John Hayes visits Leeds City College

Leeds City College welcomed a parliamentary visitor as the skills minister called into its flagship campus.

John Hayes MP, minister of state for further education, skills and lifelong learning, paid a special visit to the college’s new Keighley Campus on Tuesday and took a tour of some of the on-site facilities, meeting staff and students.

The minister was also asked to unveil a special plaque to officially open the campus.

He said: “I am delighted to be visiting the new Keighley Campus.

“There is a real sense of achievement here – the significance of a new building in helping to improve the town and the people who work in it, teaching and learning.”

Principal Peter Roberts said: “It was a great privilege to have John Hayes come to visit our flagship campus, which is a place of great achievement in terms of educational opportunities and community impact.”

Nick Clegg pays visit to Colchester Institute

The Deputy Prime Minister helped put the icing on the cake when visiting the Colchester Institute to set out plans for the new Youth Contract.

Nick Clegg visited the institute last month where he set out the government’s commitment to getting all young people earning or learning.

While on the visit, he met with students, staff and business leaders as well as taking time to watch a cookery lesson first hand.

The visit follows the unveiling of the Youth Contract – a government package of £1 billion to provide unemployed young people with more opportunities including apprenticeships and work experience placements.

Mr Clegg said: “Colchester Institute is giving thousands of students the opportunity to develop their skills and talents, not just in the classroom but together with real-world employers. We want to make sure that when students leave education they have the best chance to make a successful transition into the world of work.”

Danny Clough, principal of Colchester Institute, said: “We were delighted to welcome the Deputy Prime Minister and share his determination to provide students with the best possible range of skills to succeed in the workplace.”

Hereward college students teach peers a lesson in Anti-Bullying Week campaign

Kind hearted students helped to raise money and awareness with a string of events for an important cause.

Hereward College took part in Anti-Bullying Week, with their Peer Support Team (PST), a group of students who help and support new students at the college, raising concerns about negative use of language in the college and wider community.

They were aided by Cyntia G Laycy, assistant educational psychologist, youth worker Rachel Brindley, mentor Dayna Donnelly and counsellor Linda Allden-West.

Events included a petition on a notice board to share thoughts on bullying and making T-shirts with messages against topic.

“I enjoyed it and it taught me a lot,” said Steph Merrison, a member of the PST.

And if these weren’t enough, the PST organised a sponsored walk to help raise funds for Childline, a charity which helps the most vulnerable children in society.

The walk took place at the Memorial Park, in Coventry, raising more than £265.

Why every college Principal should join the Twittersphere

There are now over 100 million active Twitter users – but is your college principal one of them? If not, should they be, and so for that matter should the rest of the senior management team.

“But isn’t that the job of the marketing team?” I hear some people cry. Others might answer the Twitter question with responses like “I tried getting into it, but just couldn’t get the hang with it”, “It’s like another language with all of those hash tags and things – I don’t get it!”, “Where would I find the time?” or “I’d like to, but I have real work to be getting on with”.

Yes, Twitter is a powerful tool for college marketing and PR and your marketing team undoubtedly should be tweeting for your organisation – and, of course, many already do. You can get some great PR from Twitter.

As well as providing opportunities to network, Twitter is also a space in which you can establish a reputation and tell people about the key things happening within your college.”

Our college song and video, produced by student record label Interim Records, was recently picked up and re-tweeted by MC Hammer to over 2.3 million follows worldwide! Such a retweet brought City College Norwich and our work to promote student entrepreneurship to a much wider audience – and our local paper thought it was a great story too!

But Twitter is not just about the corporate. It is also an inherently personal medium, which gives you the opportunity to network virtually with many of the key people with whom you work – and, perhaps more importantly, those with whom you want to work. It’s the mother of all networking opportunities, anyone who’s anyone is there, and you can talk to whoever you like.

For me, too, it’s been a huge source of new and hitherto inaccessible information. I now concentrate my tweets (following some professional advice) on one core topic – entrepreneurship. I have found so much information (mostly in the States but from all over the world too) that I just would not have come across without Twitter.

For example, do you know what Crowdfunding or Crowdsourcing is? Well I didn’t until I started following a crowdfunding guru in the States and we are looking at doing a pilot student start up here in Norwich following crowdfunding principles later this year.

