Norwich

Objectives

To promote a culture of lifelong learning in the Norwich.

The Pathfinder project used the Guide in evaluating the success or otherwise of the marketing of learning. The initial project proposal indicated interest in pursuing the participation strand of the Guide but the final project report's main focus is on the usefulness of the Guide in relation to evaluating performance.

The Guide was used mainly as a background document and a basis for reflection. The matrices within it were found to be less useful.

The particular activities that the project focused on developing evaluation tools for were the Learning Festival, the Learning Shop and the SRB 5 project operating in the City, which has a focus on community participation.

Outcomes

It was found very difficult to evaluate the Learning Festival because there was no established useful base line data. The number of changing variables from different providers made any kind of exercise extremely complicated. However, an effort was made to produce a plan for looking at a number of indicators that would indicate the success of the Festival for this year. These included the development of guidance targets and evaluation of participation rates.

So far as the Learning Shop was concerned, the city has established a cohort of base line information through a survey of 300 clients of the 18,000 using the shop during the year. The 300 survey provides information on the gender, age of users, patterns of attendance and response to the survey. It is clear from this work that the Learning Shop is good at reaching people who are thinking about learning and from this group it was able to attract a mixture of ethnic groups and those with an interest in basic skills. The Shop is not effective in reaching those who have not contemplated learning. Other strategies are needed to evince an interest from those with no current intention of taking part in learning activities.

The evaluation of the SRB5 project is of key interest to the Learning City initiative as all partners are involved in the delivery of this large initiative. The toolkit has been used as a starting point in evaluating SRB5, and there has been a great deal of interest in Norwich in the use of the Local Government Management Board "Learning from Complexity Pack". There is still a great deal to be done in the development of evaluation strategies for this area of work.

During the life of the project a number of key staff in Norwich became interested in the learning from complexity materials and how these might be used in evaluation. There was particular interest in the areas of cultural transmission and increased returns, which are part of the Pack's approach.

The project felt that the Guide was a useful background document, but they did not find it easy to use in relation to the specific projects they wished to evaluate.