This article originally appeared in the Spring 2013 edition of InTuition - the professional journal for IfL members : www.ifl.ac.uk/membership/intuition
It should be noted that Government funding figures have changed since publication. A recent announcement on funding can be seen at: http://www.scotland.gov.uk/News/Releases/2013/04/Additional-funding-for-colleges12042013
Call
for a more effective developmental framework for Scotland’s FE practitioners:
an
international perspective by Kenneth Allen, IfL Member
Further education provision in Scotland is undergoing major change, but with change should come improvement. Care should be taken to ensure that learners benefit from teaching and learning based on an ethos of continuous improvement
Since 1993, Scottish colleges have enjoyed
incorporated status, removing them from local authority funding and control.
Boards of management took over strategic and financial accountability for
individual colleges, and a newly formed body, The Scottish Funding Council
(SFC) now allocates funds to the 43 colleges on the basis of their measured
share of student activity. The funding is based on Student Units of
Measurement, which equate to approximately 40 hours of study, weighted to
reflect the different costs of running a variety of courses.
However, funding cuts, which the whole UK
has experienced, have forced the Scottish government to exercise its devolved
educational powers and introduce reform. A recent controversial stand-off in
the Scottish Parliament eventually confirmed that the SFC revenue budget for
colleges will continue to fall by 1.5 per cent from financial year 2012/13 to
2013/14 and a further 11.6 per cent the year after.
Michael Russell, cabinet secretary for
education and lifelong learning, wants to introduce what he believes is much
needed reform. He indicated that he wanted to see improvement in:
• how our colleges are funded
• how the sector is structured
• the type of educational and training
opportunities colleges provide
• the quality of that provision
• colleges’ accountability
Thus, we are now faced with radical change
that, in many ways, is specifically designed to deal with the aforementioned
fiscal situation. But will this really improve our FE provision? And, most
importantly, will it really put our learners at the centre?
Colleges will, at the end of this academic
year, shrink in number from 43 to approximately 13 regional structures. A
further government consultation on college governance, the Griggs Report1, has
recommended an overhaul of the way in which college management boards are
appointed and a tightening up of their responsibility and accountability.
In broad terms, college boards will:
• enter into a regional outcome agreement
with the SFC and decide how funding received within the region should be
distributed and how efficiencies should be secured
• plan college provision strategically
across the region
• provide a focal point for engagement with
regional partners
• be held to account by the SFC for
delivering the regional outcome agreement
Funding will be directly linked to agreed
outcomes, with about 70 per cent targeted specifically at young people aged 16
to 24, which is in line with government policy.
The development of outcome agreements is a
complex one, with colleges being asked to negotiate targets in several
significant areas.
However, there are five strategic priority
areas:
• Efficient regional structures: deliver
efficient regional structures to meet the needs of the region
• Right learning in the right place:
contribute to meeting the national guarantee for young people, the demands of
the region and, where appropriate, the nation
• High quality and efficient learning:
ensure that learners are qualified to progress through the system an efficient
and flexible manner
• A developed workforce: ensure that
learners are qualified and prepared for work, and improve and adapt the skills
of the regional workforce
• Sustainable institutions: secure
well-managed and financially and environmentally sustainable colleges
A measurement framework, intended as a tool
to inform and support regional negotiations, includes many indicators that may
have a potential impact on the FE professional. For example, although not
necessarily unique to this reform, performance will be measured on aspects such
as efficiency savings gained from regionalisation, opportunities for all (age
demographic of learners), curriculum provision, retention and achievement,
employer engagement, and so on.
Scotland’s inspectorate, Education
Scotland, will continue to monitor the effectiveness of Scotland’s colleges
through an oft-criticised inspection process. Regrettably, these cyclical
reviews come with extensive notice and inspectors rarely see a realistic
reflection of the quality of teaching and learning taking place in the
classroom. Full reviews and subject specific reviews have tended to be seen as
perfunctory and very little actual change takes place.
Learning
and teaching for the future
When such far-reaching changes are made to
our structures – management and, most significantly, our funding – the teaching
professional and, ultimately, the learner, are often regarded as subordinate in
favour of the more pressing fiscal imperative. There is no doubt that these new
outcome agreements focus on important economic and social priorities. However,
can FE practitioners have confidence that they, at the chalk face, will be
equipped with the requisite skills and organisational support to deliver on
such aspirations? Ambitions for improvement in the quality of provision are
laudable, but without proper investment and planning, success in this regard
would appear unlikely.
There is no mandatory requirement for FE
professionals to be appropriately pedagogically qualified, although most (75
per cent in 2010/11 data: source Scottish Funding Council) hold the Teaching
Qualification in Further Education (TQFE) which is a Scottish Qualifications
Framework level 9 qualification, namely degree level. The qualification
conforms to the Professional Standards for Lecturers in Scotland’s Colleges2.
These standards, refreshed through consultation in 2012, highlighted four
common themes that emerged in response to the question: what do lecturers,
teachers and tutors need to do to prepare for their role in 2020?
These themes were:
• Learners
• ICT • Professional standards and CPD
• Teaching practice and reflection
Recommendations have been made that these themes should be given due
consideration when planning courses and continuing professional development
(CPD) for college lecturers in the future. Particular emphasis is placed on the
need for lecturers to be ‘digital practitioners’.
