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Local Learning for Sustainable Communities
creating:excellence appointed Local Livelihoods, from October 2005 to February 2006, to undertake a study, into the feasibility of, and the need for, Local Centres of Learning in the South West Region of England which would equip people and organisations in the South West with the skills and knowledge required to be able to participate effectively in the Sustainable Communities agenda, as identified in the Egan Review 2004.
‘The research study covered all six Counties and the ten Unitary Authorities. The South West of England covers the largest land area of any region yet has one of the smallest populations and of the almost 5 million residents in the South West 54% live in a rural area; a higher proportion than any other region. The South West’s low population density and high percentage of rural dwellers make it the most ‘rural’ of the English regions although densities vary considerably across the region.
The feasibility study contacted over 500 organisations and individuals supporting local learning, interviewed 80 individuals, and held two workshops, one in Bristol and one in Plymouth, which were attended by a total of 91 participants. The consultants were greatly encouraged by the level of interest and response. The study was also supported by reading reports, evaluations and other documents concerning regeneration and sustainable communities. We also developed a scoping plan of some of the work that was happening in each county: contacts were asked to add their information to it. The range and scope of existing, and those being currently established, local learning initiatives in the South West was identified through an initial mapping exercise
Sustainable communities do not describe a single type of region, city, town or neighbourhood, but any combination of activities that can be sustained and which residents, and other stakeholders, want. Like any community, a sustainable community will be different in relation to its social, economic and natural environments and will be continually adjusting to meet new needs and challenges.
The focus of sustainable communities is quality of life through the recognition and application of social, economic and natural elements being interdependent. It is a place in which all people can engage in their community and have a say over how it is run and organised: where there is a strong civic life and citizens can draw individual strength from each other and the community as a whole. Learning for sustainable communities will need to reflect this.
Our Findings
We were asked to investigate the gap in delivery of local learning skills and we found that at the community and neighbourhood level there exists a range of provision and use, but of mixed quality; at the higher level we found a good range of courses offered by a number of Universities and Colleges who are collaborating regionally in joined-up ways; but a distinct gap exists at the intermediate level. This level is crucial to up-skilling professionals. We did not believe that the provision of Local Learning Centres would be the way to fill this professional learning gap.
At the end of the scoping phase it was discovered that there were many initiatives that described themselves as Local Learning Centres, were developing a Local Learning Centre or who wanted to be one. There was no evidence at this point that new initiatives were called for, but that skills and knowledge learning and delivery might need to be bent, extended or improved. New initiatives would not have been welcomed by the existing initiatives and would have created too much duplication whilst having a small impact. However, a need for quality training in a higher level skills range was identified.
In some cases there was competition for resources and clients, and at the same time a desire to join up and to work together. The strength of the sector is based on the diversity of provision and geographical coverage, and the weakness is based on the parochial attitude of individual organisations and duplication of effort.
The research study indicates that there is most to gain by changing the way local learning is organised and managed. The study has strongly recommended that each County and Unitary Authority in the South West Region employs a Learning Facilitator to work with local learning initiatives to improve the quality of learning within the sustainable communities sector and promote best practice. A Learning Facilitator should focus on supporting organisations through working with the existing facilities, resources and provisions to link and join-up groups.
A Summary of our Findings and Recommendations:
Finding.
1. There is an incomplete understanding of what sustainable communities’ means and there is no clear distinction between regeneration skills and sustainable communities skills.
Recommendation.
1. A common understanding s is adopted across the stakeholders of the South West and integrated within the general literature of creating:excellence and others.
Finding.
2. Terms and their meanings, within the regeneration and renewal sector are confused.
Recommendation.
2. A glossary of terms is established, and made available through the creating:excellence website and stakeholders are encouraged to standardise their terminology.
Finding.
3. Many interviewees felt that the Egan Review generic skills were correct, but they were not comprehensive enough for the sustainable communities agenda.
Recommendation.
3. Regeneration becomes a subset of sustainable communities along with many other learning subsets; creating:excellence designs a generic set of sustainable communities induction courses; and LSPs and their subgroups promote the skills and knowledge sets for sustainable communities in the South West Region.
Finding.
4. There has been a long period of innovative use of different methods, techniques and approaches, but there is no sense of methodology and consequently learning curriculum and syllabi are based on individual providers’ preferences.
Recommendation
4. Funders, policy makers and regional agency representatives form a working group to explore methodologies.
Finding.