As well as providing opportunities to network, Twitter is also a space in which you can establish a reputation and tell people about the key things happening within your college. Provided you add value with your tweets – highlighting and sharing knowledge and resources that will be helpful to those with whom you are engaging – your Twitter following will grow rapidly.

Although I have been tweeting for a couple of years, I only really started properly around six months ago and even more recently concentrated my tweets around education and entrepreneurship. In the first eighteen months I went from zero to just over 150 followers. In the last six months I’ve gone from 150 to over 1200 – not exactly Stephen Fry (millions) but it’s a positive step!

As a college principal, I spend a lot of my time talking to people: to students, employ
ers, staff and a plethora of partners who are in the business of further education and training.

Twitter extends and opens up those conversations, bringing new and sometimes unexpected opportunities for new partnerships and projects. We have a 19 year old entrepreneur coming to the college to deliver a two-day course to some 13 year olds from one of the local academies where we are the lead sponsor, later this month; I “met” this young man through Twitter and met face-to-face at the AoC Conference.

Twitter also invites you to tell others about what’s happening. As well as providing the opportunity to tell the world about what you’re up to, it is fantastic for finding out what’s happening elsewhere – very often in real time. Twitter enables you to be fully up to speed with the very latest news, even before stories make it into the news bulletins and papers (in part because so many journalists are also active Twitter users).

Of course there is an investment of time needed in following others on Twitter, adding your own tweets and engaging in conversations – as there is in making phone calls and writing and responding to emails. Twitter is very often more immediate and to the point – and it can open up a whole new world of possibilities to you, your organisation and your students.

If you’ve tried it and not quite “got it” – persevere! It will surprise you as to its connectedness – honest! And, of course, do follow me at @dickpalmerccn – all you need to know about crowdfunding.

Dick Palmer is Principal and Chief Executive of City College Norwich

Want to know more about using Twitter. Why not download our FE Week Guide to Twitter? Click here

Flexible learning delivery

In my previous life as a college tutor, January was always the month of the annual student awards evening. Each year we would dutifully send in our list of worthy candidates. The brief was fairly succinct: nominees must have been enthusiastic learners who attended fully and punctiliously.

They must of course have produced work of high merit. Finally, and perhaps with one eye on the PR benefits, we were also encouraged to identify those who had overcome ‘significant personal obstacles’ in order to attain their qualification.

One year, a student of mine – I’ll call her ‘Irene’ – scooped the student of the year award. She fulfilled all the prerequisites. She was in her mid-sixties and undertaking her first recognised qualification in some fifty years. She had left school with no qualifications. Her work was genuinely exceptional.

However, Irene was a distance learning student and I clearly remember that this didn’t sit well with some of my colleagues. For the academic purists, distance learning wasn’t ‘real’ teaching or learning.

That unless the bestower of education was at the front of their classroom imparting their wisdom, something substandard was going on.

Although some of the purists may still hold that view, there is little doubt that attitudes have changed and distance learning (also commonly referred to as ‘remote’ or ‘distributed’ learning) has established itself as a credible alternative to traditional classroom delivery for some types of learners, qualifications and sectors.

In the last two decades providers have embraced established and emerging technologies to turn distance learning into an extremely valuable tool, bringing benefits to both individuals and employers, as well as to the providers themselves”

One reason for this is that education providers have sharpened up their act in terms of their distance learning provision. Sure there are still stories of overseas ‘degree mills’ conferring bogus distance learning ‘qualifications’ on those willing and desperate enough to pay.

However, in the last two decades providers have embraced established and emerging technologies to turn distance learning into an extremely valuable tool, bringing benefits to both individuals and employers, as well as to the providers themselves.

What are the benefits to the individual? Well, perhaps the most obvious is flexibility. Distance learning gives the learner the opportunity to learn anytime, anywhere.

This is ideal for those that are in employment or have to fit learning around other commitments. Learners are not beholden to a college timetable or set enrolment dates.

For example, online learning usually allows learners to save work and log back into where they left off and podcast lessons can be downloaded and listened to on the go. Mobile learning, or ‘mlearning’, done well, may take distance learning to another level.

Some providers are already using smartphone applications to enable their students to complete quizzes and assessments via their phones or other handheld devices.