Colleges
Scotland and the College Development Network
Colleges Scotland, formerly Scotland’s
Colleges, has recently re-branded and now has two distinct roles:
• ‘Colleges Scotland’ will support the FE
sector by attempting to influence policy, funding and media representation;
• ‘College Development Network’ will
support the sector by providing CPD opportunities, developing learning
networks, sharing resources and recognising achievement.
A major concern is that, despite this
rebranding exercise, this body is providing nothing new to the sector and,
until now, is widely believed to have failed as a support mechanism for the
practitioner. One reason for this perceived failure stems from weak college interaction
with this body. If colleges did not recognise quality CPD as part of their
strategic and cultural identity, then staff simply did not benefit from the
opportunities on offer.
Furthermore, many argue that endless
seminars, network events and similar initiatives offered to the sector as CPD,
do little to improve our practice. Moreover, the Scottish Qualifications
Authority, Scotland’s monopolistic awarding body, provides support for the
delivery and assessment of its products and this often conflicts with more
pedagogical offerings that may be available.
Many staff (myself included) who recognise
the importance of CPD, rely on their own personal learning networks (PLNs) such
as Twitter, and have joined up with other like-minded teachers to further their
development needs. Networks such as www.pedagoo.org have enabled practitioners
to share good practice, openly discuss contemporary issues, and develop
relationships to promote professional enquiry. In many ways such networks are
an indictment of what surely should be ingrained into the fabric of our schools
and colleges.
Scotland has retained a General Teaching
Council (GTCS3) and further education professionals holding the TQFE are
entitled to register on a voluntary basis. A consultation on the need for a
professional body for staff in Scotland’s colleges (2004)4 stated that: “it is
difficult avoid the implication (from the responses) that there is a general
willingness in the sector to explore the idea of a professional body further”.
Additionally, there was support for a
mandatory, recorded CPD process. Unfortunately, further exploration did not
occur and resistance to mandatory registration mainly emanated from college
principals who were anxious that registration would interfere with their
freedom to employ and deploy staff in a way that they deemed appropriate.
However, this reluctance to standardise professional competence and conduct has
led to learners being taught by unqualified and/or inappropriately qualified
staff.
The council continues to encourage registration
and is currently reviewing the support that is offered to the FE professional.
But while the GTCS operates a mandatory register for the compulsory education
sector, registration remains voluntary for those teaching in post-compulsory education
and training. The GTCS does ensure that all those registered are appropriately
qualified, fit to teach and adhere to their standards of conduct.
Additionally, as set out in Public Services
Reform (GTC Scotland) Order 20115 and subsequently endorsed by the Donaldson
report, Teaching Scotland’s Future: a review of teacher education in Scotland
6, there is a mandatory requirement for registered teachers to record and
declare their CPD through a system called ‘Professional Update’ on a five-year
cycle. In 2013, there will be participation by the college sector in the
piloting of this scheme.
But too many colleges have failed to ensure
that their learners are taught by teachers who conform to the rightly demanding
standards set by the GTCS. Although no empirical evidence exists, anecdotally,
social science graduates teach English, learners with special educational needs
(SEN) are taught by unqualified mainstream teachers and accountants teach
geography, for example. Colleges have, therefore, sometimes been guilty of
putting their commercial and structural priorities before the needs of their
learners.
In England, the abolition of its General Teaching
Council and a reversal of policy on the mandatory registration for FE professionals
with IfL will only serve to diminish public confidence in England’s schools and
colleges. Recent developments in both Ireland and Wales will require FE
professionals to be registered with their respective teaching councils and it
is this consistency in standards across sectors that should influence the
future direction for Scotland.
Change should offer the prospect of improvement
and, in such a process, care should be taken to address the core purpose of our
endeavours: exercising our professional practice in such a way that our
learners acquire a desire for knowledge and appreciate the benefits that a
quality education has to offer.
Ultimately, engagement is the key to the
future of our learning and teaching approaches. Such engagement can only become
a reality if our colleges truly embrace development in the way that we continually
press our learners to do so. The desire for pedagogical improvement must be
manifestly at the centre of everything we do, driven by our values, and led
assiduously by senior staff.
I feel I am in danger of providing the reader
with nothing more than an educational polemic, and to avoid such allegations I
would like to proffer some suggestions for a more effective developmental
framework for Scotland’s FE practitioners.
Registration with the GTCS should become
mandatory and, with the cooperation of the College Development Network and the
Scottish Qualifications Authority, a uniform and non-fragmented strategy should
be devised to ensure that our learners benefit from teaching and learning
predicated on an ethos of continuous improvement.
I am convinced that building quality into a
process will achieve the results that we, as a nation, are so passionately committed
to.
Kenneth
Allen
Kenneth has worked in Scotland’s FE sector
since 1998. He is employed in a substantive post with James Watt College as a
business education lecturer. In his wider professional role, he is the elected FE
representative with the General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTCS), and an
experienced external verifier and development consultant with Scotland’s
awarding body, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA). He is an IfL
Member.
References
1 www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/ Education/UniversitiesColleges/17135/
CollegeGovernanceReview/ FEGovernanceReport
2 www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2012/ 03/6519
3 www.gtcs.org.uk/home/home.aspx
4
www.scotlandscolleges.ac.uk/Downloaddocument/ 2638-The-Need-for-a- Professional-Body.html
5 www.legislation.gov.uk/ssi/2011/215/ contents/made
6 www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/ 2011/01/13092132/0
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