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Some file on this page are PDF files. ______________________________
A Review of 2005
NIACE staff take a look back on the major moments of 2005 and share their hopes and fears for 2006.
Sue Meyer, NIACE Director of Policy and ProgrammesMark Ravenhall, Senior Development Officer, NIACE Regions Team“For me 2005 has been a rather distressing year with a few highlights.”
“I think adults have had opportunities cut and horizons narrowed albeit in a good cause. I think the level 2 as a proxy is well worth supporting but without more sophistication it may damage adult participation.”
“I am delighted there is to be some protection for learning for pleasure but fear it will be hard to convince funders and providers of its value when first steps learning will be cut.”
“I dread more cuts for adults and dream of Leitch getting the demographic message to hit home so more is invested in adult learning by the Treasury.”
Jim Soulsby, Development Officer for NIACE’s Older and Bolder Team“2005 has seen a great deal of change in the English regions with some support agencies working in the field being disbanded or slimmed down.”
“Meanwhile new bodies like Regional Skills Partnerships have published action plans that will affect adult learning in the next few years.”
“There continues to be a strong focus on the needs of employers and skills, over individuals and communities. Having said that there are encouraging signs that some regional agencies are beginning to address these issues, and sustain work in community based adult learning despite a much constrained funding environment.”
“Regional Economic Strategies are taking a message from the great environmental and social disaster of 2005 - New Orleans. Regions are thinking of planning their economies around not only productivity, but also social inclusion and sustainable development. Also being considered are the roles of the voluntary sector and social enterprise.”
“The problem remains as to how adult learners, educators and citizens in general influence change in the regions. NIACE has a voice at many regional tables, but most regional bodies are still not democratically accountable to the region they serve. 2006 is likely to see some questioning of the relationship between regional development agencies and the Learning and Skills Council, the major funder of adult learning.”
“The dream for 2006 is that government becomes more joined up at a regional level and stops devolving that responsibility. In doing so it will begin to address the link between adult learning, health, well-being, employment and community regeneration, which are currently being joined up by providers often working with short term funding.”
“It would be nice to say at the end of the 2006 that the most vulnerable groups are not being served by the most vulnerable organisations.”
“2005 has been seen both highs and lows. The high having been the value of later life learning acknowledged in Government policy documents - Opportunity Age: Meeting the challenges of ageing in the 21st century and the England Skills White Paper, Skills: Getting on in business, getting on at work – the low being only to find there was no funding to sustain that vision.”
“My hope for 2006 is to see fairer funding for all learners. This should be to ensure that older learners - who may not be engaged in learning for vocational or skills purposes but for the equally important purposes of personal development, maintaining health and striving to achieve a purposeful and active retirement - are not penalised.”
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A Bad Day for Adult Learning?
NIACE is concerned that a decision to merge the statutory Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI) in England into a new single inspectorate for children and learners will be bad news for adults.
The government’s decision, announced 13 December 2005, follows a consultation during the course of which NIACE, along with the UK’s leading employers’ organisations, argued that the interests of adult learners and learning would be best served by the retention of a distinct and separate inspectorate (see our submission to the consultation HERE).
Dr Peter Lavender, NIACE’s director of Research and Development commented:
“We risk losing the sensitivity and flexibility of the ALI approach, which has been exemplary”. NIACE is concerned that the new inspectorate (which will bring together ALI with the Office for Standards in Education, the Commission for Social Care Inspection and elements of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) will be dominated by concerns for children’s development and protection and that the interests and concerns of adult learners risks being marginalised.
NIACE is, of course, committed to working with Ofsted and the new Quality Improvement Agency to make the new arrangements work as well as possible. However ALI will be widely missed in the field and NIACE believes it is right to celebrate its achievements on behalf of adult learners.
The full DfES press release can be read here
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Learning for life: adult and community education for all
NIACE Director, Alan Tuckett, will be giving a presentation entitled "How do excluded groups fit into the wider lifelong learning agenda?" at a conference on Monday 20th February 2006.
The event, which is being organised by the Local Government Association (LGA), is entitled "Learning for life: adult and community education for all" and takes place in London.
