Peterborough Regional College (PRC) is on cloud nine with the appointment of Royal Air Force director of flying training Terry Jones as its new principal.
Mr Jones, who oversees the famous Red Arrows, takes over from interim principal Ioan Morgan next month.
Mr Jones also oversees three UK bases responsible for education and training, including vocational training and distance learning in his current post and will be heading to a college rated as good by Ofsted its last inspection in December 2011.
“The college made great strides under the previous leadership and I intend to carry this journey forward to make it one of the very best colleges in the UK,” he said.
He added: “I’m passionate about high standards in education and training and committed to serving our learners, the wider community and businesses in Peterborough and beyond.”
College corporation board chair Andrew Stafford said: “Terry was the unanimous choice of the board to become the new principal and we’re delighted he accepted the role.”
And former Learning and Skills Improvement Service trustee Ayub Khan is taking over from Mark Ravenhall as chief executive of the Further Education Trust for Leadership (Fetl) on an interim basis from today (June 15).
Mr Khan, previously a Fetl trustee, said: “Fetl has a clear focus to help lead thinking in the FE and skills sector and has made good progress with its grants and fellowship programme.
“We know it’s a challenging time in the sector but there is opportunity. The body of knowledge we are building will help forge new ways of working.
“There is much to do to and I look forward to supporting Fetl in the next phase of its development.”
Jill Westerman, Fetl chair, said: “Ayub will oversee the strategic and operational elements of Fetl, strengthen resources and help ensure a smooth transition, building on the work that has already been achieved.”
Meanwhile, Midkent’s acting principal Simon Cook has been given the post on a permanent basis.
Mr Cook, a former apprentice, had stepped up from vice principal in July last year following the death of principal Sue Mcleod.
Mr Cook said: “I have such great hopes and ambitions for our students, I know from personal experience how much we can change people’s lives as I would not be here without a college like ours.
“I want to make sure all our students have the same life-changing opportunities I did.”
Governors’ chair Sheila Potipher told staff at the college, which slipped down a Ofsted grade last month from good to ‘requires improvement,’ that the board had unanimously confirmed Mr Cook’s appointment in May.
“Simon joined MidKent from Cornwall College in 2013 as the vice principal since which time he has worked tirelessly to steer us all through some of the most challenging times we have experienced to date,” she said.
“His skills, experience and enthusiasm for FE are evident to us all and I am thrilled that he is going to continue the positive work already underway.”
The government target to create 3m apprenticeship starts could pose “a real danger” to national productivity, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) boss David Hughes has warned.
Mr Hughes made the comments following the release of the Niace annual participation survey, which showed although the number of adults learning in the past three years rose slightly, from 38 per cent to 41 per cent, the lowest paid are still least likely to be learning.
Mr Hughes told FE Week the survey findings “reinforce the need to persuade more people back into learning because if we’re going to really hit [Chancellor George] Osborne’s ambition of being a productive nation we need to raise the overall skills level of the workforce or it just won’t happen”.
And, he said, government’s focus on protecting the apprenticeship budget while cutting the Adult Skills Budget “reinforces this rather than countering it”.
“The 5.2m people in low pay get very, very little support from government at all — the apprenticeship programme won’t do for much of them because often they will need literacy and numeracy training before they can get anywhere near an apprenticeship,” he said.
“There’s a real danger the 3m apprenticeship target gets in the way of doing the right things to address the issue.
“It’s great that we’ve got an ambitious target around apprenticeships because that will focus ideas and resources on skills, but if it’s the only target that matters, I think that’s really concerning.”
The Niace survey found 72 per cent of those in the lowest socioeconomic groups were not learning and nearly half (49 per cent) had not participated in the past three years.
The study of 5,000 adults also revealed twice as many of those who left education at 21 or later were learning, compared to those who left school at 16 (52 per cent versus 26 per cent).
“This reinforces and confirms my apprehension that the skills system just isn’t working for too many people,” said Mr Hughes.
“If you’re successful in learning up to the age of 21 you get into a higher level job with training, so people in high socio-economic groups do quite well out of the system.”
Conversely, he said, those who left school with few qualifications were likely to find themselves in low paying jobs without training.
The survey also found that the number of unemployed people taking part in learning had dropped from 41 per cent to 35 per cent.
