Ian Finlay

Modernisation and the Role of Policy Levers in the Learning and Skills Sector.

This paper examines the changing use of policy levers in the English postcompulsory education and training system, often referred to as the learning and skills sector (LSS). Policy steering by governments has increased significantly in recent years, bringing with it the development of new forms of arms‐length regulation. In the English context, these changes were expressed during the 1980s and 1990s through neoliberal New Public Management and, since 1997, have been extended through the New Labour government’s project to further ‘modernise’ public services. We look here at the changing use of policy levers (focussing in particular on the role of targets, funding, inspection, planning and initiatives) over three historical phases, paying particular attention to developments since the formation of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in 2001. We conclude by considering the range of responses adopted by education professionals in this era of ‘modernisation’.

Young people on the margins: in need of more choices and more chances in twenty‐first century Scotland

The aim of this study was to find out more about the lives of young people in the category ‘not in education, employment or training’ (NEET). We worked intensively with 26 young people in four smaller groups, spending three days with each group. During our time with them we engaged in a variety of creative and artistic activities designed to help them to construct accounts of their lives for us with the purpose of gaining an understanding of what it was like to be NEET. Three significant issues that emerged from these life stories are discussed in this paper. These are the problematic nature of the discourse of NEET sub‐groups; the challenges of school‐exclusion policies and practices; and the myth of low aspirations.

How policy impacts on practice and how practice does not impact on policy

The TLRP project reported on in this article attempts to understand how the Learning and Skills sector functions. It traces how education and training policy percolates down through many levels in the English system and how these levels interact, or fail to interact. The authors first focus upon how policy impacts upon the interests of three groups of learners: unemployed people in adult and community learning centres, adult employees in work-based learning and younger learners on Level 1 and Level 2 courses in further education. They focus next upon how professionals in these three settings struggle to cope with two sets of pressures upon them: those exerted by government and a broader set of professional, institutional and local factors. They describe in particular how managers and tutors mediate national policy and translate it (and sometimes mistranslate it) into local plans and practices. Finally, the authors criticise the new government model of public service reform for failing to harness the knowledge, good will and energy of staff working in the sector, and for ignoring what constitutes the main finding of the research: the central importance of the relationship between tutor and students.

‘The heart of what we do’: policies on teaching, learning and assessment in the learning and skills sector

One of the stated aims of government policy in England is to put teaching, training and learning at the heart of the learning and skills system. This paper provides a critical review of policies on teaching, learning and assessment in the learning and skills sector over the past five years. It draws upon data collected and analysed in the early stages of an ESRC‐funded Teaching and Learning Research Programme project. 1 Using evidence from policy sources, we argue that despite policy rhetoric about devolution of responsibility to the ‘front line’, the dominant ‘images’ that government has of putting teaching, learning and assessment at the heart of the learning and skills sector involves a narrow concept of learning and skills; an idealization of learner agency lacking an appreciation of the pivotal role of the learner–tutor relationship and a top‐down view of change in which central government agencies are relied on to secure education standards.

A new learning and skills landscape? The central role of the Learning and Skills Council

This is the first paper from a project which is part of the Economic and Social Research Councils programme of research into ‘Teaching and learning’. The project, entitled ‘The impact of policy on learning and inclusion in the new learning and skills sector’, explores what impact the efforts to create a single learning and skills system are having on teaching, learning, assessment and inclusion for three marginalized groups of post‐16 learners. Drawing primarily on policy documents and 62 in‐depth interviews with national, regional and local policy‐makers in England, the paper points to a complex, confusing and constantly changing landscape. In particular, it deals with the formation, early years and recent reorganization of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC), its roles, relations with government, its rather limited power, its partnerships and likely futures. While the formation of a more unified learning and skills system is broadly seen as a necessary step in overcoming the fragmentation and inequalities of the previous post‐16 sector, interviewees also highlighted problems, some of which may not simply abate with the passing of time. Political expectations of change are high, but the LSC and its partners are expected to carry through ‘transformational’ strategies without the necessary ‘tools for the job’. In addition, some features of the learning and skills sector policy landscape still remain unreformed or need to be reorganized. The LSC and its partners are at the receiving end of a series of policy drivers (e.g. planning, funding, targets, inspection and initiatives) that may have partial or even perverse effects on the groups of marginalized learners we are studying.

