s Adult Learners’ Week, visit our website www.alw.org.uk  or call learndirect free on 0800 100 900.”

Source: NIACE Press Release: "The UK’s Largest Festival of Learning" Released On 24/06/2006

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The future of further education

What will the Government’s further education White Paper, Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances, mean for adult learning? April’s issue of Adults Learning carries eight pages of reaction from some of the leading and most challenging voices in the learning and skills sector.

This special issue sets the agenda for an informed public debate about the proposals and includes contributions from Alan Tuckett, Director of NIACE, Nick Pearce, Director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, Brendan Barber, General Secretary of the TUC, Nadine Cartner, Head of Policy, Association for College Management, Monica Deasy, Director of Standards, Qualifications and Research, Lifelong Learning UK, John Stone, Chief Executive of the Learning and Skills Network, Judith Norrington, Head of National Policy Development, City and Guilds, Martin Tolhurst, Principal of Newham College, John Brennan, Chief Executive of the Association of Colleges, Maggie Galliers, Principal of Leicester College, Peter Templeton, Director of Education, Quality and Strategy, WEA, Donald Rae, Chair of LEAFEA, and Deborah Cooper and Claire Griffin, of Milton Keynes Council

The Government invites formal responses to the White Paper by 19 June. In the run up, NIACE is to run a ‘Big Conversation’ to celebrate adults who succeed in learning and to debate how policies can be improved, particularly for the funding of courses for adults. This will include a rolling lobby of Parliament during Adult Learners’ Week (20-27 May). The key questions NIACE believes need to be asked are:

Members, supporters, providers and learners should seize the opportunity to participate.

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NIACE comment on the Financial Services Authority’s national Baseline Survey of Financial Capability.

“Study reveals financial crisis of the 18-40s” was the front-page headline of the Guardian (28.03.06) going on to speak about a “lost generation … unable to cope with soaring house prices”. With such a rich supply of information in it, the Financial Services Authority’s (FSA) national Baseline Survey on Financial Capability among adults was always going to provide rich pickings for headline writers but what is the Baseline Survey and why is it so important to anyone involved in adult learning?

The Survey is a snapshot of the financial capability of over 5,000 adults in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, commissioned by the FSA as part of its overall National Strategy on Financial Capability. As such it is the most extensive piece of research on this subject ever carried out in this country and probably worldwide. In addition to their main role of regulating the financial services industry the FSA also has a statutory responsibility for consumer financial education and they have been discharging this over the last few years by developing a National Strategy, in partnership with a large number of other organisations and bodies from Government, education, the private sector and the voluntary sector, including NIACE.

The FSA first had to decide what they were testing within their concept of “financial capability”, by which they referred to a wider range of skills and behaviours than normally referred to under the heading of “financial literacy”. So the Survey set out to study not just what people understood about personal finance but also what they were doing with that understanding and how effective their management of their finances was.

The questions were organised under five main headings, thought by the FSA to be key indicators about personal financial capability:

Many bodies, including NIACE, would have liked to add other questions and dimensions to this. However, given that the Survey was clearly going to be a massive operation already, it is not surprising that the FSA was quite selective in what it took from the early consultations about content. NIACE would have liked an altogether wider definition of financial capability, encompassing not just consumer issues about what people do with money once they have got it but also skills and behaviours about obtaining money. We would also have liked a stronger component on moral and ethical behaviours surrounding money. More information about people’s learning histories and current learning behaviour would have been useful for us (there is information about people’s levels of educational attainment as measured by qualifications gained).

The importance accorded to “Staying informed about financial matters” also rather betrays the FSA’s primary role with the Financial Services industry, seemingly implying that individuals should be continually reviewing the massive output of new products from the industry and fine tuning their portfolios on a regular basis – almost as if people should be expected to move house every time a new type of brick was developed.

However, notwithstanding these points, the end result is an enormously rich store of information about the nation’s financial skills and behaviours and the FSA are to be commended both for their decision to undertake the Survey and also for their perseverance with all the immensely difficult work of completing it.
So what are these initial key findings? The main themes emerging are as follows:

There is no doubt that these and many other findings even from the first “pass” will be very challenging for a large number of bodies and organisations dealing with personal finance and education. Just a few examples may illustrate this:

There are many challenging – and indeed uncomfortable – questions here for all of us.

So what is the next stage for the National Strategy and what part will the Baseline Survey play in this? Hopefully, we shall see the FSA using this evidence to exert greater pressure on those who can usefully contribute to the improvement of the nations’ financial capability.

However, there are some areas of concern. At the conference that launched the Survey results, there was keen questioning from the representative of an FE College about why the FSA’s emphasis on young adults was being directed through Universities and the NEET (Not in Employment, Education or Training) group and by-passing FE. This was reinforced by Marcus Luck from the LSC in London, who pointed out that around 50% of those in FE are mature adults returning to education at change points in their lives when they are in need of help about all aspects of these changes, including the reorganisation of their finances that invariably accompanies this.