Mr Hughes said: “As money gets tighter there is a risk, with the apprenticeship focus, other things get squeezed out, and what these figures show is you’ve got to do more to get to the people who haven’t done much or any learning for many years if you really want to get to the heart of the productivity issue — and the fairness issue.”
Click here for an expert piece by Mr Hughes exploring the survey findings.
Sitting at a meeting table in his wood-panelled principal’s office, Andy Forbes strikes a comedy pose with lips pouted and eyebrows raised as he says to the FE Week photographer: “You can see where the being in the drama club comes in, can’t you?”
“Delete it!” begs Forbes through his chuckles — “you can’t print that”.
To my everlasting regret (and I suspect, Forbes’s relief) the photographer obliges before I can intervene and the College of Haringey, Enfield and North East London (Conel) principal escapes future photographic embarrassment.
“Believe it or not, I was quite shy, really introverted as a teenager,” he tells me.
“I didn’t enjoy school at all until I joined the drama society, in around about year nine.
“Why I joined the thing I don’t know, but something made me do it, and I started meeting a lot more people and coming out of myself, really enjoyed the final bit of school and sixth form.”
Forbes, aged eight
And Forbes, now aged 60, says, it’s stood him in good stead as a principal.
“There’s quite a lot of performance with this job,” he tells me.
“You spend so much time going to events and representing the college, being on stage with students — so the ability to say a few words, and look suitably dignified, friendly and important all at the same time, that’s a big part of it.”
And it wasn’t something he’d realised in a former role as vice principal for curriculum at Blackpool and the Fylde College.
“As a vice principal it’s much more hands on — as a principal, yes, you have the executive bit where you make decisions, but it’s a bit like being Prince Charles,” he explains.
“You’re wheeled out to events because you represent the college. It’s a semi-diplomatic role.”
Education was central in Forbes’s household growing up in Stourbridge, near Birmingham.
“As with many immigrant households, education was seen as the way forward,”
he says.
Forbes’s father, Oswald, was the first Jamaican GP in England having come over in 1943 to complete his medical training as part of the war effort. But Oswald met Dorothy, Forbes’s mother, and never went back.
As a principal, you have the executive bit where you make decisions, but it’s a bit like being Prince Charles — you’re wheeled out to events
“It’s interesting mixture, because in some ways my father was not part of the establishment,” Forbes reflects.
“We were outsiders but because of his success professionally we had the resources to get a relatively privileged experience — he paid for us to go to private prep school.
“I found the whole school photo recently, there were 700 boys, there was one Indian boy and me and 698 white boys and I didn’t feel any sense of not being part of it but I look back and just think how unusual that was.
“I look back and think it must have been quite something and you’re not aware of it as a child.”
The family life was turned upside down when Forbes was 10, when the “larger than life” Oswald left.
“He did the dirty on my mum and ran off with his practice nurse,” says Forbes.
As a single parent of four mixed-race children in the 1940s, Dorothy struggled to cope, but, Forbes says, with unabashed pride, she was “magnificent”.
“Honestly, I’ve asked her many times how she did it and she just says you had to get on with it,” he says.
“She was of that war generation where you were used to getting on with things, rationing and all sorts.
“She said there were times when she felt like giving up, but she couldn’t face the thought of us going into care, so she forced herself to keep going.
“We thought of her as mummy, but astonishingly, she turned out to have a degree in economics, and she started working as a social worker part time and then full time as we got older and had quite a substantial 20-year career in social work.”
And, he says, the experience was in some ways good for the family as it prompted the four boys to learn to look after themselves.
“It sounds dreadful now but when I went to university I was quite unusual in that I could iron my own shirts and cook a bit — it was seen as ‘really? Wow!’ as most the boys sent their laundry back to their mothers,” he says.
The family focus on education paid off and Forbes landed a place studying English literature at Cambridge, which was like “stepping off into another world”.
“Reading was my saviour as a child,” says the dad-of-seven.
Forbes, aged six
“So academically I thought it was just brilliant.”
When he left university “the fantastic lack of careers advice” left Forbes without a plan and he spent two years as an untrained mental health nurse, before deciding to be teacher and heading for Manchester to do a PGCE.
He fell into FE teaching “by accident” in his first job at the Abraham Moss Centre, a combined adult and FE college, youth centre, theatre and secondary school in a deprived area of Manchester.
Forbes initially gained a job teaching in both the school and the college, but when legislation came in requiring the school to have its own governing body in 1988, the institution had to be split and Forbes stayed with the FE and adult side.
