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Best practice case studies sought from gallery and museum educators.
Collect & Share: New engage-led programme promotes lifelong learning in museums and galleries across Europe – visit www.collectandshare.eu.com
Eleven European museum, gallery and adult learning networks, agencies and institutions have become partners in Collect & Share. Funded by the European Commission through the Socrates programme, this three-year programme is researching good practice in lifelong learning in museums and galleries. This is the first project of its kind, and reflects the high priority which Europe places on lifelong learning. Funding has also been received from Arts Council England.
Collect & Share is led by UK-based engage, the leading organisation promoting greater access to and enjoyment of the visual arts in the UK and internationally.
Collect & Share is collecting examples of best practice in lifelong learning work with adults 16+ in museums and galleries across Europe, and sharing this information and expertise through a searchable website, training, reports and conferences. Collect & Share emphasises projects which benefit people who are disadvantaged by social or economic factors, discrimination or disability. The projects have been generated by art galleries, museums, or professional artists.
Phase one of the Collect & Share website went live at the end of January in English, with French and German versions to be available in February. Visitors to the site can enter or search for case studies from any EU country and in any of the nine Partner languages: Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Slovene and Swedish.
Collect & Share would like to receive case studies from anyone working in this field. To contribute a case study to the project please visit www.collectandshare.eu.com for the criteria and pro forma.
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Wireless Outreach Network (WON) Organisations
Awards for WON Learners
NIACE is currently compiling a selection of case studies from Wireless Outreach Network (WON) projects to illustrate the success of the initiative in reaching new and hard to reach learners.
To complement these organisational case studies, we would like to include case studies of individual learners written in their own words (tutors may assist learners). As an incentive to the learners, we are offering awards of £50 for them to write in with their success stories telling us how they have used the WON equipment and how it has contributed to their learning experience. Learners should include their name and address with the case study. Please note that we can only offer a maximum of 100 awards - the final choice will be made by NIACE.
The case study can be anything from one paragraph up to a maximum of 3 sides of A4 typed pages in length and may also include a photo(s). These should be submitted either by post to:
Jackie Essom - ICT Project Officer, NIACE, Enkalon House, 92 Regent Road, Leicester, LE1 7PE or by e-mail attachment to: jackie.essom@niace.org.uk
Case studies should reach us no later than 19 March 2004 and award winners will be notified in due course.
A selection of the winning case studies will eventually be published by NIACE.
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Clarke tops fees with concessions
| The Government won a narrow victory in the second reading of its flagship Higher
Education Bill, scraping home by just five votes after weeks of intense
campaigning by ministers and rebels. 316 MPs voted for the Bill and 311 against,
including 72 Labour MPs; a further 19 abstained.
Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats opposed the Bill, which will allow English universities to charge students up to £3,000-a-year in fees. Despite the closeness of the vote, which saw the Government’s usual majority cut from 161, Education Secretary Charles Clarke welcomed ‘an outcome which allows us to go forward with our legislative programme’. Opening a six-hour debate on the Bill, Mr Clarke told MPs that the fees would provide £1 billion a year for universities, while addressing the ‘appalling obscenity of deep class differences in who goes into higher education’. He confirmed that the poorest students would receive £2,700 upfront and that the £3,000 upper limit on variable fees – one of a number of concessions the Government made to rebels – could only be raised after 2010, through primary legislation. Mr Clarke also announced that the DfES would report next year on the likely impact of fees on students not eligible for the full package of support. Earlier concessions included plans for an independent review to examine the impact of top-up fees three years after their introduction in 2006. The Bill will now proceed to the committee stage. Source: Adults Learning
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Top-level shake-up at LSC
The Learning and Skills Council (LSC) has announced sweeping changes to its internal structure, including a major clear-out of senior staff. The Council’s national office in Coventry will now be organised around two groups – Learning and Skills – which reflect its core purpose. As a result of the changes three of the national directors – Ken Pascoe, Director of Operations, Avril Willis, Director of Quality and Standards, and Michael Kesztenbaum, Director of Strategic Marketing – have now left the LSC.
Caroline Neville, currently Director of Quality and Standards, will lead the Learning group. A Director of Skills is to be appointed shortly. Two further groups – Finance and Corporate Services – have been created to support the two core groups. They will be led by Philip Lloyd, now Director of Finance, and David Russell, Director of Human Resources and Corporate Services.
The national office restructuring builds on the LSC’s new regional structure – and the appointment of new regional directors – announced in January by Chief Executive Mark Haysom, who promised ‘a lighter touch from the national office’ and ‘truly local leadership’. ‘I am committed to continuing to develop the “localness” of our operations,’ said Mr Haysom, ‘and I want to emphasise that the appointment of regional directors strengthens, not weakens the role of our local Learning and Skills Councils. I am confident that the new regional structure will allow a much more streamlined, manageable and responsive reporting line within the LSC.’
The new regional directors are: Chris Roberts, North East; John Korzeniewski, North West; David Cragg, West Midlands; Margaret Coleman, Yorkshire and Humberside; David Hughes, East Midlands; Mary Connelly, East of England; Henry Ball, South East; Malcolm Gillespie, South West; Jacqui Henderson (Regional Director), London; Verity Bullough (Regional Director, Operations), London. Source: Adults Learning
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New man at the WEA
The troubled Workers’ Educational Association has appointed a new General Secretary. Richard Bolsin is currently Director of Education at Agilisys, a joint-venture information technology company set up by IT company netdecisions and Jarvis plc, the company responsible for much of the maintenance of the London Underground. Mr Bolsin is expected to take up the position at the end of March. He was previously employed by Kent County Council, working for a time as Education Director for North and Mid Kent. Source: Adults Learning
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Introducing Excalibur
The Adult Learning Inspectorate (ALI) has launched Excalibur, a good practice database designed to support continuous improvement on the part of learning and skills providers.
