Adult and Community Learning Strategy Group
Adult and Community Learning Strategy
1.0
Introduction and Context;
2.0 ACL Strategy - The
Building Blocks;
3.0 Developing the Partner
Base;
4.0
Development of the ACL Strategy.
For the past two years the Learning Partnership has been involved in a widening participation project which aims to improve access to learning and progression routes for adults living in disadvantaged areas of the city. The partnership believes that this can be achieved through improved joint planning arrangements and closer links with regeneration structures. The project has focussed on the seven neighbourhood Management Pilot areas and a cluster of neighbourhoods in Low Hill ward. Community Learning Co-ordinators – funded through NRF - have worked with Neighbourhood Managers in the development of Local Learning Plans. These plans have been the mechanism by which NLDCF monies from the LSC have been deployed. An important part of this project has been the partnership’s lead role in the Strategic Area Review of Adult & Community Learning which involved a “testbed” in the city which was rolled-out through the rest of the Black Country.
The arrival of the Wolverhampton Local Area Agreement Pilot will have a strong influence on the way the Learning Partnership and it’s allies develop a strategy of adult learning and skills. Work has already started on the development of a close working arrangement with the Economic Partnership with regards to the construction of the “Fourth Block” of LAA. Both partnerships have a strong interest in the skills and employment agenda and it makes sense to link these more closely via the Economy and Enterprise Block of Local Area Agreement. How this arrangement would work is explained in the attached flowchart (Appendix A).
The NRF element of the project comes to an end in March 2006 ( with transitional funding available until June 2006 ) and the LP is keen to sustain and develop further this way of working as part of a holistic strategy for the City and within the context of LAA and LANA ( see section 2.2 ). This decision has been informed by a number of successful outcomes which have accrued from this way of working. These are :
1.1 Local Learning Plans
The development of Local Learning Plans has been supported by a number of partners and stakeholders. Learning Plans currently operate in the seven Neighbourhood Management Pilots and a cluster of neighbourhoods in the Low Hill area of the city. Both Wolverhampton New Deal for Communities ( ABCD ) and the Community Empowerment Network have sought to extend and develop this model. The LP has recently completed an agreement with ABCD to manage three and a half year programme in the New Deal for Communities area.
1.2 Planning Forums
Neighbourhood Managers have set up local forums in which the actions within the Local Learning Plans are monitored and adjusted. For example, the East Field/ East Park PIG and the Merridale / Chapel Ash / Pennfields Learning and Jobs Forum. The forums are a means by which the deployment of Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities Fund ( NLDCF ) can be interrogated.
1.3 Operational relationships
The operational relationship between the WAES and the City College is a positive one and joint planning involving staff from the respective community development teams is the norm. Not only has this enabled us to understand how to work in partnership, it has also resulted in the better strategic allocation of resources for adult learning. Both organisations have committed themselves to “mainstreaming” the work of community learning co-ordination post March 2006.
1.4 Learning, Skills and Regeneration
The process has received the support of both the Learning & Skills Council ( Black Country ) and the Local Strategic Partnership. The linking of the “learning and skills” and “regeneration” agendas has been a deliberate aspect of this strategy. Strong linkages between neighbourhood regeneration structures, e.g. Management Pilot Areas, and planning for widening participation and progression are well established and the LP views this as an essential element if we are to achieve the vision of “sustainable learning communities”
1.5 Community and Voluntary Sector
The role of the voluntary sector as a major provider of learning opportunities has been recognised and developed as this way of working has progressed. The two core providers of ACL recognise that the sector provides the venue for much of the widening participation activity in the city and is the conduit through which marginalised communities can be engaged. The LP is able to use NRF Skills and Knowledge funds to support provision in the CVS and improve capacity to deliver learning.
