A report on family learning last year from Niace called for a huge expansion in family education programmes to improve child and adult numeracy, literacy and other key skills. Carol Taylor assesses the report’s impact eight months on.

The first few years of life are vital for everyone’s future attainment and achievement. We cannot rely on schools alone.

Many families lack the resources, knowledge or confidence to help their children, meaning that the inter-generational cycle of low achievement, prosperity and aspiration will continue. This is why we see family learning as being a crucial element for economic and social renewal.

We must create a situation where homes become places where learning is seen as normal, where children and young people see the value of learning and come to post-16 provision ‘ready to learn’.

We are not alone in this vision, but family learning’s progress in becoming a permanent part of our lifelong learning system has suffered lately through the split in government departments.

There is plenty of enthusiasm and support, but because no Government department takes responsibility and no agency leads on its CPD, quality or innovation, family learning has been left floundering in ‘no man’s land’.

This means provision is sporadic, but that does not mean its quality is. Anything but, in fact.

There is a big role here for FE providers with their availability of experienced adult teachers, suitable curricula and access to qualifications

The Niace-led independent Inquiry into Family Learning was set up in 2012, under the guidance of its chair, Baroness Valerie Howarth, to examine the current state of family learning in England and Wales, and to make recommendations about how we can ensure its place as a powerful intervention within the system.

We found that family learning can increase children’s development by as much as 15 percentage points and could cut the costs of ‘vulnerable families’. We heard from people who told us about the incredible impact learning has had on their family’s lives, not just on their learning but on their health, job prospects and involvement in their local communities.

The inquiry provoked a renewed interest. For instance, Ofsted is working with us, visiting several different examples of excellent practice across the country. This was inspired by a claim at the inquiry’s launch that some head-teachers saw inspection as a barrier to using the Pupil Premium to fund family learning provision — one of the inquiry’s main recommendations.

Discussions with the Education Endowment Foundation are also underway to consider how family learning can be used as an intervention if supported by the Pupil Premium. This work will give head-teachers research findings to show the value, and practical ways, of making family learning work in their school.

A further piece of work, sponsored by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, will see six pathfinder projects linking schools with other providers to develop family numeracy in a range of different contexts — including sport and financial capability. This will produce resources, curricula and a blueprint for further similar, or indeed, imaginative provision.

The final recommendation of the inquiry called for the setting up of a national forum. Meeting for the first time in July, this forum — with representatives from all the relevant national organisations, including government departments — will start the process of creating a better understanding of family learning and call for increased investment.

But this is not solely a responsibility for schools. There is a big role here for FE providers too, with their availability of experienced adult teachers, suitable curricula and access to qualifications. Every child needs the best possible start in life and it is often children who inspire parents/carers or grandparents to return to learning.

As we, and Ofsted, have seen, the best family learning provision grows people’s confidence. It helps children to improve their levels of attainment at school, prepares all of us for the rapidly changing labour market and will ultimately go a long way to ensuring strong economic and social growth for everyone.

Carol Taylor, Deputy chief executive, National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace)

A delegation of college principals set off to India in January last year to assess opportunities for delivering FE in a burgeoning foreign market. They marked the opening of the AoC India office in Delhi, and John Mountford looks at what’s been happening there since.

The UK’s FE colleges are ideally placed to add real value to India’s training requirements as it continues to develop as one of the world’s largest and fastest growing economies.

In January 2013 AoC India was launched in Delhi by Skills Minister Matthew Hancock and Dilip Chenoy, chief executive of the Indian National Skills Development Corporation.

Thirty three colleges agreed to work in partnership to establish FE’s first UK sector-wide overseas office. The ambitions of the partnership were to promote, represent and support UK FE colleges in India; to develop business opportunities; to establish a base that allows colleges to build mutually beneficial partnerships; to build consortiums that help to ‘scale up’ the UK college offer to better meet the needs of the Indian market; to act as a springboard for colleges looking to enter India for the first time; and, to explain and articulate the UK college offer to Indian partners.

As we are now more than halfway through the partnership’s initial two-year period it seems timely to reflect on progress against these early ambitions.

Without doubt, the UK college brand is now better recognised by key Indian partners, in part due to the signing of a number of strategic allegiances with key organisations such as both the Federation and Confederation of Indian Industries.

AoC India has also established strong links with partners in the Indian government, including the Ministry of Human Resource Development as they work on developing their new national FE college sector.

AoC India has also joined forces with UK government-led initiatives in the Indian market. This has included being invited to join both Prime Ministerial and ministerial-led delegations. A number of colleges have successfully bid for joint UK and Indian government funding through the UK India Education Research Initiative.

AoC India has also established a strategic partnership with the UK India Business Council (UKIBC), the agency specifically charged with promoting UK business interests in India. AoC India acts as a forum to bring the partner colleges together
which is, in turn, promoting more collaborative, sector-wide solutions to meeting the challenges of the Indian
market.