Employers are also becoming increasingly switched on to distance learning. Understandably, organisations that are operating with a lean workforce are reluctant to release staff en bloc for training.

However, distance learning allows companies in tandem with their training providers to build elearning activities, for example, into quieter work periods.

Better still, if the individual can see the personal benefits of undertaking such training, many are prepared to complete their learning at home.

Finally, what are the benefits to the providers themselves? In an age of economic austerity, distance learning can be an extremely cost-effective option. Take the 100 hours learning ‘away from the workstation’ obligation under apprenticeships.

This can be delivered via distance learning and many providers are now using elearning packages to deliver this. By reducing travelling times and the number of workshops, these allow assessors to deliver to more learners and to cover a much wider geographical area.

You only have to look to some of the examples from North America and Australia to see how distance learning, in particular elearning, has enabled providers to penetrate the hitherto impenetrable.

Distance learning has still to lose some of its blemishes. But, like classroom-based delivery, if those involved in the delivery are passionate and there is a scrutinous eye on quality, surely innovative distance learning deserves a seat at the same table as the more traditional methods of teaching.

 

By Lee Brooks

New Challenges, New Chances, not so New Year

The Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) may have had their marketing budgets frozen, but this has not stopped them announcing a new strapline for further education. But what does it really mean?

Last year the BIS strapline for FE was New Horizons, and they have gone one better this year, with a strapline which uses the word ‘new’ twice! This year BIS will be using “New Challenges, New Chances” as the FE strapline, which was first announced alongside an ‘investment statement’ and a reform plan to create a ‘world class skills system’.

So the New Year brings with it lots of new stuff for FE right? Some bad (challenges) and some good (chances) right? Wrong.

In fact there will be very little change at all in 2012 from BIS. Following a bunch of poorly thought out policy changes introduced in 2011 (such as fee eligbility) the decision has clearly been taken to treat 2012 as a transitional year.

The funding formula, national funding rate and minimum contract levels will remain unchanged, although there are well trailed technical changes to who is eligible to full funding on first full level 2 and 3 courses.

So now the Minister and department officials have announced the policies, it will be a greatly diminished Skills Funding Agency that has to keep their collective foot firming planted to the floor on the implementation peddal”

Fantasic I hear you cry! Some stability at last, the officials actually listened when you complained that policies in FE never stay the same for more than 10 minutes.

But wait, take a closer look and you find this ‘stability’ is an unplanned delay to arguably the biggest set of changes to the machinations of further education for a decade.

Consider just two big changes to funding in 2013 for a moment:

1. Based on current BIS plans 2013 will see the introducation of whole new ‘simplified’ and ‘streamlined’ national funding formula (the third attempt in 10 years). It may be streamlined but no-one will consider it simple. Expect plenty of twists and turns.
2. FE loans at level 3 and above kick-in, with learners able to apply from March 2013. This is an area of policy which few know much about and for too many reasons to list here will quickly be compared to a car crash.

So now the Minister and department officials have announced the policies, it will be a greatly diminished Skills Funding Agency that has to keep their collective foot firming planted to the floor on the implementation peddal. Further delay beyond 2013 is not an option, is it?

And it seems the Skills Funding Agency will still be around to try and keep us all both on time and on track, but their boss may not be. After the legislative slap-down removing independance for the role of the Chief Executive, he’s probably already dreaming of an easy life in the South of France.

Perhaps the BIS strapline should drop reference to ‘new’, as those of us that have been in and around the sector longer than a couple of ministers will have seen it all before. Much better that BIS documents start with: ‘strap yourself in, and join-us on the 2013 rollercoaster’

David Hughes, CEO, NIACE

David Hughes said he never had any “grand career plans.” In fact, the chief executive of NIACE, who has also had top jobs at the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA), could easily have ended up in the financial sector.

Raised on a council estate in north London, where “everyone left school at 16,” Hughes made it to grammar school at 13, but didn’t give any serious thought to higher education. His father was the clerk in a motor repair garage, his mother a dinner lady and he just “didn’t know anyone who had been to university.” And as the youngest of four boys, he was more interested in having money in his pocket. “It’s not like we were destitute,” he recalls. “But I remember my dad’s glasses broke and he had tape on them for about two and a half years because he couldn’t afford a new pair…it was that kind of poverty.”