1.6 Employment and Skills Sub-Group
The partnership is now working closely with the Employment and Skills Sub-Group of the Economic Partnership and has agreed that future joint planning for employability problems will be a joint exercise. For example, the identification of “Learning Hubs” will involve a range of stakeholders including the College, Adult Service, Voluntary Sector and Job Centre Plus on the grounds that the “client group” is a shared one and that joined-up approaches to planning will result in improved and more coherent provision.
1.7 Widening Participation Strategy
The partnership is at a stage where it can be more ambitious with regards to widening participation strategy and the aim is extend this model to all the areas which need coverage in the city. This has been agreed by the LP Board ( 18th October 2005 ) and the first meeting of the ACL Strategy Group ( formerly the CLC Steering Group ) will take place on Wednesday 9th November. This group is charged with developing a strategy for the city focussed on the priorities neighbourhoods identified by StAR and the Strategic Partnership and building on model developed over the past two years.
2.0 ACL Strategy – The Building Blocks
2.1 Planning Areas
The partnership intends to create extended versions of Local Learning Plans which will reflect new local structures ( e.g. LANA ) and wards where there are low skill levels and low participation in learning. Broadly speaking the geographical scope of the Local Learning Plans will be extended to include priority neighbourhoods and parts of IMD wards not previously covered within the plans. Local Learning Plans provide the framework for the deployment of Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities Fund ( NLDCF ). NLDCF will cover seven of the eight priority areas for the city. The eighth area is the New Deal for Communities ( ABCD ) area where the Learning Partnership has developed a NDfC funded operational plan.
2.2 Local and Neighbourhood Arrangements ( LANA )
It is important that the boundaries of the new planning areas are broadly the same as those being drawn through the LANA ( Local and Neighbourhood Arrangements ) process. A first draft of what these areas might look like is outlined below but it is important to recognise that these boundaries are likely to be moved once the City Council finalises LANA.
2.3 Planning Areas ( draft )
The proposed nine priority planning areas could look something like those described below and shown in the attached map ( Appendix C ) :
local government wards.
The proposed nine priority areas will :
2.4 Community Learning Co-ordination
This paper advocates the further development of the model for local planning currently used in the Neighbourhood Management Pilots. This model deploys a team of Community Learning Co-ordinators ( funded by NRF until March 2006 ) who work with Neighbourhood Management and other partners to build Local Learning Plans. An important element of this model, as applied to the planning areas, is clarity about the roles of the two core providers – the Adult Education Service and the City of Wolverhampton College. The Adult Education Service will provide the lead for First Step and “engagement” with the City College providing the focus for the Level Two entitlement, employability and “progression”.
3.0 Developing the Partner Base
3.1 Adult and Further Education in Partnership
A key element of the work of the past two and a half years has been securing an active partnership between the two core providers of Adult Learning and widening participation, namely the Adult Education Service and the City of Wolverhampton College. It has been the view of the LP Co-ordinator that a joint planning approach to widening participation built around NM pilot boundaries was the essential first step in this process. For historical reasons this was not always an easy path but there were good reasons for thinking that operational partnership was achievable, especially through the incentive of joint deployment of NRF and NLDCF.
3.2 New Deal for Communities
The partnership has used the experience gained through the local learning planning model to design a three and a half year programme for Wolverhampton New Deal for Communities. Work will start in the ABCD area this November and this will be an opportunity for the WAES / CWC to test a partnership team approach to the engagement and progression model for widening participation. A joint team of Community Learning Co-ordinators, Hub management and sessional tutors will work under a single management structure and deploy a budget of £570,000 over the duration of the programme which will become mainstreamed activity in 2008. Integral to this work will be the engagement with other providers, for example CVSOs and the University of Wolverhampton, who are developing approaches to access and progression in the ABCD area.
