Workshop D - Session 3

Title: Securing a Policy Framework - Providers' Perspectives Chair: Ekkard Nuissi Von Rein, German Institute for Adult Education Jenny Shackleton, Wirral Metropolitan College, UK

Jenny Shackleton is Chief Executive of the Royal Metropolitan College which has 25,000 students.

My college is hybrid. Each year it will have some 25,000 students but only about 3,000 will be full time. Eighty percent of those students at least will be adult and they will study from basic education through to post graduate level.

It is very clear that in the United Kingdom, and throughout our countries, the form of our institutions is, very strongly, nationally directed. In such a situation the vertical lines are very much stronger than the horizontal lines. That strong vertical formation is there both within the organisation and also outside, to the centre.

Such an organisation is bureaucratically funded and bureaucratically regulated, and of course what that does is create traditional management behaviour. That style of organisation creates rigidities and barriers. It puts us in a particularly weak position for a time when it is quite clear that partnership and regional local development is at least as important as compliance with a national situation.

It is important for providers. However much they appear to resist such a new policy framework, it is crucial to their survival. Our organisations have considerable strain now placed upon them by the fact that government is increasingly, however hard it tries not to, having to give way to aspects of the markets. There are collisions between policy and inevitabilities which can cause strain. They also create risk, very high levels of risk for organisations, and when an organisation is at risk, of course its students are also.

We find ourselves with provision which is rationed in a dysfunctional way. We find that we are put into the strait jacket of grading and sorting when we should be enabling. We find that we carry huge costs from fragmentation. The more policies come about incrementally for lifelong learning, the more costs we carry because of the fragmentation increase. We find that we have at one and the same time under- and over-provision.

I have reduced my staffing by over 30% in the last 2 years. I have reduced my physical resource base by 30% and that will go down by another 20% within the next year. We are over-provided but we are poor at the same time. Our students constantly have to make concessions to the same kinds of structures as cause us difficulties.

An enabling framework which would allow institutions to cross that critical barrier between being a minority provider and providing for more than 10 or 15% of our populations must have a new type of policy framework.

My components would be these:

• crediting and qualification arrangements, but alongside that service standards to ensure that the qualification arrangements do not have to be bureaucratic
• learning entitlements spelt out as a basis for being able to put public funding behind those who need that support
• provision of learning materials of course, but along with the development of legislation and electronic infrastructure, we do need legislation around intellectual property and copyright and use, both for profitable use and not-for-profit use.

Such a list has to be developed for local, regional, national and international purposes.

Now that kind of policy framework denotes a change in values. One is not simply talking about a change of organisation while the value stays the same. It means that we have to underpin our policy with a conception of what an intelligent civil society is capable of, and I do not think in developing that we should underestimate the problems that that causes even for ourselves, for those of us who have benefited from the current type of position.

For me the policy framework has to be one which enables pluralism and enterprise. It includes self policing, inclusiveness, trust and partnership and it is essential to do that, not just because it gives us that civil society that we are looking for, but because it would also enable public institutions like mine, and most of yours, to work with and across the private sector, the voluntary sector and hybrid organisations so that we also can operate in the fast lane.

Questions

Q:

It was very interesting to hear that you have 25,000 students and only 3,000 of them are full-time students. Can you very briefly describe how you organise the work with 22,000 students?

Jenny Shackleton:

There is a basic form of organisation which is a matrix. We have five schools which deliver a very comprehensive general and vocational curriculum and three delivery mechanisms for students and clients. We have five vocational schools and then three units which serve our corporate clients and our students with all the services they need to be independent learners, including services for students who need more support in order to get most out of the college.

We have three main sites, which are becoming two - and then potentially one - which act as centres of excellence. We physically serve students within about a 10 - 15 mile catchment area, but we have a very advanced electronic infrastructure which includes company learning centres in the major companies in our area. Indeed some of our electronic infrastructure serves students in other countries. The students are, as far as we are concerned, invisible in terms of their mode of study. We say that we are providing some elements of their learning. Some people spend most of their time learning; most people are learning all the time and just need to use us a little.

Back

Home