Enterprise and Lifelong Learning Committee, 03 Oct 2001

Meeting date: Wednesday, October 3, 2001

Official Report 247KB pdf

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Lifelong Learning Inquiry

We move to agenda item 5, which is our lifelong learning inquiry. We will receive a presentation on the report that the committee commissioned through the Scottish Parliament information centre. I welcome Professor John Fairley from the University of Strathclyde and Norma Hurley from Blake Stevenson.

I remind members that as this is the final report from Blake Stevenson and Professor Fairley, the presentation will concentrate on the main conclusions and lessons arising from the substantial work that has recently been undertaken. The presentation will take about 15 minutes, after which we will have a period of questioning. I want to finish this session by 12:20, so I ask members to keep their questions to the point. I am sure that the consultants will do the same with their answers. I have already agreed with the consultants that if there are any outstanding questions, they will reply to them quickly in writing to ensure that members do not feel that some of their questions have not been answered properly.

I will provide some background and contextual remarks before handing over to Norma Hurley, who will present our findings in summary. Norma led and co-ordinated the Blake Stevenson team, of which I was a part for this purpose.

The brief that we were given is important. We were asked to map lifelong learning provision in Scotland, which has not been done before, and in so doing to concentrate on certain priority groups of learners. It is important to keep that in mind, because the committee will have many concerns that were not part of our brief. As far as the brief is concerned, the report is a fairly comprehensive document.

We were asked to present our findings by local economic forum area, to provide profiles of those areas—which I think members will be interested in—and to permit comparisons between them. We have done that in the report.

It is worth dwelling for a few moments on the process that we went through. In mapping lifelong learning, we were very aware of a point that we had known previously but which was put into sharper focus: this area is not only complex but changing rapidly. In a sense, we have provided a snapshot of something that is moving quickly and changing shape. That is not to say that the snapshot is redundant. It is capable of being updated, but if it is not updated it will date rather rapidly. We conducted quite a lot of original research in the process of preparing the snapshot for the committee; that will be clear from the report.

I will point in particular to one aspect of the work: the survey of national training organisations. We spoke in some depth to 11 of them. There are currently 73, although the network is being downsized as a result of the recent review. Most of them are voluntary bodies. Three of them are non-departmental public bodies with levy grant powers and are cross-border authorities in terms of the Scotland Act 1998. That part of the report is original research, as are several others.

We also produced a detailed database. I hope that members get the chance to look at it and to use it in the context of the committee's inquiry. It is clear from our document—I want to conclude with these remarks—that other issues require to be researched if the inquiry is to be exhaustive. For example, we have done little work, because of the nature of our brief, on work-based learning in Scotland. Little is known about that, especially the informal aspects of work-based learning, because it is under-researched. Further education for adults and its links with community-based learning is another issue that requires further research. There is a complex set of issues around access to higher education, which is increasingly being facilitated by further education. Our report touches on those issues, but it was not part of our brief to research them.

In preparing the document, our main priority was the brief given to us by the client, but we also tried to think how committee members might make use of it. We hope that it will be helpful to the committee in two ways. First, as a background to today's discussion, during which we will try to answer your questions on the work that we have done and, secondly, as a reference document as the committee carries out its inquiry. If members lack specialist expertise on some aspects of the inquiry, it may be helpful to turn to the relevant part of our document to refresh your memory before speaking to witnesses.

I will speak fairly briefly about some of the issues and questions that have arisen from the mapping exercise that we have done for the committee. Members have received the report and will be able to consider the details.

I will touch on some of the significant issues that seem to come out from our work. The first concerns legislation and entitlements to learning. As the committee would expect, we have found that although a lot of legislation governs mainstream post-school education and training, there is a particular weakness with work-based learning. The entitlement to time off for study is fairly limited, because it is restricted to 16 and 17-year-olds, who would arguably go down the skillseekers route if they wanted to study. In April of this year, only 14 per cent of the working population were involved in work-based learning. We know that the figure is not particularly high, but as John Fairley said, there is currently not a great deal of research that we can look to for that information.