The Government’s role in this is crucial. There is considerable expression of support for Financial Education from various parts of Government, with some Departments, notably the Department for Work & Pensions, taking intelligent and proactive approaches to incorporate it into their Departmental objectives – and to put money behind this. However, there is a serious lack of co-ordinated thinking in Government about Financial Education, with the result that the partnership of key organisations that was assembled by the FSA to assist includes the Voluntary Sector and the Private Sector but also the Government seemingly itself acting as a loosely aligned group of unconnected organisations, little different from a grouping involving, say, Citizens Advice, the CBI and One Parent Families.

NIACE believes that the National Strategy for Financial Capability will always be running with the brakes on until Government adopts it and embeds it in a co-ordinated way across all relevant Departments.

The clock is ticking. The FSA has bravely committed itself to a repeat of the Baseline Survey in around five years time to see what progress has been made. Five years is not a long time and we all have a lot of work to do to see that learners have access to learning, that consumers have access to clear, sensible information from the Financial Services industry and its regulator and that at least some of the more depressing findings of the first Survey have been consigned to history.

Howard Gannaway, 30th March 2006-03-30

The full report on the Baseline Survey can be found at:
http://www.fsa.gov.uk/pubs/consumer-research/crpr37.pdf

An extended version of this article can be found on http://www.spondoolies.org.uk  in the Forum section “Think Tank”

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One step forward, two steps missed?

An initial response to the Further Education White Paper from NIACE

NIACE welcomes the publication of the White Paper Further Education: Raising Skills, Improving Life Chances (Cm 6768) as a recognition by the Government of the sector’s potential to contribute to both economic and social policy. There are a number of positive reforms in the paper but the paper is also a significant missed opportunity to address the balance of investment between full and part-time students as well as people preparing to enter the labour market, returners to it, those seeking mobility in it and those who have left paid employment.

The Government invites formal responses to the White Paper by June 19th 2006. In order to secure an informed public debate about the proposals, NIACE will run a Big Conversation to celebrate those adults who succeed in learning and debate how policies could be improved. This will include a rolling lobby of Parliament around Adult Learners’ Week (May 20 – 27). The question we urge NIACE members, supporters, providers and learners to consider is “If courses for adults are funded from the public purse, from learners’ own pockets and from employers in different mixtures depending on subject, level and place, are we investing enough? Is the balance right? And are the priorities right?”

For more information about this response, contact Alastair Thomson (Senior Policy Officer) 0116 204 4241. (Out of hours press contact mobile: 07787 534413).

The full initial response can be read here

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Melanie Hunt – National Director of Learning at the LSC calls for STAR nominations

Every spring, the attention of the entertainment community and of film fans around the world turns to the Academy Awards. The Oscars are truly the highlight of the film industry’s year. They are the time when many Stars are recognised for their contribution to the film industry excellence.

Behind every Oscar winner, however, stands a whole range of people who have supported him or her. Recognising these people who work behind the scenes, and who contribute to the success of others is what the STAR Awards is all about – but these are awards for the learning and skills sector. The STAR Awards are there to recognise those individuals who work day in, day out to improve the learning experience of people in their community, but who are not always recognised for their work.

There are currently 600,000 people in the learning and skills sector who are working with adults and young people over the age of 16 and who are eligible for a STAR Award nomination. Their careers range from work-based trainers to evening class tutors, college lecturers, receptionists, cleaners and crèche workers. The challenge for these individuals is to engage learners from different backgrounds, be responsive to different people’s needs and to ensure that learners develop their skills and knowledge. They provide the support and encouragement for learners to succeed, which in turn helps individuals move into employment, achieve qualifications, and in some cases progress on to higher education.

As nominations for the 2006 STAR Awards are now well underway, the LSC is keen to help generate interest in the Awards and to boost nominations. I would encourage learners, managers and colleagues to nominate their STARs – the tutors, trainers, managers and support staff who have inspired, motivated and encouraged them to succeed. With so much creativity and innovation in the sector, the STAR Awards provide a real opportunity to recognise those who are involved in education, training and support for people over the age of 16. Ultimately the Awards aim to recognise and celebrate the richness and diversity of a sector which prides itself in being responsive to so many different learners.

This year, the STAR Awards are particularly interested in encouraging learners to nominate their STARs via the new Learner’s Choice Award. With an estimated one in ten of the population studying in the learning and skills sector, there are potentially 6 million people who could nominate someone!

Nominations can be made on line via the STAR Awards website www.dfes.gov.uk/starawards . Nominators can call the freephone Helpline on 0800 652 0528.

Nominations close at midnight on 21 April. With only a few weeks to go, nominate your STARs today. Your small nomination can make a big difference.

NIACE sponsors the Adult and Community Learning Tutor of the Year.

Melanie Hunt – National Director of Learning at the LSC

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