Living in an ‘entrepreneurial’ university

Abstract This study set out to test the major criticisms of Burton Clarks book Creating Entrepreneurial Universities: organisational pathways of transformation (1998). Both Deem (2001) and Smith (1999) criticise Clark on the grounds that he interviewed only a selection of senior staff in the institutions he surveyed and, hence, did not get a closely grained account of change within those institutions. In this study, a selection of staff in one of the universities studied by Clark was interviewed to test the reliability of his findings. The article concludes that Clarks perspective reflects only one of a range of views held within the university in which there are a variety of cultures operating.

Flowers in the desert: the impact of policy on basic skills provision in the workplace

In this paper we argue that learning in the workplace can bring considerable benefits for learners and employers. It draws on data from in‐depth interviews and secondary sources from eight sites of work‐based learning as part of wider research into the effects of five national policy mechanisms within the Learning and Skills Sector. We also have evidence of the positive effects of policy initiatives, in this case, Skills for Life, Union Learning Representatives and Employer Training Pilots, and of legislation such as the Care Standards Act. However, initiative‐based resources cannot substitute for longer‐term, more secure funding. We have found what may be described as ‘flowers in the desert’—provision that grows, develops and blossoms quickly with the injection of funding, but which is very susceptible to changes in resourcing and, like flowers in the desert, can wither as quickly as it grew. We conclude by arguing that initiatives and exhortation are unlikely on their own to ensure that the full benefits of learning in the workplace are realized. There is, therefore, a need both for more sustained funding from government and employers and for greater regulation, such as the ‘licence to practise’ approach taken in the Health and Social Care professions.

Learners in the English Learning and Skills Sector: the implications of half-right policy assumptions

The English Learning and Skills Sector (LSS) contains a highly diverse range of learners and covers all aspects of post‐16 learning with the exception of higher education. In the research on which this paper is based we are concerned with the effects of policy on three types of learners—unemployed adults attempting to improve their basic skills in community learning settings, younger learners on Level 1 and 2 courses in further education colleges, and employees in basic skills provision in the workplace. What is distinctive about all three groups is that they have historically failed in, or been failed by, compulsory education. What is interesting is that they are constructed as ‘problem learners’ in learning and skills sector policy documents. We use data from 194 learner interviews, conducted during 2004/5, in 24 learning sites in London and the North East of England, to argue that government policy assumptions about these learners may only be ‘half right’. We argue that such assumptions might be leading to half‐right policy based on incomplete understandings or surface views of learner needs that are more politically constructed than real. We suggest that policy‐makers should focus more on systemic problems in the learning and skills sector and less on problematising groups of learners.

Data on the doorstep: using documents for researching further education

Abstract The article is aimed at new researchers into post-compulsory education although it may also be of interest to those who have done research but have not made much use of documentary sources. The article will also be relevant to those who are interested in the links between universities and further education colleges. The purpose of the article is to explore the use of documentary sources in researching further education and to exemplify the process using a study of college and university links in Scotland.

Rapid response research: using creative arts methods to research the lives of disengaged young people

In Scotland, as in other legislations, the government and its agencies commission educational research to inform policy and practice development. This provides opportunities for academic researchers, who are under pressure to engage in funded research, to carry their interests forward with some assurance of social usefulness and impact. Many educational researchers have a commitment not just to explore and explain processes around the organisation of learning, but also to change current practices for the benefit of groups who are not getting the most out of their educational experiences. There are, though, costs involved in this kind of research. Often very tight timeframes are imposed by the funders. There may also be constraints on publication of outputs. This paper provides one case study of undertaking policy-facing research whilst attempting to maintain integrity and quality.