The policy framework is fragmented between the UK and Scotland levels. For example, national training organisations are UK bodies but they operate in Scotland with a different policy agenda because of the different political, social and economic situation. Obviously, Scotland also has a different education and training environment within which the national UK-wide NTOs must operate. Another example is how the Employment Service's new deal programme interfaces with Scottish Enterprise's policy on training for work. The policy level is a bit fragmented.

There is departmental overlap, which also exists within the Scottish Executive. The most obvious overlap is between the education department and the enterprise and lifelong learning department. For example, careers Scotland will sit within Scottish Enterprise and offer careers guidance for all ages from school to retirement and perhaps beyond. As is obvious, education sits within the education department. Community Learning Scotland is sponsored by the education department, but enterprise and lifelong learning is clearly within another department. Another obvious overlap is that the new communities Scotland organisation, which will focus on regeneration and social inclusion, of which lifelong learning is one element, will not sit within the enterprise and lifelong learning department.

Let me tease out those differences. Multiple funding streams are available for lifelong learning. Different funding is available from the European social fund, the community fund and the more established regular funds for higher and further education. Local authorities also have multiple funds. There are FE hardship funds that people do not know about until they apply to a particular college. That leads to duplication of provision, especially at the community level. Organisations that supply learning in the community must apply to a range of organisations for funding. The picture of provision is complex because there are different funding criteria and regulations: funding may be accessed by age or by previous employment or unemployment or whatever. Our report highlights some of the complexity that we have come across.

I want also to pick up on a couple of equality issues. An obvious gap exists in the co-ordination and support of lifelong learning provision for ethnic minority groups in Scotland. As far as we could ascertain, there is no national organisation to do that. There also appears to be a real need for capacity building at local level among ethnic minority groups.

It was interesting that the committee picked up on gender segregation. The report details the percentage of young women who are undertaking modern apprenticeships in Scotland. That varies from 4 per cent in the Western Isles, through 11 per cent in the north-east and Grampian, to 27 per cent in Glasgow, which is the highest. Overall, there is still clear gender segregation in modern apprenticeships. We simply present that as a statistic, which members can use as they will.

The picture for lifelong learning is, as John Fairley said, changing all the time, but there are a few significant developments that are worth drawing attention to. There is a clear development in the use of technology: e-learning and e-guidance are being focused on as a way to enable many more people to access learning. That is becoming a major focus of learning. The one caveat that we might offer on that is that in our research and in other research into the area, those who are most socially and economically excluded always stress that they value the one-to-one contact—the human interaction—that can be supported through information and communications technology but can never fully replace it.

There is increasing co-ordination at the Scottish Executive level. Scottish Enterprise's bringing together of careers Scotland and future skills Scotland, for example, is clear evidence of that. Moves to co-ordinate are afoot. Collaboration among bodies operating in the sector is increasing. I would not like the map that we have drawn to be seen in any way as negative. We are saying that a lot of extremely good activity is going on in Scotland. That is clear. There are moves towards collaboration and co-ordination. They are to be supported.

We have offered a couple of examples. Adult literacy and numeracy will be major focuses of the Scottish Executive over the next three years. The Executive has allocated £24 million to those areas. Communities Scotland is emerging to replace Scottish Homes and will have a focus on encouraging regeneration and social inclusion in local communities.

Those are some of the pictures that are emerging. We are happy to take any questions that the committee may have.

The report has been circulated along with the executive summary. The questions may relate to the presentation, the report or the executive summary.

The report is a remarkable piece of work. It is a truly tremendous bit of pioneering. Many things have baffled me since I came to the Parliament, and the witnesses have shone light on areas on which I thought I was forever to dwell in darkness.

I could not help noticing that in the part of the report that covers the Renfrewshire LEC,

"No response was received from Inverclyde Council."

Am I correct in saying that that was the only council not to respond for the purposes of compiling the report?

One other council may not have responded or may not have provided all the evidence we needed. We tried strenuously to gather information from all the local authorities. In the end, we had to draw a deadline.

It struck me that that omission in that area is quite grave. I am not blaming you for it. I was surprised at the council's inability to respond.

My second point is more to do with your presentation. When I was reading the report, I realised that work-based learning is not covered for the understandable reason that it is extremely difficult to track. Work-based learning is a component of lifelong learning. Would you venture an opinion on how extensive work-based learning is in Scotland? Do you think that it is a fairly small proportion of what is happening or is it a little more significant? Is it possible to express an opinion on that?