“I’ve always been interested in the social inclusion aspect of FE and as a teacher, I did enjoy teaching bright youngsters A-levels or whatever, but the thing that I really found interesting and challenging, totally different and very rewarding was teaching adults that had no background at all in academic study,” he says.
But as far as his own professional progression went, Forbes admits he “wasn’t exactly quick off the mark” and he had no real ambitions to move up the career ladder.
“But I reached the stage of thinking ‘how could such and such a person have been promoted? Well if they can do it, I can do it’, and at each step I thought ‘well I could have a go at that’,” he says.
At Manchester, he became head of multicultural education, leading adult education, equality and diversity and youth and community initiatives, before moving on to Oldham College as director of widening participation and marketing.
“I’ve progressed up the ladder through cross-college roles — I think by the time I got to Blackpool for the fairly straightforward vice-principal’s role, I think I was seen as a rather odd mix of things,” he says.
“But it gave me a really good understanding of both the academic and the support side of the college.
Forbes at Disneyland Paris in 2013 with from left, son Zinedine, aged eight, and daughters Aisha 11 and Miriam six
“When you’re trying to do one of those difficult cross-college jobs, you have to relate across departments, negotiate with empire building heads of departments, and you find ways of making it work better and better.”
With his children grown up and moving away, Forbes headed for pastures new, and Hertford Regional College’s principalship became available.
Despite his cross-college experience, Forbes found that “nothing prepares you for becoming a principal”.
“It’s extraordinary, completely different,” he says.
“What you come to realise is so much of it is getting the elements in place that enable teachers to teach and learners to learn, it’s so indirect and I don’t think you understand that until you’ve done it.”
Forbes took on his second principalship, at Conel, in late April and said the college presented its own “challenge”.
“It may be too early for me to say definitely how it’s different from Hertford, but the atmosphere here is very different and I think the key reason for that is the mixture of adult and young here,” he says.
“And the sheer range of ethnic diversity, of different backgrounds and experiences — obviously we do have learners who are unskilled, who never got the skills in the first place, but we also have learners who have come with previous skills and experiences and need to get restarted.
“This is an exciting college, a good challenge.
“The whole world is here in microcosm and it’s got so many aspects to it that are just what I enjoy — this is just right for me.”
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It’s a personal thing
What’s your favourite book?
Of the many, many books I could have mentioned, I’m going to go for The Case For Working With Your Hands: Or Why Office Work Is Bad For Us And Fixing Things Feels Good, by Matthew Crawford.
He was somebody who for various reasons spent years working automotive and construction sites and has gone on to do a PhD and so is obviously very articulate and competent, but he reflects on why it is that he thinks that actually working in offices and all those sorts of things is less satisfying than the work he used to do
From left: Forbes, aged 30, with brothers Martin, David and Peter,
and their mother, Dorothy at the front
What do you do to switch off from work?
I read and write poetry. I have always loved poetry. There are many other things I do, there’s listening to music and films, the usual sorts of things, but my secret love is poetry
What’s your pet hate?
I think pomposity and arrogance — the sort of academic (not always, but often) person who somehow feels that entitles them to feel superior in some way and speak as if they are an oracle of all wisdom. Yes, they have expertise. Yes, they have knowledge but it’s that pompous thing that gets my goat
If you could invite anyone, living or dead, to a dinner party, who would it be?
Nelson Mandela — sorry, slam dunk. For all sorts of reasons I think he would be fascinating. I’d probably need several dinner parties with him
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I wanted to be a writer. I was quite shy as I grew up and I used to love reading books, and writing. I used to write endless things, stories about ants and so on. I wanted to be a writer and I am in an amateur sense
It’s unclear just how poor the tracking of young people’s education and employment status is, but having seen Local Government Association (LGA) findings, Amy Lalla argues it’s an issue for which those at the very top must ensure funding pressures do not mean inaction.
Another week and another set of depressing data on the state of FE funding and the outlook for some of our most vulnerable young people.
The headline finding from the Local Government Association (LGA) survey is that ‘teenage Neets are at risk of being left behind by growth if services are not reformed, councils warn’.
Just 7 per cent of councils say they have powers and funding to meet their legal duties to identify and reduce teenage disengagement and secure suitable education and training places for all 16 to 18-year-olds.
