Fitness for Purpose - Ensuring (E)Quality Workshop by Learning and Skills Development Agency. Two definitions: Quality must include an equal opportunity to succeed - hence the use of ‘(e)quality’ in the title of this workshop Fitness for purpose means fitting provision to potential learners rather than learners fitting themselves to what is on offer. Why it matters Too many people are missing out because provision does not meet their needs. If we are to close the equality gap we must give people the support they need (with childcare, money, language, for example). Raising skill standards benefits individuals and whole communities. We need to identify more clearly the gaps that exist and the benefits to be gained. At the same time as drawing in new learners, new inspection and LSC quality standards must be met. Every provider must have an annual self assessment report;everyone has to show how to improve quality year on year. Publicly-funded agencies must now demonstrate how their services contribute to equality of opportunity for people from all sections of the community. This means looking at how services are marketed and delivered. Improving good practice without re-inventing the wheel needs a partnership approach. Up to now this has been hindered by too many short term projects, with too much information and good practice not shared, and too much competition rather than co-operation. How we can make it happen To make the necessary improvements we must have: training and mentor support for voluntary groups - if we want to get people onto a learning ladder, the first rung (which is often provided by voluntary groups)must be very good consortia of small providers to improve quality and to access LSC funding a quality framework for partnership activity an approach of fitting provision to learners not learners to provision. Challenges Putting improvements into practice will involve consulting effectively with local communities -if this is to be a priority, how do you know exactly what is the community? What about local voluntary groups with different agendas? making a step change in reaching new learners - having one body, the LSC, with such a wide remit for all aspects of learning will help, for example, in the shift from short term to mainstream funding recording and valuing informal learning -a tough nut to crack signing up providers to be collaborators rather than competitors. Feedback from workshop participants; direct quotes are in quotation marks and italics. Funding Much of the participants’ response concerned funding and its lack of flexibility. Furthermore, they thought that if larger formal organisations received the funding at the expense of smaller organisations, which might be more focused on community needs and informal learning, then the smaller organisations could be driven out of business entirely. It was felt that the ‘LSC must ensure flexible provision. Adult and Community Learning (ACL) should take its place in the mainstream, not as a peripheral activity and that the relatively high costs of providing learning in the community should be recognised.’ There was a need for ‘clarity, openness, flexibility and coherence’ in the way funding is allocated and for funding arrangements to be long term. Small, voluntary and community organisations It was felt that a particular effort should be made to ‘help, encourage and persuade voluntary organisations to improve quality and share good practice’. There were worries that the quality requirements might be too much for some smaller providers and drive them out of the market, and also that smaller providers might be driven out of the market by the quality standards simply because they thought (possibly wrongly) they could not cope with them. For some the solution might be to team up with colleges who could take responsibility for the administration and quality assurance. There was thought to be a risk of stifling the energy and innovatory approaches of smaller organisations because of bureaucracy. It was suggested that the LSC should ring fence part of the Local Initiative Fund to encourage people to take risks.‘Allow innovation - target the audience and be prepared to change and meet needs.These innovations must then be evaluated and learnt from.’ Communication Some people identified communication as the key theme running through all efforts to improve quality and equality.‘We must not reinvent the wheel. Most things are being done somewhere. We need to communicate this idea widely, and get people to tell others what they are doing.’ However, it was felt that ‘We lack the mechanisms to share good practice across agencies. Information gained in a health context does not always transfer across to a learning provider, ’and that we should ‘pick up on successful high quality work projects already in place and call those pilots.’

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