It would be only an opinion. There is a definition problem, in that to do jobs that are changing—in many cases changing rapidly—workers have to learn all the time, but when we think about public policy on and public funding to support work-based learning, we tend only to consider learning that leads to a formal qualification.

We have some research findings on that latter area that suggest that the activity level is quite low. Norma Hurley gave the figure of 14 per cent of people being engaged in formal work-based learning at the time of our study, but little is known about the broader and less formal processes.

My first question concerns complexity of funding. I was interested in some of the points that were made throughout the report. Did you find any evidence that funding, rather than relevance of training programme, was a consideration when people—particularly young people—make their choices of training?

My answer will probably be more opinion than fact because examining young people's choices was not part of our research. From other research that we have done in the area, it appears that because of the different ways in which funding is offered, young people sometimes opt for what they can afford to study rather than what they choose to study.

The report considers the number of routes that individuals can take and makes the crucial point that there is a need for guidance about the range of opportunities that is available and the funding that is available for each of those opportunities. That guidance is required at all stages—for young and older people. Research exists on the barriers, including the financial ones, to people entering learning, but that was not covered clearly in what we did.

My question was more about economies of scale and volume training. Did you pick up evidence that people following the funding streams, such as employers, influence what people study?

To be honest, we cannot comment on that from our work.

My second point is about barriers. You felt that one of the major barriers was the lack of impartial and informed guidance. Were there other issues—for example, was funding perceived as a barrier?

I will answer that question partly and John Fairley can add his views. Lack of funding is a barrier, as is lack of information. Last week I had a focus group in which I discussed those issues with young people in Drumchapel. They felt that they had been given insufficient information at school about the funding for post-school education. When they went into FE and HE, they had insufficient detailed information about what was available. That was only one focus group in one area of the country, but those views are not uncommon—there is a lack of sufficiently clear detailed information for young people at the transitional stage.

We use the word "funding" as shorthand for a number of things, such as the budget, the lack of budget flexibility, the time period for which the budget is available and aspects of financial management—output budgeting and so on. We reached the conclusion that the fragmentation of funding, understood in that complex way, contributes to the fragmentation of provision. The fragmentation sets up barriers, which are sometimes insuperable, for people who want to move from one form of provision to another.

You examined the developing interface between FE colleges and universities and the transfer of students and you said that access to university with non-traditional highers and O grades is patchy. Will you expand on that and say how patchy it is?

I say at the risk of over-generalising that we found that new universities—the post-1992 universities—seem to be more flexible and to be taking greater strides towards encouraging access from non-traditional students or students who would not normally be expected to go straight into HE after school. For example, those universities seem to be more flexible and open than do some of the older universities in accepting students who have an HNC on to the second year of a degree course.

Our research on the area was limited, but it backed up other research on the flexibility of the newer universities versus the older ones. The other thing that came out in the report is that, for historic reasons, the newer universities tend to be more flexible in terms of part-time courses. That enables non-traditional first entrants to re-enter as mature students.

As you know, I worked in further and higher education before being elected to the Parliament. One of the issues that was apparent to me was the lack of women participating in modern apprenticeships. There was a lot of gender stereotyping and a lot of the modern apprenticeships were in traditional apprenticeship areas such as construction. We need to consider developing and promoting modern apprenticeships in different areas.

That was my very limited observation. Did your results indicate the same?

Yes. HIE was able to give a good breakdown of modern apprenticeships by sector and occupation. What you say is true. There is clear occupational segregation by gender. However, most modern apprenticeships are in stereotypical men's work—if you want to call it that—such as engineering and construction.

In Britain, we have 20 to 25 years' experience of trying to recruit young women for non-traditional apprenticeships. It is patchy, however. Some public agencies have found it difficult to learn the lessons of that experience.

My final point is on quality. Could you expand on the quality and inspection issue?

Again that is very patchy. As you would expect, we found that the best systems are in mainstream post-school and further and higher education. In the new deal programme, the systems are only being developed and they are non-existent in some areas—for example in prisoner education, where there is no longer an inspection process.