At 15, Hughes was set to follow two of his brothers – who worked at Lloyds and Barclays – into banking. His self-confessed “competitive streak” had made him go one better and apply to the Bank of England. But with a job offer on the table, Hughes was given “the best bit of careers advice” he’d ever had. “I’d got through this big assessment process and guy who had interviewed me said ‘Yes, we’ve got to give you a job, but I don’t want you to take it. I want you to stay on at school and do ‘A’ levels and come back to us after that.’”

He did stay on at school and admits his decision to apply to Cambridge was also fuelled by competitiveness. “I remember sitting at home eating tea and saying I had this meeting about going to Oxbridge and my brothers just started laughing. It was the classic line: ‘People like us don’t go to Oxford or Cambridge.’ And that was enough incentive, really. I thought, ‘Okay, I’ll show you.’”

Hughes went on to secure a place at Fitzwilliam College to study Geography, where – far from the rich learning experience he had expected – he found “people were just getting pissed and being sick behind hedges.”

A keen sportsman, he was also unimpressed by the “outdated and outmoded rituals” of the university’s clubs and societies. “It was just incredibly sexist and exclusive, which I really hated,” he says.

After university and an MA in Social Housing at Salford University, Hughes spent the next two years working in various housing jobs in Liverpool (including working with co-operatives and tenants’ association) where he says he got his first taste of adult education, helping residents understand how local decisions were made and how they could communicate with influence decision-makers.

But when his wife (a university academic) was offered a job in Australia it seemed like too good an opportunity miss. Hughes arrived in Western Australia in 1993 thinking he might “learn to surf” and ended up working for a housing co-operative and fighting for the rights of aborigines.

The family returned to the UK in 1997 and settled in Loughborough (which after driving home from work past the Indian Ocean every night took a bit of getting used to, he jokes) and took on the role of chief executive of the Nottingham Council for Voluntary Service.

Under the new Labour government, the voluntary sector quickly became an “equal partner” with the public and private sectors, he says.

At the same time the Learning Age White Paper (which advocated, amongst other things, learning entitlements at all stages of life and an adult qualifications system based on units that accumulated over time), authored by the then education secretary David Blunkett, had captured his imagination, setting out “a really compelling vision for what adult lifelong learning should be.” So when the job came up at the LSC in 2000, as executive director for Derbyshire, he jumped at the chance.

The biggest challenge of his career came five years later, when he was “pushed down to London” as the capital’s regional director to tackle the reputation of LSC, which he admits was “shocking” at the time. But what no one had told him was that Ken Livingstone – Mayor of London at the time – had made it clear that he intended to take control of the LSC

And from their first meeting – at the public opening of the new City Lit building – it was clear Hughes had a fight on his hands. “He was the key note speaker and he stood up and said ‘I don’t know why you bothered coming, Mr Hughes’…and I’m going to paraphrase here… ‘I’m going to take it over and do what I did with Transport for London and kick out all of the top managers and you will have to go back where you came from.’”

Dealing with the political infighting that followed was one of the toughest challenges of his career. The irony was that everyone actually wanted the same thing – to deliver better learning for Londoners – but getting through to Livingstone wasn’t easy.

Things “did get a bit nasty for a while” and while he generally managed to keep his cool, Hughes recalls one memorable incident when he swore at one of Livingstone’s advisors and stormed out of a meeting. “I remember ringing the chief exec at the LSC then and saying, ‘I think you need to find me another job because I think I’m about to be kicked out,’” he recalls, with a smile. But the LSC did manage to build a relationship with Livingstone, who eventually conceded that the organisation wasn’t so bad after all, and as Hughes points out, with an even broader grin,“We lasted a bit longer than he did.”

It’s hard, isn’t it, when you have more than a million young people in need…but what about the 45 to 50-year-old who has lost his or her job and is vulnerable, and their options for retraining?

The next few years brought more trouble-shooting for Hughes: the EMA fiasco in 2008, when thousands of young people had to wait months for payment, closely followed by the capital funding crisis, which meant almost 150 colleges had to cancel rebuilding plans as a result of a LSC overspend.

His final challenge, in early 2010, was helping to shut down the LSC and get its two replacement organisations – the Young Peoples’ Learning Agency (YPLA) and the Skills Funding Agency (SFA) off the ground.

