My last column was all about the politics of FE. I got a few encouraging responses publicly on Twitter and some, let’s say, agitated responses from people concerned about what the general election results will mean for our sector.

To be clear, I am done talking about the latter and want to focus now on encouraging the sector to maximise the influencing opportunities now open to us.

For a few years now, prior to major events like the annual Budget and Autumn Statement, Her Majesty’s Treasury invite organisations, the public and Members of Parliament to make written representations for consideration as part of the policy development process. The Treasury says this is part of “open and transparent policy-making” to attract “original and innovative ideas”.

I want to convince you that sending in a response on behalf of your organisation/provider is a valuable few hours of your time this week.

Talk about how you are helping your local employers create jobs and how you’re helping unemployed people gain the skills and experience to access to the labour market

FE and skills is under-represented

Countless inches in this very newspaper have decried the lack of knowledge and representation resulting in bad policy. There seems to me to be two ways around this. A more diverse Parliament and Civil Service would be excellent but is probably a longer term ambition. Second, we take every opportunity possible to, as educators, inform and inspire interest, passion and understanding with decision makers.

Information released under a Freedom of Information request that lists the names of organisations and Members of Parliament who have submitted representations ahead of two years worth of Budgets and Autumn Statements show that, surprisingly, the education sector as a whole doesn’t currently engage in this process.

Businesses, energy companies, retail associations, finance organisations and professional associations feature on the list. I think the permanent addition of colleges and providers on that list would be a great start to raising our collective presence and influence in policy.

Devolution

The Conservative Party has made clear its ambitions to devolve more powers to cities. Core and Key Cities are setting out what areas of public policy they want more control over. Education and skills features to varying degrees, ranging from full planning and funding to co-commissioning models through Local Enterprise Partnerships. The Treasury, as the government department with a key role in this agenda, will want to see how providers are already interacting with local employers and the impacts those relationships are having on employment, progression, social inclusion and productivity. As national organisations, we can only ‘fly the flag’ to an extent so responses from local employers will be a powerful addition.

Keep it short and namedrop

Ahead of the Budget in 2014, the Treasury received 171 written representations. For the Autumn Statement later that year, 194 were sent in by organisations and Members of Parliament. This means we face tough competition for attention. Written representations should be short, at two pages maximum, and should, as far as possible, offer solutions to problems that will interest Treasury officials. We know the Conservatives want to strengthen our economy and achieve full employment, so talk about how you are helping your local employers create jobs and how you’re helping unemployed people gain the skills and experience to access to the labour market. ‘Full employment’, ‘productivity’, ‘helping small businesses’ and the like are things to talk about.

CC your MP

Whether or not you have a relationship with your Member of Parliament, it is a good idea to send your Treasury representation to them. It’ll be a good tool to form a relationship with a new MP should you have one in your constituency and will be the kind of ammunition/evidence that MPs like to have to hand when in discussions with Ministers.

I hope I’ve convinced you to make a submission. They have to be submitted by Friday (June 5) and details on how to submit can be found on the Treasury website.

Bill Lucas was a keynote speaker at an international conference in Sweden on vocational education and training recently. Here he shares his arguments and reflects on some broader themes for FE globally.

Before we can even begin to think about pedagogy in FE and the wider skills sectors we need to stop and think much more deeply about the wider goals of vocational education. What are these? How are they impacted by the nature of the particular subject or vocational pathway or shaped by the particular needs of learners?

Delegates liked a model we have developed which looks at different kinds of vocational education by emphasising the medium through which the work is expressed. For example, three categories distinguish vocational education that focuses on working with. Firstly, physical materials — bricklaying, plumbing, hairdressing, professional make-up. Secondly, people — financial advice, nursing, hospitality, retail, and care industries. And thirdly, symbols (words, numbers and images) — accountancy, journalism, software development, graphic design.

Names of subjects and occupations vary across the world, but I hope that the principle is clear.

Such groupings are, inevitably, somewhat arbitrary and in most vocational learning there will be a blend of all three. But FE teachers tell us that the model helps them to make sense of the kinds of pedagogies that can be appropriate in different vocational domains — their signature pedagogies.

Thinking like this is just the beginning of a longer process of pedagogical exploration. With my colleagues at the Centre for Real-World Learning I have argued that there are six important outcomes of vocational education which have to be considered before we can start to think about the methods of learning and teaching which we choose to select for students.

Firstly, routine expertise. This is at the core of working competence. It involves skilled routines and the ability to carry out skilful activities to a satisfactory standard.

It’s about time that we focused on learning as we seek to dramatically to expand apprenticeships

Secondly, resourcefulness. Beyond the familiar and routine, expert practitioners are able to bring to mind knowledge that is applicable to new and unfamiliar contexts.

Thirdly, is craftsmanship, which is about the pleasure, pride and patience involved in doing a ’good job’.

