Wales European Agenda for Adult Learning (EAAL) Impact Forum Minutes

12pm – 16.00pmMonday 28th September 2015

Location: WCVA, Baltic House, Mount Stuart Square, Cardiff, CF10 5FH

Attendees:Berni Brady AONTAS National Adult Learning Organisation (BB)John Gates Adult Learning advocate (JGa)John Graystone Chair (JGr)Jeff Greenidge learndirect (JeG)Calvin Lees NIACE Cymru (CL)Zvonka Pangerc Pahernik Slovenia Institute for Adult Education (ZP)Mark Ravenhall NIACE (MR)Helen Scaife Welsh Government (HS)Kay Smith NIACE Cymru (KS)Alex Stevenson NIACE (AS)Dan Taubman ETUCE representative (DT)Mike Wilson Dwr Cymru (MW)

Apologies:Sian Cartwright Wales TUCAnn Brain TorfaenJan Eldred NIACEPhil Fiander WCVAJoy Kent Chwarae TegMark Isherwood WEA Greg Walker Coleagu CymruAlan Felstead Cardiff UniversityCarl Jones WheeliesGareth Rees Cardiff UniversityDavid Hibler British CouncilAnne Lewis AgoredPhil Whitney Welsh Government

1. Welcome/Apologies

JGr welcomed the group to the fourth session of the EAAL Impact Forum for Wales focused on Basic Skills and PIAAC.

2. Introductions

All members introduced themselves.

3. Minutes of the meeting on 1st July 2015

Nothing of note to amend

4. UK Impact Forum updates

MR gave a brief overview and update on the progress of the other UK forums and the forward work plans.

MR confirmed that the 15/17 NIACE proposal to continue the EAAL project in the UK has been accepted. The Impact Forums in each of the nations have been seen as successful although they have been very similar. They will be taken forward in the work package.

It was noted that both Slovenia’s and Ireland’s proposals have also been accepted.

There was a brief discussion around the Impact forums and how the group would like to take this forward with both content and format discussed.

This discussion will continue once the Work packages are agreed and disseminated to the forum.

MR commented that a report on the forums will be presented to the commission this autumn.

The report will focus on 3 of the themes from the forums:

Employment skills for young people Excluded groups Basic skills

The group needs to think how it shows that the work has been disseminated to organizations outside of the forum and how the Impact forums can feed into a State of the Nation report with a conference and interim report in 2016 and a final report in 2017.

An overall focus for next year’s work should be what is adult learning and what is it doing to benefit Wales?

DT who serves on the ETUCE working group on early school leaving raised the 2020 Thematic Learning groups and pointed out that a new one is on Adult Learning – Skills for the unemployed.

HS confirmed that there is attendance by Welsh Government at the Vocational Skills Learning group

Action - CL to send DT email addresses for HS and RS, to follow up on the Thematic Learning groups.

5. Basic Skills/PIAAC Work Packages

AS presented a brief summary on the work NIACE has completed on Basic Skills and Social Inclusion.

There was some discussion around the new GCSEs in England and how employers supported the vocational/workplace qualifications (functional skills)

It was agreed that there was still a lot of work needed to be done around engagement in basic skills as there is recent falling participation in both literacy and numeracy programmes.

AS presented details on NIACE’s Citizens Curriculum including:

Future for lifelong learning: report’s key recommendations Embedded basic skills How the Citizens Curriculum would interlink basic skills and a wide

range of activities including ICT/health/civic studies

AS presented case study work with St Mungo’s Broadway (click link to visit case study) and recommended reading 5 other case studies on the NIACE Website here: Citizens Curriculum case studies

AS confirmed that the pilots would continue into the 2015/17 work packages and that they would be focusing on basic skills provision for unemployed adults.There would be work with practitioners for the co-creation of activities in health and civic citizenship areas.There would be a randomised control panel research for Citizens Curriculum with ESA claimants and Work Programme providers.They would be exploring a study programme approach with funding for learners.

Could the Citizens curriculum be a model for this, and how would the programme be commissioned?

BB asked ‘what was the role of NIACE in the citizen’s curriculum delivery’?

AS responded that providers would deliver. NIACE’s role would be to audit the provision and work with providers on identifying any missing elements and how to improve their provision.

BB asked how this fits with AE policy?

AS responded that ACL providers would already be delivering a citizen’s curriculum as their current basic skills provision. NIACE can validate and collect evidence of impact, measure best practice etc and to try and formalize this in the funding process. Could this be used to as a way to push for the adaption of funding to move away from accredited training?

JGr asked if the curriculum has changed over the course of delivery with feedback from the pilot’s providers.

AS responded there the curriculum has not change significantly as there was a great degree of flexibility in the programme to begin with; although health and civic citizenship capabilities have had to have more work on them to develop guidance and resources for practitioners to utilize.

Specific levels of provision is level 1 and below.

DT questioned if these developments are relevant in Wales? For example, the movement away from qualifications and the requirement for learners to achieve level 2 in English.