I ask that question because we have had evidence about all the different quality assurance programmes in existence. Examples are the Scottish Quality Management System and Investors in People. A lot of the evidence that we have taken points to a possible need to rationalise those quality systems and make them more coherent. I wondered whether that idea had come through in your evidence.

Because of the patchiness of those programmes, it might be interesting to consider whether there would be any value in having one quality framework that covers a number of sectors. A number of different quality measures are being developed. The evidence provokes the idea that it might be worth further consideration.

I join my colleagues in saying that I am much better informed because of your piece of work. To that extent, it has been helpful.

I want to pick a different area and talk about the policy and funding of national training organisations. On policy, I was interested in the remarks in your presentation about not so much the complexity as the different agendas that might exist. Will you give the committee some illustration of that? Are you saying that because there are, for example, three cross-border NTOs they might have a different policy agenda because they have to react to the Scottish Executive as well as their sponsoring Whitehall department? As for the NTOs that are not statutorily set up on a cross-border basis, does the explanation lie in their location or is there a historic reason? What is behind that?

To answer your first point, about different agendas, it might be helpful to offer a fictitious example. The NTOs are changing, but for all sorts of good reasons they have been driven by business plans. If someone in a rural area tried to set up a business in a sector that was under-represented in Scotland compared with the British pattern, they might not find it easy to access support from the NTO. Whether such support was possible might even depend on LEC-NTO relationships. My feeling—which is not based on my research—is that HIE has been a bit more proactive than Scottish Enterprise has been for its rural areas. Nevertheless, HIE may still have difficulties.

The reasons for the divide between statutory and non-statutory NTOs are historical. I do not wish to comment personally on that trend, but I would argue that since the enactment of the Employment and Training Act 1973 there has been a move away from an effective, statute-based training system towards a voluntary system. Following that policy shift, people have viewed the remaining statutory arrangements as weak, because employers could not voluntarily get their act together. On the other hand, I do not know of any proper research into the effectiveness of NTOs.

Are you saying that no such research has been carried out?

I know of some consultancy reports, but not of any other research.

We will be taking evidence from the Construction Industry Training Board, which is one of the biggest of the remaining three NTOs.

That is interesting and useful information.

Your report says:

"NTOs have been allocated £1.5 million for Scottish operations for the next three years, against a total UK funding allocation of £45 million."

You go on to say that such under-representation in respect of funding is a major concern.

Is there an historical process behind the way in which funding is set up? I presume that your point about business plans was based on the fact that there has been no research into the effectiveness of NTOs. There seems to be no link back to effectiveness, targets or outputs. What are your reflections on that point?

NTOs are set up and regulated by the Department for Education and Skills—I think that that is what it is called now. They are given fairly broad objectives but I assume that, within the accountability framework of the DFES, some notional examination of effectiveness will be made. However, I am not aware of any broader examination of the effectiveness of NTOs in relation to the contribution of training to economic development.

I noticed from your report that Seafish Training and Standards is one of the statutory NTOs. It is obvious that you have done some work on that organisation. Its proportion of the UK yield is 33 per cent and it spends £700,000 in Scotland, which is about 40 per cent of UK spend and is better than the other NTOs that are mentioned in the table on page 60 of your report. I presume that it could be argued that, as the majority of the UK fishing industry is based in Scotland, it should spend a heck of lot more in Scotland. How does that relationship work? Does it depend on the sponsoring department? I note that Seafish Training and Standards is a cross-border statutory organisation. Did your research find that it is an example of an NTO that has good linkages into LEC areas?

Our research into that NTO did not go into such detail. However, we found that it is a particularly interesting organisation, as it is an NDPB that is accountable to whatever the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food is now called rather than the DFES. Its levy is raised on fished landed and varies by species, which is an interesting point. I do not know exactly how it plans its training expenditure—you would have to put that question to the organisation directly.

My questions relate to the section of the report that deals with gaps in provision and the issue of rural and island provision—I was pleased that you highlighted that area.