It’s almost impossible to resolve an already intractable problem if we don’t have enough information to work with
And, piling on the misery, the LGA tells us that nine out of 10 local authorities (LAs) have been forced to reduce spending on support for 16 to 18-year-olds.
There’s absolutely no doubt that these statistics make for horrific reading. And although the survey achieved a very creditable 58 per cent response rate, I’d be surprised if — even with the usual caveats on methodology — there wasn’t yet more grim news lurking at the LAs which chose not to participate.
One of my main worries is the lack of data around exactly who Neets are. If we don’t know who, or where they are, how can we get them back into education or training and give them the opportunity they so desperately need to get their lives back on track? It’s as basic as that.
In January LAs were taken to task by the powerful Public Accounts Committee, which reported that round 100,000 teenage Neets had simply disappeared off councils’ radars. They had ‘gone missing’.
In some LA areas, the activity of a massive 20 per cent of young people was unknown, compared with a national average of 7 per cent, the committee said.
And this regional variation in data provision is a big worry. We know that many councils are beacons of good practice on this — they share their data with us and involve us in planning provision.
But we also know of councils which are unable to tell us who and where their Neets are despite the fact that we have the solutions to engage them.
It’s almost impossible to resolve an already intractable problem if we don’t have enough information to work with.
Without some foresight the problem of dealing with Neets will continue to grow — and the danger is that we won’t be able to locate them.
These regional variations must go, and the only way to do that is to introduce a standardised, central system for data collection. It cannot be left to the discretion of individual councils, now under enormous pressure and forced to make such punishing cuts across all their services.
Of course, the grim irony is that young people who have strayed from a traditional life path — often as a result of destructive home lives and educational barriers — are the least likely to have the resources or networks to make their voices heard.
That is why those of us who work in the sector and know at first hand the fantastic potential of these young people must campaign to raise Neets provision to the top of the political and policy agenda.
The wasted potential and cost — in human and economic terms — of picking up the pieces is simply unacceptable.
But of course, once young people have been reduced to faceless numbers on the Neets statistics, we’ve already failed them. What we should be focusing on is early interventions in school — primary and secondary — to identify the children in danger of becoming the Neets of tomorrow.
I have no doubt that this is where we need to turn our attention as a matter of urgency.
In light of the Chancellor’s announcement he wanted to see £900m of in-year savings split evenly between the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department for Education (DfE), Mick Fletcher considers how FE might be affected — and how to lessen that effect.
What we know is that the two education departments, BIS and DfE, are each being asked to make an extra in-year cut of £450m — almost a third of the total sum being sought in the emergency budget planned for July.
What we don’t know is where the cuts will fall; but here’s a prediction. In this round and in the subsequent autumn spending review the Chancellor will find it easier to pick on provision for the weak and disadvantaged rather than tackle the big vested interests defending much larger sums.
We will probably see action on the manifesto pledge to reduce provision of full time FE at level two and below, hidden behind a fig leaf of increased apprenticeship opportunities.
It seems likely that we will see a further move from grant funding to loans, once again spun as ‘empowering the learner’.
Other soft targets could be learner support funds (less need as student numbers fall?) or adult and community learning (replaced by the big society in the form of the University of the Third Age). A further blow to the last remnants of social partnership represented by sector skills councils must be high on the hit list.
There are however a couple of sacred cows that could yield much larger savings but are far less likely to be touched. The biggest is the long running scandal of small school sixth forms, surviving only by robbing resources from the lower school.
If government has pledged to ring-fence funding for pupils up to the age of 16 it seems only fair for schools to be forced to do the same, leaving sixth form pupils to be taught efficiently and effectively in sixth form and tertiary colleges.
Since, shockingly, the average class size for the 16 to 18 phase in schools is less than half of that in primary schools, there are serious savings to be made from the £2bn or so in this bit of the schools budget.
Although it is both logical and feasible the chances of sensible reform of sixth form provision are vanishingly small. They are only marginally greater for tackling the second great vested interest; the unholy alliance of providers and employer bodies that argue strenuously against any attempt to make employers pay their share of training costs.
We will probably see action on the manifesto pledge to reduce provision of full time FE at level two and below, hidden behind a fig leaf of increased apprenticeship opportunities
It cannot be right however that FE colleges are more dependent on state funding than they were at the time of incorporation over 20 years ago, or that private providers are even less likely to secure co-funding.