The Adult and Community Learning sector is facing a number of new challenges as the funding environment gets tougher and when priorities can seem to be heading elsewhere. How will authorities and colleges adjust? Is the focus on basic skills going to be to the detriment of wider communities of learners? The sector needs to adapt to prosper, and there is no shortage of determination to make this happen. The development of children's services departments means a shake-up in organisation at local level, with implications for staff and leadership, and with adult social care facing reforms, can we make adult education a key part of the wider well-being agenda?
Access and inclusion is a touchstone issue, and the LGA, with NIACE, have been looking at how we can overcome some of the barriers to access and achievement in some key groups - carers, isolated older adults, offenders and ex-offenders, and travellers. The LGA will publish a new report on how we can encourage these excluded groups to get involved and stay involved.
This conference looks at the developing agenda, with keynote speeches from all the main players, with a broad look from the national debate, right through to the local issues that affect local learners.
More details on this event can be found on the LGA website.
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Engaging young adults in literacy, language and numeracy
There are currently 1.1 million young adults in the UK aged 16 to 24 who are not in employment, education or training. Young adults in this group are far more likely to experience difficulties relating to literacy, language and numeracy, and consequently can find themselves further marginalised from formal opportunities. A conference from the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) to explore routes to re-engaging young adults in literacy, language and numeracy learning is being held in London tomorrow and will include personal testimony from young adults about their experiences.
The Success factors in informal learning Conference - to be held at the Institute of Education at the University of London, on Wednesday 14th December 2005 and organised by NIACE with the support of the National Research and Development Centre (NRDC) - will explore effective approaches to engage and motivate young adults in literacy, language and numeracy, with a particular focus on the significant contribution informal and community based learning can provide.
The Conference will also discuss the importance of learners’ voices in shaping learning; working with young people in custody; making reading exciting for young adults; exploring creative activities for developing emotional intelligence; gaining confidence through recognising achievement; and effective strategies for embedding literacy, language and numeracy in innovative and relevant learning programmes.
Bethia McNeil, NIACE Project Officer for the Young Adults Learning Partnership, said:
“This conference will provide an opportunity for practitioners and policy makers to reflect on and explore the potential ways of engaging young adult learners in literacy, language and numeracy provision. The voices of learners will be at the heart of the day, and delegates will have the opportunity to hear from young adults about the approaches and strategies that supported them in achieving their personal learning goals.”
She continued, “Young adults are not necessarily resistant to learning itself, but may strongly resist provision that they perceive as being related to formal, school-like learning situations, and unrelated to their own lives, experiences and interests. Many of these young adults feel that ‘learning is not for them’, and feel that education has nothing to offer their lives. This conference will provide an opportunity to share experiences and successes, and enable practitioners to build networks and develop their practice more confidently and creatively.”
Source: NIACE Press Release: "Engaging young adults in literacy, language and numeracy" (PDF file) Released On 24/11/2005
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Champion your learners
There's still time to nominate your adult learners for an Adult Learners' Week Award! You can help your learners get the recognition they deserve.
Do you know someone who has a remarkable story to tell or who has overcome particular challenges and barriers to his or her learning? If you do, then nominate them now and help celebrate the creativity, imagination and energy that adults bring to their learning.
The awards are a great way to celebrate the value of learning in your area or organisation, and make a strong statement about how learning can transform people's lives for the better.
We have an array of awards for individuals and groups, those who learn as a family as well as projects that are remarkable for their innovation or impact.
All award winners will receive a framed certificate of achievement and be invited to one of two national awards ceremonies in London during Adult Learners' Week, 20-26 May 2006.
If you know someone, a family or a group of people whose learning journey others would find inspirational, then we want to hear about them.
Nomination Forms can be downloaded here. Alternatively click here to email us, call on 0116 204 4200/1.
The closing date for nominations is 13 January 2006.
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NIACE response to ALI Annual report
NIACE recognises that the findings in the Adult Learning Inspectorate’s (ALI) Annual Report - published on 7th December 2005 -matches broadly with the NIACE view of the state of adult learning generally. Of particular interest is the poor quality of some Job Centre Plus providers, the learning and skills provision for offenders in custody or in the community, and the improving provision in work-based learning.