I would like to hear more about whether, at this stage, you are able to draw tentative conclusions from that work. What did the respondents that you contacted identify as the top four or five issues? More important, you identified that HIE's rationale and strategy are different from those of Scottish Enterprise. Did the people to whom you spoke have a consensus opinion on whether there should be one overarching strategy with the same rationale, or did they want a differentiated position? If the view was that there should be a more coherent strategy, did people hold a concerted view about who should lead that strategy? The Scottish Executive would be responsible for online learning and connectivity issues, whereas councils, NTOs and enterprise companies would have other responsibilities. Who do you think should lead that strategy?

We did not ask people, as part of our research, what the strategy should be. There needs to be more work and more focus around that matter. We did not ask people whether there should be an overall strategy or who should lead the strategy. We thought that the committee might want to ask some of those questions of the appropriate bodies, as and when it talks to them.

What people said to us—and what we mapped—was that there are different needs in different areas and that there has to be a flexible local response. It emerged that a blanket, one-size-fits-all strategy is not the answer. Rural areas, for example, have specific needs in transport, accessibility and economies of scale. They have the problems that are associated with setting up classes for small numbers and making them financially viable. The lively way in which the Highlands and Islands have taken to e-learning, for example, is excellent and there are good models there that could be adopted elsewhere in the country. Within an overall strategic framework there must be flexibility to meet local need, because that is variable in Scotland.

Do you want to add anything, Professor Fairley?

The Highlands and Islands have differences in learning needs that must be met. That was one of the reasons for having the Highlands and Islands Enterprise network, rather than a single Scottish body. Prior to the establishment of the HIE network—Highlands authorities gave evidence to the then House of Commons Select Committee on Education and Employment on this matter—it was perceived that the one-size-fits-all approach of United Kingdom schemes had not helped learning to be effective in the Highlands.

The research exercise has established that there is a different rationale, but there is no view about whether that is a positive or negative position at this stage.

We did not explicitly address that in our work, but my opinion is that had we put that question to Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the LECs, they would have argued that the current situation is advantageous compared to what existed previously.

I am interested in duplication or non-duplication, particularly as you highlight the fact that similar learning content could be provided by a range of organisations. Did you find that the content was exactly the same? My experience suggests that in computing or IT, for example, there is a range of things that are not the same. Those things seem broadly similar, yet people find it difficult to know whether they are on the right course. For example, someone might find that higher computing is not necessarily the right course to do, compared with a more hands-on course. Do the different providers provide the same content or do they provide different content, but in an unfocused way that does not deliver for the person who might just have dropped into that course?

It is a bit of both. There are places where different providers provide virtually the same content, but have to provide it differently. One provider might be funded by new deal 18 to 24, with criteria restrictions. Another provider might be funded through the European social fund programme with social inclusion partnership funding that has criteria attached to it. Yet another provider might be funded through a lottery grant that has different funding criteria attached to it. Theoretically—but actually, in some areas—the same programme, particularly at community level, might be offered by different organisations that are funded by different sources and which target different groups. In other areas, there might be differences in the content that is provided.

Well-informed guidance needs to be made available to avoid people signing up for what they think is a basic IT course only to discover that it is an internet-access course, which is different. People who are not familiar with computers probably would not know what the differences are.

A lot of course content might be different, but the differences are indefinable unless you have knowledge of that area. There is also a lot of content that is similar, but which is funded differently and is open to different people for different reasons, which adds to the rich wealth of provision at community level.

I have a further question about how people get good advice on which course to do. Are some agencies better than others at giving advice, supporting people and guiding them so that they can access training?

There is tremendous variation. As members will know, there are adult guidance networks all over the country. Within those networks are a number of excellent organisations—whether they be careers service organisations, local economic development agencies in Glasgow, or what they call intermediary agencies in Edinburgh. A number of good organisations operate good practice in working with individuals at local level, but it is difficult to say whether any one of them is better than the others. You will find examples of good practice across the country, but it is patchy; in some areas, there is no high-quality provision. We also have to consider the standard of adult guidance, because not everyone who gives adult guidance is a qualified guidance worker, so the quality of provision varies.

It will be interesting to see what happens as careers Scotland develops.

Yes, it will.

The impact of age-related criteria had not occurred to me before. We are all aware of the difficulty of getting older men, in particular, into lifelong learning. You suggest that the picture in relation to age-related criteria is confused, but are such criteria a barrier? It might be argued that using age-related criteria for certain courses is actually a good way of targeting certain learning programmes on certain groups. Do you feel that the confusion creates a barrier, unfairness and inequity?