We are also seeing college consortiums and individual colleges beginning to develop business in the Indian market. Exeter College has established a Beyond Borders programme in partnership with Accent International (UK) and Bring Spring (India) that aims to develop and pilot a range of vocational and English skills development programmes to be used by trainees both here and India.

Burton and South Derbyshire College, in partnership with Highbury College, UKIBC, Lavasa Corporation and Manipal City and Guilds (the latter two are both in India) are working on developing an intensive Train the Trainer programme in the construction and unarmed security guard sectors. While Vision West Nottinghamshire College is establishing a construction training centre in the Punjab and Bournville College is opening a campus in Kolkata.

Despite these early successes, it is important to acknowledge that the Indian skills market is not an easy one to crack. It demands effort, patience and a long-term approach; the commercial models aren’t always obvious and turning a market presence into viable business opportunities is not always straightforward.

Through the introduction of Student Visas it is increasingly difficult to recruit Indian students into the UK which removes a valuable revenue stream for colleges. It can be hard to balance the difficulties of the Indian market while also contending with a challenging domestic agenda. AoC India needs to ensure that it strives to fully support its members as they navigate this complicated landscape.

AoC India colleges can be proud of their early achievements and the effort they have put in. Even if the rewards aren’t always immediate we have to acknowledge the very special opportunity that this work affords our sector. Through this partnership we can make a major contribution to India’s future development while helping our colleges to access new and exciting business opportunities.

John Mountford, Association of Colleges international director

The Lep Network underwent something of a revamp earlier this year, with Alex Pratt stepping in as chair of its newly created management board. Mr Pratt outlines his views on Leps and their relationship with FE and skills

Leps are a bold attempt to arrest the long term trend of economic centralisation by rebalancing strategic influence over the factors of production.

It is no accident that the 39 Leps have swung behind efforts to boost, broaden and breathe life into apprenticeship, internship and work placement programmes and to try and make sense of the changing schools and skills landscape.

Any economic development strategy that has no core regard for the available workforce would be built on sand, which is why the Association of Colleges, the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and the Education and Training Foundation were among the first in discussions held by the new Lep Network.

The Leps may have started with what appears to be little more than delegated authority over the initial £2bn per annum Local Growth Fund, but the clear aspiration is for devolution of funds and freedoms to empower places to make better and faster decisions on matters of local economic importance that impact directly on jobs and growth

The extent to which Neets are a major factor in a local economy varies greatly between Leps

The well-spring of added-value is the private sector, which mixes labour, land and capital together. It doesn’t therefore take a rocket economist to see a clear line of sight between education and skills, and jobs and growth.

I have yet to find a Lep chair who does not believe one essential component of any sustainable long term competitive economy to be an education and skills system fit for the realities of the 21st Century economy.

There is further unanimity around the need for fantastic information advice and guidance.

What may well draw you to your Lep just now is its newfound influence over FE capital and European Structural Investment Funds and the realistic prospect of further skills budget devolution, but the learning sector and Leps are natural allies in the need to rebalance aspirations more towards the vocational, practically useful opportunities that are emerging from the internet of things and other disruptive economic forces in the global economy.

In working with the 39 different Leps it is worth remembering that we are each unique in a multitude of ways; size, priorities, opportunities, governance, politics, business-base etc.

The Leps are less like a herd of tame cows of different sizes, and more like 39 different wild animals, from an elephant to an eagle. This makes the Lep Network a game reserve, a place to connect and grow all 39 Leps, while each one roams wild, free and behaves as it sees fit.

The very point of Leps is for us to take a more relevant localised look at the relative importance of different factors.

While every young person not in education, employment or training (Neet) is a significant issue for the individuals involved, the extent to which Neets are a major factor in a local economy varies greatly between Leps.

My own Lep is for example focussing on the small, but growing cohort of grade A students who are opting out of higher education, strengthening the resolve of struggling students by carefully profiling them, and working to bring cyber security skills up the food chain of essential 21st Century life skills. Every Lep has its own focus and priorities.

It would be a mistake therefore to adopt a network-wide approach — one few are making, judging by the positive noises about our early doors work together and it also shows the need to get the balance right between localism and great practice, to avoid 39 re-inventions of every wheel. Providers operating in different places will not find their Lep relationships to be consistent.

The Leps may be the new kids on the economic block but they have strong cross-party support and look set to be an increasingly important locus for influence on all matters growth. I wager we are more likely to lose Scotland, leave the EU, or see the collapse of the Euro, than to witness the demise of Leps within the next nine years.

Alex Pratt OBE, Chair of the management board of the Local Enterprise Partnership (Lep) Network,
chair of the Bucks Thames Valley Lep