Practitioners Voices: Understanding their role within a
demand-led system
Project Date: October 2008 - February 2009
Practitioners are one of the most important stakeholders
within the education system. They are the frontline: learners rely
on them to deliver the training that helps them get, keep and gain
promotion in a job. They can only do this if they listen carefully
to what industry needs. In many ways they are therefore
already providing what many policymakers want – a demand-led
approach. Yet practitioners have to deliver on employer and
learner requirements within what can seem to be an ever-changing
policy environment. No one doubts that policy has the best
interests of those who seek to benefit from skills development at
its heart, but having to respond to policy, industry and learners
all at the same time can make education delivery incredibly complex
for practitioners.
The Centre for Skills Development (CSD) wanted
to explore this complexity in more detail and felt that the best
place to start would be through the eyes of practitioners.
CSD wanted to test whether practitioners (not those who are
responsible for the administration and leadership of further
education but those who are actually teaching) understood the
intricacies of the system, felt that they were able to influence it
in anyway and whether there were any tensions between what was
being demanded of vocational education and training and what they
were able to supply under current policy, funding and regulatory
requirements.
To add a further dimension to this study, CSD
held round table discussions with heads of department from three
different sectors in October 2008 (catering, construction and
social care) to see if there were any sector-specific differences
and what findings were common to all three sectors.
Click here to read the full report, or
alternatively contact Kate Shoesmith
for further information.