NIACE also believes that - while the report is a fair assessment - improvements must be prioritised for the sake of learners. However NIACE realises that this will not happen overnight. This is especially the case for Skills for Life where the quality of literacy, language and numeracy provision has not increased rapidly enough. The OfSTED report in February noted that while literacy and numeracy provision was improving, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision has not. This is why ESOL is the subject of a national enquiry by NIACE chaired by Derek Grover CB.
Alan Tuckett, Director of NIACE, said:
“The ALI report, in its focus on adult and community learning, recognises that this has only been inspected for the last three years. It is not surprising that local authority adult education has some weaknesses, given the limited resources and quality improvement support available to providers.”
He continued, “We are pleased that the importance of adult education is recognised here but there has been a reduction in provision as a direct result of higher levels of inspection. This reduction in the offer to adults, combined with some cuts in provision made by the providers, significantly reduces opportunities for adult learners. Such unintended consequences are a worrying feature for the education landscape.”
Dr Peter Lavender, Director for Research and Development at NIACE, said:
“This report illustrates the many challenges Skills for Life faces in the future. It is important to remember how difficult it is to teach literacy, language and numeracy to adults. But, like an oil tanker, it takes time to turn the quality of provision round. It takes several years to train teachers and deploy them before you might notice any change in what has been a part-time, neglected, underfunded, and unsupported area in past years.”
He ended, “It will be harder to overcome these problems with less funding for adult provision generally. The report clearly recognises that adult learning providers have an important role to play in strengthening communities in social and economic terms.”
Source: NIACE Press Release: "NIACE response to ALI Annual report" (PDF file) Released On 07/12/2005
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LSC widening adult participation ‘stocktake’
Earlier this year the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) commissioned NIACE to look at the impact of ‘Successful participation for all: widening adult participation’ since its publication in September 2003. Collecting views from LSC staff in local and national offices, as well as learning providers from Local Authorities, further education colleges and the voluntary and community sector, the research:
 | examined the nature and impact of activity initiated in the wake of the widening participation strategy, highlighting factors that hinder; and |
| considered how widening participation sits with more recent strategies and priorities, revisiting and updating the aspirations in ‘Successful participation for all’ . |
The executive summary and the full report can be downloaded here
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Consultation on effective practice for people with disabilities
NIACE is currently looking into the experiences of learning for adult learners with acquired disabilities, sensory impairments and long-term health difficulties. We would like to identify practices that are inclusive, imaginative and effective in engaging learners, and those which are problematic and need improvement.
We would like to hear about people’s views, opinions and experiences from everyone involved including: learners, teachers, carers, support staff, curriculum and course organisers, and so forth. We hope to hear both positive examples and challenges encountered, along with suggestions to make learning more appealing and accessible, about the following:
| Practical access issues. |
| The use of IT in learning. |
| Attitudes of teachers, course providers and learners towards learners with acquired disabilities, sensory impairments and long-term health difficulties. |
| The significance of forward thinking and planning for courses. |
| The experience of learners with disabilities who are from ethnic minority groups. |
| How people’s specific needs are met, and those which are not met. |
Please respond by completing this on-line response form or by contacting Caroline Law, 0116 2044249, caroline.law@niace.org.uk or Christine Nightingale, 0116 2047084, Christine.nightingale@niace.org.uk
The consultation ends on 28 February 2006.
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Volunteering transforms lives and communities
The positive life-changing impact that volunteering stimulates has been celebrated throughout this year - the Year of the Volunteer. To mark this, a conference from NIACE highlighted the importance of volunteering to the development of a vibrant culture of active citizenship and focus attention on the key roles of informal and formal learning in volunteering.
The Volunteers Are Adult Learners Too Conference – held in London on Tuesday 6th December - also discussed the contribution learning for and through volunteering makes to key government policy areas - neighbourhood renewal, community regeneration, workforce development, widening participation, skills for employability, ‘Skills for Life’ and lifelong learning. A key feature of the Conference was personal testimony from three people who have undertaken remarkable journeys of transformation through volunteering.