It was agreed that the principle of raising skills in Wales remains central and that the Citizen’s Curriculum could be the engagement tool for learners as a starting point for their progression onto level 2 qualifications.

The Rochdale Case Study was discussed.

It was agreed that this could be used as hard evidence with Welsh Government to demonstrate how adult learning can bring savings across various government spending departments.

CF commented that a different type of curriculum across various areas is not the way to go and that NIACE Cymru is piloting the development of a Adult Community Learning Framework to standardise the process.

The Framework for Adult Learning aims to resolve difficulties and provide standardized provision that maintains flexibility for cultural and local variation. The Framework is applicable to many different delivery models, providers, funding models, learning communities and levels of learning for adults- across the diverse communities of Wales.

The framework sets out the core purpose of adult learning in Wales, and its contribution to the broader education sector. It will enable a consistent offer to adults within partnerships and other providers across Wales.

Pulling together service departments to share ideas will not be something that government will or should fund; but they should be involved in ensuring delivery takes place.

Both ACL partnership and WEA YMCA CC are delivering pilots for the framework.

6. PIAAC in Slovenia

Zvonka Pangerc Pahernik of the Slovenian Institute for Adult Education (Click to

Visit site) gave an overview of the Slovenian entry to PIAAC.

The PIAAC research is cross governmental with 7 departments contributing.

Education Labour Culture Health Agriculture

Internal Affairs Environment (Traffic)

Contributions to these sectors are identified and added to the Adult Education Master Plan document. The National Adult Education Master Plan is a strategic and developmental document. By confirming it, the National Assembly determines the national interest in adult education, defines activities required for the implementation of adult education, and provides stable funding from public sources.

RS asked how they managed to deliver this with such a small budget.

ZP responded that it was delivered as a result of ESF funding and the hard work, commitment and dedication of the team

There was a further question around the delivery using online and paper questionnaires.

ZP responded that that only a small amount of paper questionnaires were used but even so this did not save a considerable amount of funding.

HS asked if the AE Master Plan document was 16+ as Wales focused on 16-19

ZP confirmed it was actually 18+, and that in Slovenia the definition was Initial Education for up to 18 years old and Continuing Education for over 18

DT commented that this process could be used as a stick to highlight the negative outcomes but if Wales was to be involved we need to focus on the positives.

Action: CL to distribute ZP presentation

CF stated why we want PIAAC in Wales and that there has been no research study since 2010 on Basic Skills.

JGr commented that we need to ask ourselves ‘why do we want it?’ and when we get the evidence ‘what do we do with it?’

There was a general discussion around PIAAC which included:

Do we want the results from PIAAC as this would highlight issues and we would need to find funding to fix.

The feasibility of using ESF funding in Wales to support the costs of entry into PIAAC and a suggestion that a small percentage of funding used from each large scale ESF project would fund PIAAC and provide data on adult skills.

Some estimated figures were calculated for the cost of Wales’ involvement with PIAAC: - : £2.7m with ESF funding and £5m without.

General consensus of the forum was that no-one around the table was against involvement with PIAAC but this would need to be linked with and financially supported by other departments within Welsh Government.

7. Essential Skills in Ireland

BB gave a presentation on Essential skills in Ireland which included:

o Brief overview of Aontas- The national adult learning organisation, Ireland

o Irish PIAAC resultso Qualification Levels of the Labour Forceo Irish Government Agendao Literacy and Numeracy Strategyo National Literacy and Numeracy Promotional and Awareness

Campaigno Case Studies

Her presentation stimulated a useful discussion.

Some points. BB pointed out that involvement in PIAAC did not provoke much interest within government. In addition, there is legislation underpinning adult education in Ireland. 46,000 adults attend literacy classes with 4,000 volunteer tutors.

8. Welsh Government Essential Skills

HS commented that there is no specific essential skills policy area within Welsh Government; but both basic skills and ESOL were a focus in 2015/16.

Other subject area courses in ACL could only be delivered as cost recovery, self funded or through other funded projects.

There would be a focus on competency not qualifications.

The new 2015 policy will focus on adult learning in general and not on adult community learning (ACL). It will cover:

Communication Numeracy skills (application of number) Digital literacy (online services , not Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc) Broader employability skills

This should be published in November/December 2015. – Update November 2015:- this has now been pushed back and will more likely be published in the 2nd quarter 2016

The forum commented that there could be a danger of seriously disadvantaging those learners with ‘average’ basic skills who cannot afford to fund their own learning, thus halting their progression.

9. UK Summative Conference – Dr John Graystone

JGr gave a brief overview of the EU Summative Conference that took place on 10th and 11th September 2015.

In discussion, it was suggested that it would have been beneficial for the nations to have shared ideas and perhaps the ability to hear the other nation’s workshops.

MR commented, going forward that the Impact forums should focus on specific areas such as Health, Skills, and Housing etc.

JGe defined ‘Impact’ as the difference made, but also asked the question ‘do we have any data to benchmark against?’

10. Any other business

DT asked if everyone agreed with sharing emails to keep the networks open the forum agreed.

CL to send out email addresses of attendees with minutes.