Excalibur will allow providers to examine examples of noteworthy practice and make comparisons with their own practices. It will include examples of ‘absolute’ good practice and also ‘relative’ good practice in relation to what is emerging as the national picture in an area or aspect of provision.
Currently the database, accessible via the ALI website, contains 30 case studies from across the sector. A further 45 are to be added each term, with the aim of having 200 exemplars in place by March 2005. The case studies have been developed by ALI’s Provider Development Unit (PDU) with the providers themselves.
The ALI is planning a series of regional introduction and awareness-raising sessions for providers. In the meantime, it is well worth having a look ( www.ali.gov.uk/htm/excalibur.htm ) – Excalibur promises to be a useful tool in the drive for quality improvement. Source: Adults Learning
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Measuring success
The LSC, DfES, OfSTED and the Adult Learning Inspectorate have proposed a set of new measures of success to be put in place for 2005/06. This direction represents a major development for the sector and comments on the consultation document are sought. The proposed measures of success for learners cover:
 | Learner success (retention and achievement of qualifications); |
| Value added and distance travelled for young people aged 16 – 18; |
| Distance travelled for adult learners over 19; |
| Non-accredited learning; |
| Learner satisfaction; |
| Learner destinations. |
The aim is to have a coherent and fair set of measures across the sector, one which can be used by the LSC, the DfES and the inspectorates.
Copies of the consultation document have been posted to all colleges and providers, and it is also on the Success for All website at www.successforall.gov.uk . The closing date for comments is Friday 20 February. Source: Adults Learning
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Nomura founder dies
Yoshiko Nomura, Director General of the Nomura Centre for Lifelong Integrated Education, in Japan, has died aged 81. The founder of the Centre, Mrs Nomura devoted her life to voluntary action for educational reform throughout the world. Yumiko Kaneko, her successor as Director General, said Mrs Nomura had been motivated to launch the Centre in the 1960s, when the problems among young people in Japan led her to seek their solution in the reform of education. ‘For over 40 years she promoted the theory of Nomura Lifelong Integrated Education for educational reform: the restoration of humanity,’ she said. Source: Adults Learning
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Tutu starts work at King’s
Archbishop Desmond Tutu – Nobel Peace Prize winner and one of the foremost campaigners against South Africa’s former apartheid regime – has started a new job at a British university. Dr Tutu, 72, has become a visiting professor in post-conflict studies at King’s College London. His teaching responsibilities will touch on ethics, philosophy and theology.
The former Archbishop of Cape Town came to the UK with his wife Leah in the 1960s to study theology at King’s. His association with the College was cemented when the Students’ Union named a nightclub – Tutu’s – after him. ‘I have wonderful, happy memories of my time at King’s,’ he said. ‘My experience was one of great encouragement and support in my academic studies and an acceptance and warmth from my fellow students.’ His tenure at King’s will last until the end of the spring term. Source: Adults Learning
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Working together
The LSC has launched a formal public consultation exercise on Working Together, its draft strategy for the voluntary and community sector. Through the consultation process, the LSC wants to gather the widest possible range of views, particularly from the voluntary and community sector, on the issues to be addressed, the priorities for action, and effective practice based on creative and practical ideas already in the field.
The consultation period runs until 23 March 2004. People can comment on the draft strategy by post, fax or email using the response form supplied in the document. Or they can participate in national, regional or local consultation events, organised by NIACE.
The regional events take place on 9 February, Birmingham; 10 February, Cambridge; 16 February, London and the South East; 17 February, Exeter; 24 February, Liverpool; 25 February, York. For more information the regional events contact Gurjit Kaur: Tel: 0116 204 2855; gurjit.kaur@niace.org.uk . Local voluntary and community organisations are invited to organise their own discussions. For help in doing so contact Garrick Fincham at garrick.fincham@niace.org.uk.
Download the draft
here, or contact Sue O’Hara, Adult Learning Division,
Learning and Skills Council (tel: 02476 825778, or email:
sue.o’hara@lsc.gov.uk ). Source:
Adults Learning
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Working with asylum seekers
ASSET UK, a partnership of organisations – led by the Refugee Council – whose focus is to address the social and vocational integration of asylum seekers is, in partnership with NIACE, to organise a series of regional seminars to raise awareness, promote good practice and identify needs in working with asylum seekers. Source: Adults Learning
> Further information on the regional seminars
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Measuring learning’s wider benefits
The Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning (WBL) is seeking to facilitate discussion, informed by its research, with providers and practitioners about the measurement of the wider benefits of educational provision.
NIACE is to organise a series of half-day road shows to consider what the wider benefits of learning are, whether these benefits should be measured at all, and if so, by whom, and how.
Research conducted by the Centre has mapped out a range of wider benefits, and developed instruments to measure these. How these findings and experiences apply to the measurement of wider benefits within a practitioner context will be discussed at the road shows.
The events will take place on 27 April, York; 28 April, London; and 29 April, Birmingham (NIACE Conferences, 0116 204 2833). Information about the Centre and reports of the research can be found at www.learningbenefits.net . Source: Adults Learning
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