Dave Cooper, one of the volunteers who will speak at the Conference tomorrow, said:
“I had been self-employed for 30 years. In 1999 my mother was mugged on her way home from church. She hit her head and was completely unconscious. For a woman who was so independent it changed her life in minutes. I was having to work all day and into the night and couldn’t do much to help her. She went through a long time when she needed rehabilitation. She ended up partially sighted - couldn’t get out of the flat on her own - and in sheltered accommodation. I was so, so angry. In 2000 my personal circumstances changed. I lost my business. I lost my house. I lost everything. I decided to take some time out.”
He continued, “It was in that time when I had taken my mother out shopping, I saw an advert asking for volunteers for Victim Support and I launched myself into that. I gave it everything. I visited over 400 people who had been through purse-snatching to house-breaking to being threatened with violence. During that time I was wondering about what I should do. It was the inequality of it all, where poor people always seem to come off worse that made me want to work in the community. I went back into education at 50 and graduated from a Community Animateur Course at Northern College and I am now a Community Regeneration Officer in Sheffield but I still find time for volunteering.”
The Volunteers Are Adult Learners Too Conference coincided with the launch of a new book in the NIACE Lifelines in Adult Learning Series - Volunteers and Volunteering, written by Janet Swinney. Janet Swinney said:
“Community organisations have recognised the value of using volunteers to support their work and have identified how learning opportunities for volunteers enhance their effectiveness. But how does learning help volunteers and how can volunteers help others to learn? Volunteers and Volunteering offers ideas, information and practical suggestions of how to support volunteers, their development and progression and their impact on the wider community.”
| More details on the Conference |
| More details on the Book |
Source: NIACE Press Release: "Volunteering Transforms lives and communities" (PDF file) Released On 05/12/2005
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NIACE to hold high level enquiry into ESOL
Because of the difficulties currently facing ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) provision, NIACE officially launched a high level Enquiry into ESOL at a meeting in Birmingham on Wednesday 30th November.
The Enquiry into ESOL – to be chaired by Derek Grover CB, a former Director of Adult Learning at the DfES and a former director of the NHSU – will consider the major challenges that ESOL faces. OfSTED and the Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI) regard the quality of provision as poor in many places and, unlike literacy or numeracy learning, there is no evidence of the quality improving.
In addition, there is a shortage of teachers and those currently in post are sometimes unqualified and work part-time, which leads to professional development challenges and limited career opportunities. There are also waiting lists of students in some colleges, particularly in London and other urban areas, with demand exceeding supply for the first time in some rural areas.
Derek Grover, the Chair of the Enquiry into ESOL, said:
“ESOL is one of the biggest challenges we face. The demographic shift means that there is greater demand in the labour market for migrant workers. The enlargement of the European Union means that there are important new client groups to be catered for. This Enquiry will review existing evidence on the provision of ESOL in England, with particular emphasis on the quality and quantity of provision and staffing. The Enquiry will also identify the extent and nature of the current demand for ESOL provision. The role of ESOL in its wider context, including how it relates to citizenship and the connection it has to employment and social justice will also be discussed.”
He continued, “We will be trying to identify clearly what can be done to improve ESOL work including the quality of teaching, learning and achievement and to make recommendations on how, as a nation, ESOL should be paid for. The Enquiry aims to provide realistic and helpful recommendations to policy makers, funders, providers and practitioners for the future good of ESOL provision in this country.”
Dr Jane Ward, NIACE Development Officer, said:
“This is a great opportunity to make a difference to adults learning English, and to support ESOL practitioners. We will want to hear from ESOL learners, teachers and managers in colleges, adult education services, prisons and the voluntary sector, who will have valuable insights about what needs to be done and what can be achieved. We will be creating a website to seek views and report progress.”
Source: NIACE Press Release: "NIACE to hold high level enquiry into ESOL" (PDF file) Released On 30/11/2005
More details can be found on the ESOL Enquiry website
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