5. LSPs are the right body to drive forward the skills and knowledge learning sets, but lack, in some cases, the strategic thinking and implementation skills to provide the county level spur to lead the sustainable communities’ agenda.
Recommendation
5. Professional training is provided to Local Strategic Partnership (LSP) members in strategic planning and action planning and LSPs take a key role in promoting the skills and knowledge sets for sustainable communities in the South West Region.
Finding.
6. Funding agencies, both statutory and non-statutory, operate a mismatch between their conditions and policy and actual needs.
Recommendation
6. Funders should support the introduction of Project Cycle Management as a standard project methodology in order to enable project proposers to contribute to the funders’ criteria and regional priorities while at the same time focusing on the problems at local the level as perceived by local stakeholders.
Finding.
7. Transaction costs for organisations in receipt of funds are high due to the requirements of different procedures and documents operated by funders, especially, when match funding is required. Funding operates unrealistic time scales for achieving sustainability.
Recommendation
7. Funders rationalise and streamline funding procedures and document forms and creating:excellence supports and promotes common funding formats to funders on behalf of stakeholders in the South West; funding agencies, both statutory and non-statutory, should address the short term nature of their support, and either lengthen the funding period or introduce incremental funding streams.
Finding.
8. Organisations are not taking responsibility for learning plans but are relying on individuals (staff, board members and volunteers) to initiate learning: there is no real corporate planning for learning: projects are missing the opportunity for capacity building by not including a budget and plan for learning.
Recommendation
8. Managers are trained in learning needs analysis and develop and plan corporate learning within their organisations for. Funders provide bursaries for organisations, as distinct from individual bursaries: funders should promote the view of projects as learning experiences; funders should encourage project proposers to include a small budget for training.
Finding.
9. There are no common quality assurance standards to guide and improve the quality of learning provision and only anecdotal evaluations for individual training provision. Evaluations are not being used as a learning experience and a way of improving future actions.
Recommendation
9. A quality assurance standard is put in place in the South West promoted by creating:excellence, and other bodies, and that a standard procedure for evaluating learning provision is also put in place, with information accessible via the website. A Guideline for Monitoring and Evaluation is developed for the South West; recipients are obliged to explain how they will use the information from the monitoring and evaluation to inform future strategy and projects/initiatives as condition for funding.
Finding.
10. Intermediate professional level training and learning is not readily accessible; many professional staff who can manage their work wish to improve and deepen their analytical and planning skills: there is not much take-up of accredited learning at the intermediate professional level; and there is not enough flexibility in the way learning is delivered
Recommendation
10. Undertake research into poor take-up of accredited learning at the intermediate level, and, based on the findings, raise resources to test ways of encouraging greater take up of accredited learning by professional staff; more resources should be provided for rural learning delivery as distinct to urban delivery.
Finding.
11. Little understanding of the role of schools with the sustainable communities agenda.
Recommendation
11. The role of schools within sustainable communities needs to be acknowledged and built upon strategically by Local Authorities and partners.
Finding.
12. There is considerable learning material already developed, some accredited, but it is not known or accessible to many other providers; there is no mechanism for sharing, purchasing or transacting this material; and delivery methods were poor and many people, especially in rural areas, were not accessing learning.
Recommendation
12. Providers investigate different ways of delivery and different ways of bringing together the critical mass of learners to make training cost effective. Funders must recognise the additional costs of taking learning to communities in the rural South West, and this should be factored in: creating:excellence website is expanded to include data and signposting on behalf of Learning Facilitators in the South West region; a Brokerage services is established to enable providers and users to sell, exchange or give away training material and courses; and more resources are provided for training of trainers in generic skills and delivery methods.
Finding.
13. The regeneration and sustainable communities sectors are very active with many new local initiatives, groups, networks and partnerships being formed, sometimes along narrow geographical or interest lines, and sometimes unaware of similar initiatives nearby.
Recommendation
13. Each County/Unitary Authority in the South West makes funds available to employ a Learning Facilitator to work across the County/Unitary Authority area supporting and joining-up learning providers and users who are involved in regeneration and sustainable communities, with the specific purpose of establishing shared standards and improving the quality and scope of learning in the region for all stakeholders: the Learning Facilitators form a regional team to support themselves and organise regional wide initiatives; and creating:excellence is charged with providing a regional secretariat to support the Learning Facilitators.
First Quarter 2006: A New Version of Project Facilitator is available
Version 1.4.5 of Project Facilitator is scheduled for release during the last quarter of 2005. It incorporates several new features, including interactive Gantt chart based Event Monitoring and Online license purchase and renewal.