It is true that demanding cash contributions towards the cost of providing apprenticeships and adult training risks lessening demand, but that risk is faced with equanimity elsewhere in the adult skills budget.
Under Matthew Hancock’s watch as Skills Minister the government developed a firm co-funding policy based around a generous two-for-one funding offer — far better than the deal for individuals.
If they can’t make it stick now, with an austerity budget and private sector growth they might as well abandon the whole idea forever.
The third big vested interest that the Chancellor faces is his own ministerial colleagues. At the very same time that they demand cuts in well-proven and valuable provision they indulge in an endless stream of pet projects for which there is little evidence of either need or efficacy.
Significant savings could be made if ministers held back from schemes such as the employer ownership pilots, national colleges, free schools in areas with no shortage of places or differing varieties of technical schools that duplicate what FE colleges can deliver. The chances, however, seem slim.
Finally, it is just possible that savings might be demanded from one quarter normally thought untouchable.
There is a growing body of opinion that sees the £200m or more spent on Ofsted annually as poor value for money. If he is bold the Chancellor could perhaps achieve the impossible — an education cut that is welcomed by schools and colleges.
With the issue of 16 to 19 funding dropping to critical levels, sector leaders have written to Chancellor George Osborne and Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, as reported on feweek.co.uk. Malcolm Trobe explains what why he wants government to reconsider its view on funding education for the age group.
Education for 16 to 19-year-olds is in danger of becoming a Cinderella service. It covers some of the most important years in the lives of young people, but it is the most poorly-funded part of the system.
The base rate of funding for each student is £4,000 per year. This is less than pre-16 education, where the average base rate is about £4,700, and higher education where students are generally charged £9,000.
FE colleges have been struggling along for years on around this £4,000 rate without any inflationary increases. School sixth forms and sixth form colleges were better funded, but no longer. Over the past five years their funding has been cut to the same level.
And over the next five years, the situation is set to become much worse.
Schools and colleges face significant rises in costs because of increases to employers’ National Insurance contributions, pensions, staff wages and general inflation. This is bad enough for pre-16 education, but for the 16 to 19 sector it is even more disastrous because funding is already so low.
Also worryingly, the 16 to 19 sector is unprotected in terms of government spending, raising the fear it may suffer further cuts.
This background explains why the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) and six other organisations joined together to send letters to Education Secretary Nicky Morgan and Chancellor George Osborne [see feweek.co.uk for more]. Together, the signatories represent a huge range of schools and colleges, demonstrating the strength of feeling over this issue.
In addition to ASCL, they are the Association of Colleges, the Principals’ Professional Council, the Sixth Form Colleges’ Association, the Independent Academies Association, the Grammar School Heads Association, and the Freedom and Autonomy for Schools National Association.
We recognise the financial situation is difficult, but we are asking that, at the very least, the government gives 16 to 19 institutions enough money to meet the additional costs they face. If this does not happen they will be hit with real-terms cuts of about 5 per cent over the next 12 to 18 months.
FE colleges have been struggling along for years on around this £4,000 rate without any inflationary increases
The consequences of inadequate funding are already being felt and will become more severe if not addressed. One of these is that it makes it difficult for schools and colleges to provide the full range of A-levels, AS-levels, and other courses, to meet the needs of students. This is particularly so in smaller sixth forms which cannot sustain an appropriate breadth of options on such low funding levels.
The result is that fewer students will apply, and the sixth form is trapped in a downward spiral, probably ending with its closure.
Another consequence is that it becomes increasingly difficult for schools and colleges to provide courses in subjects which attract relatively low numbers of students.
As these include modern foreign languages and further maths, this will undermine areas which are important to the wider economy.
The funding crisis also damages the ability of schools and colleges to offer students additional curriculum opportunities.
Everybody recognises the importance of equipping young people with life skills and a rounded educational experience through things like team-building activities, enterprise days, sports clubs, music and other creative arts-based opportunities.
However, the funding situation makes it is increasingly difficult for many schools and colleges to provide these opportunities. This places students in the state sector at a significant disadvantage to their peers in independent schools where these sort of activities are energetically promoted.
Indeed, if the funding crisis results in fewer of these activities and fewer course options for state students it will have a damaging effect on social mobility.
Austerity inevitably means making tough decisions. However, it is not good economics to fail to invest in the future, and this is precisely what is currently happening in 16 to 19 education. The country’s prosperity relies upon ensuring we have a workforce with the training and life skills for the 21st Century. And we have a responsibility to young people to give them that future.