His decision to move to NIACE last September was motivated by his desire to “have a much more direct impact on peoples’ lives and the quality of learning.” While the SFA is an important organisation, it is a funding body, he points out. “It’s important…and it needs to be effective and efficient, but it wasn’t like the LSC ten years ago, where you felt like you were having a much more direct impact on people’s lives and the quality of the learning that was delivered and so on… it felt more remote.”

One of the biggest challenges in his new role will be making sure that the gains in adult learning made over the last decade do not fall by the wayside, he says. Whilst having ministers like John Hayes and Vince Cable who are obviously “passionate about many of the things we are” is a definite plus point, but he is concerned that resources will be focused solely on young people, which could come at the expense of other equally important groups.

He explains: “It’s hard, isn’t it, when you have more than a million young people in need…but what about the 45 to 50-year-old who has lost his or her job and is vulnerable, and their options for retraining? Because is that not as horrific and bad and difficult? Particularly if they have children.”

The new careers service, due to be launched in April, does have potential, he says, but making sure the service is known – and used by – people of all ages, will be the biggest challenge.

And with the prospect of having to work until the age of 70 looking increasingly likely for many, one idea NIACE is hoping to propose is the introduction of a career ‘health check’ at 50 where people could get advice about their career progression or even retraining. “It would be nice, wouldn’t it, to be able to say, ‘Come in and have a discussion about retraining,’ or ‘Have you thought about using your skills for something else?’ And trying to give a bit of a boost to lifelong learning in that sense…and it wouldn’t cost any more money really, because that resource is already there.”

The biggest danger, says Hughes, is the creation of a system that is only for people “on the edge…for people who are signing on or people who need a job today.”

“I think deep down we have to get back to a sense that learning is about people’s well-being in the fullest sense of the word. Human beings are well when they feel like they are making a difference or doing something positive and are learning – because learning is not something that is just done in a classroom – it is doing something you really want to do.”

Cash boost for work experience

Colleges in areas with high proportions of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET) have been given a cash boost.

The Department for Education (DfE) has revealed that £4.5 million will be given to 25 handpicked colleges in the next two years – from now to September 2013 – to give more 16-19 year olds access to work experience.

Specifically, the available funding will be around £1,000 per learner and a maximum of £80,000 per college for use in this financial year 2011-12. A similar level of funding will be available next year, meaning at least 4,000 youngsters will benefit from the project.

The funding falls in the government’s strategy to improve opportunities for young people – Building Engagement, Building Futures – and will bridge the gap until work experience becomes part of all 16-19 Programmes of Study from 2013.

Its aim is for the colleges to test five models, focusing on removal of cost barriers for employers; investigating challenges faced by small to medium sized enterprises; giving resources to colleges; timing of work placements; and, finally, focussing on supporting LLDD or vulnerable or disadvantaged students.

The DfE said that colleges were selected from an analysis of areas with high percentage of young people NEET, combined with a high proportion of students who are currently doing level 2 and below qualifications.
A spokesperson for the Department said “DfE wants to target these funds towards this group of students.

“We chose the combination to be able to target those in greatest need of work experience, and inevitably this leads to strong concentration on areas with high levels of worklessness, especially urban areas in the north and midlands. There are colleges which will be able to address rural issues – such as Peterborough – and coastal issues such as Portsmouth.

“We expect all 25 colleges to identify what works and help spread this throughout college and training provider network, so when greater funding flexibilities are introduced in 2013 there will be established practice.”

Deborah Ribchester, the Association of Colleges’ (AoC) Senior Policy Manager -14-19 and Curriculum, welcomed the news.

“The lack of availability of work placements is a significant issue for colleges, as is finding necessary time and resources to set up and monitor students doing placements.

“We agree that these are the areas that need attention, and look forward to working with DfE and the colleges involved to identify and address some of the existing barriers to work experience placements,” she said.

Peter Doble, acting principal at Lambeth College, one of the colleges chosen to take part in the new initiative, said: “We are very pleased to be invited to participate in the 16-19 access to work experience project. We anticipate supporting at least 80 students in each of the next two years in different work experience environments.”

For more, visit www.feweek.co.uk