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Practitioners’ Voices: Understanding their role within a demand-led system (2009, UK)
The report, published by the City & Guilds Centre for Skills Development, calls for the UK Government to involve practitioners (the trainers, teachers, coaches and mentors who deliver education and training) in the development of policy at a local, regional and national level.
Other recommendations included that:
Provision is made for a purely vocational route post-14 that sits alongside 14-19 Diplomas and Apprenticeships.
Local practitioners’ expert knowledge of local needs are taken into account.
Communication channels should be put in place to help practitioners, and through them the SMEs that they work with, engage more effectively.
A more inclusive stakeholder engagement model for qualification development must be put in place.
We’d like to hear your views on the report:
•Are colleges and training providers the key to creating a truly demand-led system?
•Should the UK Government seek to actively involve practitioners in developing policy at local, regional and national level to better understand the needs of learners and local employers?
•How much freedom should the further education sector be given to meet the needs of learners and employers?
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•Are colleges and training providers the key to creating a truly demand-led system?
I think that colleges have a role to play but it will hardly be a key role if one has any understanding about learning and education - work place learning allowing more context related knowledge construction, social learning and environmental interaction. As for the role of the training providers - give us a break! why do they exist at all?. Before we get anywhere, we must define what is meant by a 'truly demand-led system'; even the experts mix this one up.
The problem with FE is that it exists on the supply side, often supplying the market with unbridled labour - look at the plumbing industry over 100,000 oversupply over the last three years (this is only counts those on City & Guilds courses). Demand is an ideal that has been found to be poorly determined - look at all that sector skills research that is now useless, which was based on the back of 14 years uninterupted growth - never mind, side step the massive error by focussing on upgrading existing skills instead. The skills fiasco is only second to banking when it comes to plain stupid predictions!
Another problem is the affect of the Market - how far do we let market forces impact upon our value system? - note the dogma of 'economic growth that is elevated above 'economic well being'. Do we want unemployed disgruntled communities with technical certificates or lively workplaces that give hope to young people. If we can make work for paper shuffling training providers, we can make work for the young!
Qualifications have become empty quantifications, devoid of aesthetic and cultural value, especially in the vocational domain. Many qualifications are determined by what FE managers want, despite the claims of sector skills councils that qualifications are 'employer-led' - give me the evidence of this!
•Should the UK Government seek to actively involve practitioners in developing policy at local, regional and national level to better understand the needs of learners and local employers?
No - the current approach of copying the German social partnerships approach is flawed - our vocational culture is not ready for social partnerships (look at the historical, economic, social, political turmoil that has taken place in training over the last 25 years or so - workers are at rock bottom, they have little to contribute because they don't think they can). In my experience these are not partnerships at all but a forum for sector skills councils to lecture industry (usually micro concerns) on policy - it is also attended in the main by FE managers who are largely predisposed to measurement of outcomes, bums on seats and grabbing anything in the way of funding irrelevant of social consequences. Small business really has no say, and often have no social or political inclination to say anything - comes down to dumbing down the masses and smashing their need to organise.
Thus the idea sounds fine, but the way practitioners are involved is undemocratic, esoteric and often dictated by the ex-military despots who occupy the high places in the training milieu.
•How much freedom should the further education sector be given to meet the needs of learners and employers?
The problem with all this 'demand-led' and 'needs of employers' discourse is that it is often synthetic and manufacturered in terms of instrumental funding going round in an accountable, predetermined loop - kids in one side - unemployed out the other. Keeping them off the streets for three years - not all bad but who cares about the lot of the former working classes? FE has become a machine, its no wonder that the employers and workers I talk to feel almost alienated - they feel learning is something that is done to them, in order that they can be allowed to work.
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Thanks for your comments Simon, this input is exactly what we need to get the debate going. I’d like to take this opportunity to invite others to share with us their views and also comment on some of your points myself:
• You ask why do training providers exist at all? I think the answer to this has to be because the market allows them to exist. Training providers are largely privately funded so if they do not continue to gain business, they would, of necessity close. I am guessing your experience has been less than satisfactory but there are countless other stories of employers valuing their interactions with training providers. Perhaps we could invite others to comment here what their experiences have been?
• I agree that 'demand led' is a phrase that is often used with little explanation. Many have argued that the essential failing of the Leitch Review was it recommended a supply-driven solution whilst saying the focus should be on ‘demand’. I firmly believe that supply & demand, rather obviously perhaps, are essential components of the same equation - we can't meet demand without engaging the suppliers, in this case meaning all practitioners - from FE colleges to privately funded training providers. The practitioners we speak with would accept that some of the continuing misconceptions about the quality of further education are due to the failures of the system in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since then, FE has changed and is now more competitive and employer focused than ever before.
• You indicate that part of the problem is unsatisfactory labour market intelligence. I couldn't agree more. We need to move away from a culture where information on perceived skills gaps and shortages comes from largely anecdotal evidence and move to a far more scientific approach, as the subject demands. One way of improving labour market intelligence may be in supporting UKCES and SSCs as they undergo relicensing, and ensuring that they can use the information practitioners gather from employers in their local region.
• Rather than being meaningless, there is a massive amount of information out there which goes to show how vocational qualifications in the last few years have really made a difference to learners. There has been a significant amount of coverage on the personal benefits that can come from gaining a vocational qualification this week following the second VQ day, organised by Edge. What I think we should be clear about here is the central point made in the Centre for Skills Development’s Practitioners Voices report - the best qualifications are those that are designed by all stakeholders in the system - employers, practitioners, awarding bodies and SSCs. This holds true not just in the UK but worldwide. For example in Canada and Denmark, it is accepted practice for high quality qualifications and curricula to be developed by committee, brining together the views of the relevant industry, training and policy representatives.
• Again, the Practitioners Voices report provides evidence to support your claim that the current measures used to indicate the quality and success of further education are largely inappropriate - often based on inputs (how many students enrol for example) and outputs (how many students complete the course). What we need to move towards in order to ensure that practitioners are accountable for their training provision, in a meaningful and quality controlled way, are outcome based measures which show us the destinations of learners and the returns on investment for employers.
• Your final point about who is this discourse helping has to be at the heart of any debate into education and training. Workers and employers should not feel that learning is something that is done to them and for it to have any real impact, this is what we all need to work towards changing.
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