David Maguire became the new Jisc chair last month and outlines for the first time his view of the FE sector and technology
ow can organisations leverage digital technologies to improve learning and teaching and equip learners with the skills they need for the future, under burgeoning cost pressures?
This is the big question facing UK education and research today, and one I am attempting to address in my new role as Jisc chair.
The FE sector in particular is facing a ‘do-or-die’ outlook when it comes to technology adoption. In this article I want to look at the challenges that learning providers are facing and what Jisc is doing to future-proof the sector, concentrating on three key areas.
First is the current austerity agenda, with the dual cost pressures of impending budget cuts under already high financial constraints hanging heavy over the sector.
‘Efficiency’ is a term generally treated with trepidation as cost-cutting in lieu of quality, but in our view efficiency means using technology to promote smarter working, increase productivity and engender cost savings.
I am committed to extending the excellent work Jisc has done to broaden access — providing thousands of free ebooks to FE and skills
One of the big areas Jisc is prioritising is shared services. For example, learning providers are having to house more data as their use grows, impacting on their electricity bills and taking up expensive estate. Shared data centres can solve this problem, and free up staff time to concentrate on core activities.
Getting access to high quality resources is also a concern for cash-strapped colleges. To this end I am committed to extending the excellent work Jisc has done to broaden access — providing thousands of free ebooks to FE and skills, creating tools such as the hairdressing training app, and offering resources like Digimaps for Colleges.
Second is the changing expectations of students. Today’s iPad generation has grown up with technology and expect it to be part of their normal everyday experiences.
Just as other sectors and industries are having to evolve their delivery models to incorporate digital, so too must education. Colleges need to understand what it is students actually want from their digital environment in order to meet their needs.
I see Jisc’s role as arbiter, steering the conversations between students and staff and offering solutions that meet the requirements of both. The digital student co-design project has made great progress in scoping out the current view of technology and where it could be improved. The next step is engaging students as partners to act as change agents and drive technology uptake.
The third and final driver is the pervasiveness of cloud services and digital personal computing such as smart phones and devices — both of which I see as having a profound impact on education delivery.
Cloud has already been widely adopted by the business world. While there is some ground to walk before we see education using it at the same level, when this switch does come it will allow organisations to be more flexible, adaptable and resilient to change. Jisc has been busy brokering deals with some of the world’s leading commercial providers; next comes dissemination of practice and providing support for effective use.
Internet-enabled devices, on the other hand, are increasingly seen as learning tools. Curious individuals are able to pursue their interests whenever and wherever they are, using mobile devices. Building on my previous point around expectations, educators need to meet them there, offering suitable resources and content and supporting access through inclusive BYOD policies.
Since the Wilson Review of Jisc in 2011 — which highlighted both the invaluable nature of Jisc as a national resource, but also emphasised the need for it to simplify and reorganise its structure and processes to continue to deliver for the sector — significant steps have been made to evolve our offer.
A key priority for me is to establish a sustainable funding model for Jisc customers, so that they are able to continue to benefit from all the activities I mentioned above, and more.
Armed with the results of the annual learning participation survey, David Hughes takes aim at the number of adults taking up learning opportunities and calls for action to make the classroom a more attractive place.
Celebration, excitement, inspiration, exploration and fun encapsulate Adult Learners’ Week for me and thousands of other people who have a go at learning as well as joining in the awards ceremonies up and down the country.
It’s an annual shot in the arm for everyone involved in learning, providing a boost and reminding us all just how important lifelong learning is for the spirit, for communities, for families and for businesses.
This year, though, I think we need to be worried about the future because the learning and employment systems are broken for millions of people. We need major reforms to change that. Our research shows that millions of people are missing out on learning which will help them get on, help businesses and strengthen the economy and society.
The Niace annual learning participation survey provides the clear evidence that more needs to be done to stimulate demand for learning.
According to the survey, only two in every five (41 per cent) UK adults have taken part in learning in the last three years, but this is uneven when looked at for different groups. For instance, more than half of those in the higher socio-economic classes (54 per cent of ABs; 52 per cent of C1s) have taken part in learning during the previous three years, compared with just 35 per cent of skilled manual workers (C2s) and only 26 per cent of unskilled workers and people on limited incomes (DEs).
We’re failing to develop the lifelong learning society that’s essential if we are to compete with other nations.