3.3 Supporting the capacity of the Community and Voluntary Sector ( CVS )
For the past two years the Learning Partnership has been responsible for the NRF Skills and Knowledge programme. This programme has become the means by which the partnership supports the capacity training needs of the those organisations in the CVS which contribute to the provision of learning opportunities for young people and adults. Recently the availability of a secondment from Wolverhampton College to the Regeneration Apprentices Programme ( RAP ) has provided an opportunity for the development of an integrated programme which supports individuals and organisations which aspire to engage with regeneration strategy at a city-wide and local level. The RAP team are currently working on the development of a regeneration curriculum framework ( the Climbing Frame ) and a learning programme for the Community Empowerment Network. There is an obvious link between this work and the development of an ACL strategy for the city.
3.4 Partnership with the University of Wolverhampton
There are a number of points at which the work described in this paper links closely to the range of widening participation initiatives which are being developed by the University of Wolverhampton. The University’s CITRUS programme , the innovative work at Graiseley Primary School which connects with the Regeneration Apprentices Programme, and the community photography project in the Whitmore Reans NM area are just three examples of where there is an interface between the LP and the University. This paper proposes that “joined up” thinking with the University can be further developed for the benefit of the city’s ACL Strategy.
4.0 Development of the ACL Strategy
4.1 The ACL Strategy Group
This group will be responsible to the Learning Partnership for the development of an ACL strategy which builds on the outcomes and experience described in section one of this paper. The group is an extension of a partnership sub-group formerly known as the Community Learning Co-ordination Steering Group and includes a wider membership. The group may want to consider whether the membership is “fit for purpose” and whether specific tasks can be devolved to smaller groupings. One of the immediate actions for the group will be the design of basic action planning process which will take forward the different elements of the strategy.
4.2 The elements of an ACL strategy
The Strategy Group has a number of tasks which have been identified by the Learning Partnership and these should form the core of an action plan. It is worth bearing in mind that this plan will need to relate to those outcomes and targets described within the different blocks of the Wolverhampton Local Area Agreement (LAA) pilot. Specifically the plan should and will support LAA targets for :
4.3 Flexibility and responsiveness
An important feature of the strategy will be the capacity it has for responding in a flexible manner to a variety of needs and aspirations which will be reflected in the Local Learning Plans. Whereas the construction of local plans will follow agreed guidelines and a common framework, it is not the intention that a “one size fits all” approach be adopted for the eight planning areas described in section 2.3. It is expected that the teams operating on behalf of current and potential learners will work in a flexible and agile manner thus producing plans which reflect the local community needs and aspirations.
4.4 Action Planning
The Strategy Group will be action focussed and will commission partners to develop an operational plan with aims, objectives, timelines, performance indicators and targets. The operation plan will have a series of achievable objectives which will be identified from the list shown below. The partners responsible for designing the operational plan will need to prioritise from this set of actions and make judgements about short term “quick wins” and identify medium to longer term developments. These decisions will need to made within the context of a changing landscape which includes Local Area Agreement and LANA ( Local and Neighbourhood Arrangements ) Potential objectives to be identified within the plan are :
4.5 Conclusion
The ACL Strategy Group will not be working with a “blank piece of paper”. Partnership has been well established through the work of the CLCs, Neighbourhood Managers and local planning of learning provision. There has been full participation from the core providers of adult learning in the city and this process has been supported throughout by the Black Country Learning & Skills Council and the Local Strategic Partnership. The ideas in this paper reflect the conclusions and recommendations contained in the Strategic Area Review ( StAR ) of Adult and Community Learning ( 2004 ) and are consistent with the aspirations expressed the LSP’s Community Strategy. There is the opportunity to testbed partnership processes through the ABCD Adult Learning Plan which has been recently approved by GOWM. Although the national context is one of reduced funding for adult learning, the Learning Partnership believes that great gains can be made through this a co-ordinated and collaborative approach to the provision of learning opportunities for adults which will bring benefit to the disadvantaged communities of Wolverhampton.
Chris Parsons, Head of Wolverhampton Adult Education Service
City Learning Quarter, Old Hall Street,
Wolverhampton.
01902 558180