We have not found any evidence of overt discrimination against older people in the establishment of learning programmes. However, there may be a problem in the way that the funding of particular programmes is focused. Most of the funding from the welfare to work programme and the new deal is clearly focused on younger people—one could argue that there are good reasons for that. The problems are possibly to do with where resources are allocated; the amount of provision that is available for older people may be less than it is for younger people. The barrier is a resource barrier, rather than an age barrier.

I agree, and I would like to add to that answer. There are some kinds of learning in which older people prefer to study as a group without younger people present. Examples would be fitness programmes, swimming, and introductions to information technology.

When it comes to personal fitness, I certainly prefer to study on my own.

For older people, is there a provision of learning that is not directly related to work that they will subsequently take up?

The senior studies institute at the University of Strathclyde, which focuses on older people, is a good example. It has a number of initiatives that are focused on older people who are in work, who are returning to work, or who are changing career later in life. The institute is an example of good practice, showing what can be done to offer learning to older people and to do so in a way that suits older people.

The Workers Educational Association also operates some good projects for older people across the country, which focus on the ways in which older people want to learn and the subjects that they want to learn. There are a number of areas of activity involving older people, but we have not been able to consider—indeed, we were not asked to consider—whether there was sufficient provision to meet the demand from older people.

We discovered that there is not much resource or provision for older workers who have become redundant. Although there is some provision through the LECs, it is small-scale and perhaps lacks flexibility.

All the research that I have read suggests that the less time someone is unemployed, the easier it is to find another job and get back into the labour market. However, in training programmes such as training for work, people have to be unemployed for six months before they qualify for a place. Are those criteria not flying in the face of the scientific evidence that suggests that we should be encouraging people to get back into the labour market well before the six or even 12 months you have to wait for a place on a course?

It will be interesting to evaluate the recent exemptions to that general rule. For example, in the case of major redundancies or redundancies that were caused directly by foot-and-mouth, the six-month qualification period is dropped.

This has been an extremely worthwhile, helpful and informative exercise and the report will act as a baseline document for the whole of our inquiry. It is amazing that no mapping exercise of this nature has been carried out until now and, from my reading of the conclusions, it appears that Scotland is crying out for a national tertiary education and training strategic framework. Your work makes it clear that such a strategy does not exist and, as a result, we have a hotch-potch of schemes, initiatives and programmes that have all grown historically without anyone taking a fundamental look at what is being done and why. In relation to further education, higher education, volume training and so on, is that patchwork having a detrimental effect on the ability of users of lifelong learning services to access education and training and to get the right education and training at the right time?

Aside from funding, on which we cannot really comment, the biggest difficulty is how to support people's progress through the different areas that are available. For example, as far as social justice targets are concerned, encouraging socially excluded people back into learning usually means starting at a local, community-based level. Those people will probably attend class a couple of afternoons a week, after which they face a fairly lengthy progression path before they end up with their degree. The linkages and support at the transition points in that path are crucial, because people could fall off at any stage, go round in circles, go to the wrong place, or lose money. A more coherent approach would support such progression and enable it to happen.

We are bad at tracking people. There are few well-developed tracking systems for learning, and better systems—combined with clearer paths and support at transition points—would all make a huge difference to consumers.

This is more of an opinion than a conclusion drawn from the research, but is it fair to say that a more coherent system would reduce the overhead costs associated with the number and variety of institutions, and the amount of duplication and overlap, and free up more money for front-line services?

From a reading of other research, I think that better support for individuals into appropriate learning would improve the retention rate, which would mean savings and a more efficient use of funding. In that sense, such a system would help.

I have two comments, convener. First, in response to your previous question, it is clear that the current system, which has grown like Topsy to some extent, differentially empowers and resources some users over others.

Secondly, on the question of institutions and overheads, there is perhaps a prior question about how we improve access in the parts of Scotland that are not well served by institutions. Our experience of merging institutions has shown that overheads are not always reduced.

This has been an extremely helpful session and, on behalf of the committee, I thank you both for the research and presentation and for answering our questions so succinctly. I think that we are now about 10 minutes ahead of time.

Meeting continued in private until 13:08.