Twice as many people who left full-time education aged 21+ participate in adult education, compared to those who left full-time education at 16. And nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) of adults without regular access to the internet have not taken part in learning since leaving full time education.
We’re failing to develop the lifelong learning society that’s essential if we are to compete with other nations
Despite our ageing society, we are failing older people, with those 55 and over the least likely to take part in any form of learning. And we are failing to support unemployed people to gain the skills they need to find decent work.
Through our research and development work we know it does not have to be like this. People who have not participated in learning since leaving school can be motivated into learning.
The pilots for our Citizens’ Curriculum have shown that people can be motivated when they are involved in designing their learning. The pilots also show that once engaged, people do progress rapidly in confidence, further learning and into work.
Part of the challenge is to persuade and encourage people to have the confidence that learning will benefit them and that they have the ability to learn. But we also know that even where people do want to learn, the opportunities do not exist or are simply not accessible.
If this government truly wants to raise the productive potential of the nation, then we need to foster a universal culture of lifelong learning. That will require a different approach and bold actions from the government as well as from others; we are ready to support them in that.
We’ve looked closely at the Conservative Party’s manifesto commitments, and our Summer Budget submission, Raising the Productive Potential of the Economy, proposes urgent short-term measures which will help move towards a more inclusive, productive economy. These include: protected funding for English, maths, traineeships and ESOL which should be delivered through the Citizens Curriculum; a Careers Advancement Service aimed at the 5.2m people in low paid work; and new employment programmes for disabled people on benefits.
The benefits of lifelong learning are wide, deep and long-lasting. But unless we make major reforms, those benefits will increasingly be the domain of the privileged few. I think it is worth us fighting for those who missed out at school.
Friends and family of a young learner who died of cancer honoured his memory with a football tournament that raised more than £1,000 for the hospital ward that cared for him, writes Billy Camden
The tragic loss of Chris Curwen who died from lymphoma in September 2010 at the age of just 23 hit his friends and family hard.
The former Myerscough College foundation degree in sports coaching learner was “football mad” and played for the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan) — the college’s partner university — and his local outift Wyre Villa.
Chris with mum Karen Bradley
To pay tribute to Chris, his university teammates set up the annual Chris Curwen Memorial Cup two years ago where an ‘Old Boys XI’ take on the current UCLan side to raise money for charity.
This year the competition was held at Myerscough College’s Bilsborrow campus and involved three ‘Old Boys’ sides — including one from Wyre Villa — and three current UCLan sides.
Zach Clark, who went to college with Chris and is now a football coach at Myerscough, said: “Throughout the whole of university and college Chris was football mad. He never missed training, even through his illness. He just had a massive passion for football and that is how all of us lads remember him and so it seems right to pay tribute to him in this way.
“It’s what he would have wanted.”
A minute’s silence was held before the tournament kicked off and a signed Liverpool shirt — the team which Chris supported — was presented to mum Karen Bradley afterwards. “It is a fantastic event and it is so lovely that they all get together,” she told FE Week. “The boys that organise it are very dedicated. They travel from all around the UK to come up to Preston. It just goes to show how much they must have thought of Chris. It’s a fitting tribute.”
Yusuf Kaffo, Karen Bradley, Seydou Bamba and Zach Clarke
Chris’s friend and former teammate, Yusuf Kaffo, aged 26, who helped organised the event, said: “Chris was highly personable and always willing to help others. The day was about coming together and remembering someone who was really close to all of us.”
The winning side on the day was one of the ‘Old Boys’ teams containing several former Myerscough College students.
The event raised more than £1,000 — almost 10 times the figure of two years ago — and will go towards the Young Oncology Unit at The Christie in Manchester where Chris was treated.
“To raise that amount makes the day a huge success and a very fitting memorial for Chris,” said Yusuf, who thanked everyone after the game for attending. “I can’t wait to get going with organising next year’s now.”
He added: “Most of all a big thank you to Karen who allows us to remember and honour Chris year on year.”
Speaking after the event, head of sport at Myerscough College Chris Pinkett said: “Chris was a popular student during his time with us and it was such a tragedy and a shock to us all when he lost his battle with his illness. It’s great that his friends have helped to create this legacy to remember him by.
“It [the tournament] gets bigger and better every year and to raise more than £1,000 for charity is a tremendous achievement. Chris would have been so proud of everyone’s efforts.”