Functional literacies, fourthly, make up a slightly broader category than the functional skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT. There are live debates today about how best to teach these kinds of functional literacies.

Fifthly, business-like attitude. This might manifest itself in behaviours such as punctuality, orderliness, willingness to put in necessary time and effort, and displays of customer service that exceed client expectation.

Finally, wider skills. The sorts of ‘wider skills’ deemed important are many and varied, and are described variously as ‘broader skills’, ‘competencies’, ‘dispositions’, ‘capabilities’, and ‘habits of mind’. Employers regularly call for employees with wider skills such as problem-solving, team-working, resilience, entrepreneurialism etc in addition to high-level basic skills.

Once this broader set of desired outcomes is agreed it becomes much easier to think about the range of learning and teaching methods required. It’s a long list which includes, among others, these methods: by watching, through deliberate practice and seamlessly by blending virtual with face-to-face. Doubtless FE Week readers will be add their own, too.

When it comes to apprenticeships, there is something else to bear in mind. For with such explicitly work-based learning pathways there are always going to be three key features: the fact that they require both on and off-the-job learning; their social context — that they require learning from and with others within a community of practice; and the requirement for visibility of learning processes — as an integral aspect of the first two and as an increasingly acknowledged feature of effective learning wherever it takes place.

As I started by saying, it’s about time that we focused on learning as we seek to dramatically to expand apprenticeships across the world. Meetings like the one in Stockholm reaffirm the importance of researchers, practitioners and policy-makers spending time thinking hard about pedagogy for all aspects of vocational education, especially the one on which I am explicitly focusing here — apprenticeship.

Providers who deliver adult education and skills training in England’s prisons are expecting their contracts to end next year, but the PLA wants these extended for a year. It is one of a number of proposals put forward by the organisation, as Alexandra Marks explains.

This June, as we prepare to mark the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education Adult Learners’ Week, the PLA, which comprises 23 organisations with expertise in offender learning, hope its vision for the future of prison education will be realised.

Our vision is simple: we want education in prison to deliver the outcomes we all want to see, less crime and better, more productive lives for prisoners and ex-prisoners.

We invite the new government to achieve this by making some key changes to the current Offender Learning and Skills Service (Olass) contracts this summer. Overhauling the system completely would be expensive and disruptive for staff and learners.

So we recommend that the current contracts are extended for a further year. But we want Ministers to make some important improvements, as set out in our briefing The Future of Prison Education Contracts.

Our eight recommendations offer ways to enrich the curriculum by increasing partnership working with the voluntary sector; to support prisoners to realise their potential and progress with further and higher education; to innovate through technology; and to improve the quality of teaching.

We welcome the increased numbers of learners achieving basic English and maths qualifications.

FE leaders, managers and teachers working in prisons do an extremely important but difficult job with limited resources

However, more flexibility in the Olass contracts would encourage prisoners to progress to higher levels and would lend a greater focus on provision that leads to longer-term rehabilitation outcomes. For example, many prisoners have negative associations with learning; approximately half of prisoners have no qualifications and 42 per cent were excluded from school.

To reach out to such prisoners, many of whom who don’t currently engage in education, non-accredited courses in the arts, social development and informal learning not only ‘hook’ people in, but develop attitudes and thinking skills that can help them manage behaviour, desist from crime and gain employment.

Our solutions are geared towards making prisoners less likely to reoffend. They are based on our members’ collective experiences of the current system and consultation with prison staff and the four providers delivering Olass education in prisons (Weston College, The Manchester College, Milton Keynes College and A4e). We have also listened to education managers, teachers and, most importantly, learners themselves.

FE leaders, managers and teachers working in prisons do an extremely important but difficult job with limited resources.

With improved access to digital technologies, teaching resources and continuing professional development, prison education departments could more closely resemble colleges in the community.

PLA is also focused on ways we can help develop education staff and enable them to network with each other. Our member, The Education and Training Foundation, works to support the sector by offering resources on its Excellence Gateway online hub (http://offender-learning.excellencegateway.org.uk/).

How far is education currently supporting prisoners’ rehabilitation? We know it has the potential to do so. People with qualifications are 15 per cent less likely to commit crime after leaving prison.

However the current system is not doing enough: 58 per cent of prisons inspected in 2013/14 were judged by Ofsted as ‘requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ for learning and skills provision.

None was ‘outstanding’. However, there are positive signs of change on the horizon. In December 2014 education provision at women’s prison HMP Askham Grange, run by The Manchester College, received an ‘outstanding’ grade.

It was soon followed in January 2015 by the education at HMP Hollesley Bay, run by A4e. The inspections reveal that what sets these prisons apart is strong leadership, a positive learning culture across the prison, and an ambition for prisoners to succeed in turning their lives around through education.

We believe other prisons can follow their lead with greater flexibility from the contracts. We urge Ministers to take on board our eight solutions to achieve this aim, and we invite our colleagues in the sector to work with us to keep striving for excellence.