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Introduction
Aother report, another White Paper on
further education and another reform of
. tructure and systems,with more agencies
and additional initiatives focusing on raising skills
and improving life chances. There are even,suggestions
in the White Paper that there is no clear mission
for further education and a new one needs to be
devised - so now we have employability and 'progression
of learners. Is this so new? What an~we
referring to here? I suspect a couple of ideas: m€eting
globalcompetiveness and, perhaps more importantly,
givinga largenumber of people a second bite at learning
to move their lives on. This is, after all,the history
of further education.
The basics of FE
An engagement with progressive learning in a mature
atmosphere with good learner support is essential
for further education whatever the contemporary
economic pressure. In fact it has done this well for
a very long time. So why haven't we recognised the
importance of further education to the national
economy by, for example, funding it realistically? Is
it desirable for further education to continue to be
a cheap delivery vehicle for universities, a teaching
bargain basement or the source of ready-made
additional top-up students on honours degrees?What
are universities giving the colleges besides validation
at a price and the abilityto teach at higher levels?
Let's be clear: the school education regime, whatever
the changes and the impending introduction of
vocational or specialist diplomas, is a system solution
to long-term deep-seated learning failureswhich further
educationalists successfullyaddress in their daily
lives.
One of the major matters for future learning and
employee engagement is the reluctance to challenge
the requirement for grading. Why does further
education need to continue to grade people into
Mag
sucesses and failures?
Sadlythe latest White Paper and the Foster review do not even refer to this. It seems
we will continue to grade people as successes and
failures based on a highly questionable assessment
methodology, reinforcjng the elitist pyramid that is
associated with this ap,proach. At least the NVQ system
assesses competence in the workplace, but the
latest revision of the national qualifications framework
seems to suggest that we may be abandoning
this too.
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