5A: How to achieve success in leadership and management

Strategy

Your organisation should have a clear view about how it plans to help achieve the targets for learner participation that have been set by the local LSC as part of the Skills for Life strategy. It should have a clear idea of how it plans to ensure that learners achieve appropriately against the national standards. If yours is a local authority service, these intentions should be written into a number of strategic plans. These include the council’s adult learning plan, its education development plan and its community strategy. The needs of learners studying in community settings should also be reflected in the council’s capital investment and buildings maintenance programme and in its ICT strategy.

A strategy for meeting the literacy, numeracy and language needs of priority communities should be written into the council’s neighbourhood renewal plan as well as into its educational agenda. The council’s intended contribution to raising achievement in literacy, numeracy and language development should also be evident in the work of the local strategic partnership, of which the council is a member. In fact, the plans of every local strategic partnership should reflect the contributions and commitments of all providers in the area – voluntary and community sector, local authority and further education towards achieving Skills for Life targets. Progress should be monitored regularly via a monitoring and scrutiny sub-group or panel.

Often, local authorities are one of the largest employers in their community. Councils committed to raising levels of literacy, numeracy and language among local residents will therefore be interested in supporting their own workforce in developing their basic skills. Some authorities have worked effectively with trades unions and their learning representatives to create good Skills for Life learning opportunities in the workplace. Intentions to support employees in this way should be reflected in the council’s workforce development strategy.

The Compact that governs local authorities’ working arrangements with the voluntary sector should also indicate how voluntary and community organisations will be encouraged, supported and funded to deliver Skills for Life learning opportunities in their communities.

If yours is a service managed by an FE college, these considerations should be reflected in the college’s strategic plan and in its action plan for literacy, numeracy, language and key skills development.

Where a local authority or an FE college contracts out literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision to one or more other providers, a clear contractual agreement should underpin the arrangement. It is the managing agent’s responsibility to agree performance targets and service levels with its subcontractors.

Similarly, where a local authority makes provision through an external institution, it is the authority’s responsibility to ensure that it has a service agreement with the external institution.

Staff should be aware of your organisation’s aims and objectives for the development of literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision. If yours is a local authority service, it may be helpful to use some of the council’s publications, for example, residents’ newsletters, to raise awareness of your service’s priorities.

Evaluating performance

Check how well your organisation is doing each year against the following performance indicators concerning learners’:

• participation
• retention
• achievement (completion of individual or group learning plans and qualifications)
• progression.

Use the data and other information discussed in relation to CIF Question 1 to help you do this. If you run more than one kind of provision, or operate at more than one centre, remember to distinguish between them. Form a view about where there is room for improvement, and set targets for the coming year.

In local authorities, it is the responsibility of senior officers and elected members to review how well the service is performing. Where provision is delegated to an external institution, the governing body should be aware of performance, but senior officers and elected members have overall responsibility. In FE colleges, the board of governors oversees performance. In voluntary organisations, this role falls to the management committee.

Management information

Management information is vital in helping you keep track of performance. If extracting data from current systems is a struggle, invest in new software and the expertise to be able to use it. Providers can obtain more information and guidance from the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (NIACE), or their local LSC.

Quality assurance

Internal and external verification arrangements are powerful mechanisms for assuring the quality of literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision. They have the potential to ensure that learners who choose to study in their local community are not disadvantaged in any way by their learning environment. Consider establishing your own internal verification system even if learners are not working towards a qualification.

Set out clear quality assurance procedures for teaching and learning. Identify and train a team of staff who can carry out the internal verification role across a range of provision. Include observations of teaching and learning in your quality assurance arrangements. Where your organisation is too small to do these things on its own, consider entering into a partnership with one or more other providers. Staff often find that carrying out the role of internal verifier or observer across a range of settings is a valuable staff development exercise in itself.

Managers have a responsibility for examining the issues thrown up by quality assurance mechanisms and for making sure that they are dealt with appropriately.

Where provision is contracted out, for example from a local authority to an FE college or vice-versa, it is the responsibility of the managing agent to set out its expectations as far as quality assurance is concerned, and to ensure that quality assurance procedures are carried out. The roles and responsibilities of each party in relation to quality assurance should be clearly specified in a written contract.

Self-assessment

The LSC’s 2005 guidance on self-assessment allows providers greater flexibility than in the past to concentrate their energies on where they perceive their real weaknesses to be, rather than trying to act on all fronts at the same time. This helpful development reinforces the view that self-assessment is meant to be about managing improvement, rather than achieving product compliance.

Approached in the right spirit, self-assessment can be a productive and liberating management tool, rather than a bureaucratic exercise of forest-felling proportions.

This shift in emphasis also reflects an understanding that management is a process and not an end product in itself. Good management is about demonstrating that you have the capacity to improve continuously, no matter what your starting point.

Having said this, the procedures for carrying out self-assessment must be sound, and must lead to the production of a quality improvement plan that informs the provider’s three-year development plan. Spend time thinking about how your self-assessment process will work, what the key components are and who will lead it. Develop the component parts so that they fit your organisation and actually work.

Where a local authority contracts out provision, or delegates it to an external institution, it has a responsibility for ensuring that self-assessment is carried out. Where services are contracted out or delegated to more than one provider, the local authority has a responsibility for ensuring that the self-assessment process is coordinated across all providers. Where subcontractors, for example voluntary organisations, have little experience of self-assessment, the local authority is responsible for supporting them in the process. The same arrangements apply where an FE college contracts out provision.

To begin the self-assessment process, take soundings from a variety of sources about what people think of various aspects of your service. The sources might include:

• people currently in learning, as well as people who are not
• full- and part-time tutors
• support workers and volunteers
• managers
• internal partners and outside agencies with which you collaborate.

Subjects to probe with these informants include:

• the enrolment procedure
• initial information, advice and guidance
• the quality of teaching
• social areas and facilities
• staff development.

Put these views alongside the hard data you have about service performance. These are likely to include:

• retention and achievement data
• numbers of learners in priority groups
• numbers of potential learners on waiting lists
• outcomes of lesson observations
• staffing profile
• income and expenditure.

On the basis of the above, arrive at some key judgements about where the organisation’s strengths and weaknesses lie.

Organise the strengths and weaknesses against the five questions of the Common Inspection Framework, and write them up as your self-assessment report. Make reference to the evidence you have drawn upon to arrive at your judgements. Now you can move on to produce a development plan.

Producing a quality improvement plan

The more fully you have involved staff in the self-assessment process, the more likely they are to be committed to thinking about how to make improvements, and the more ideas you will have available to draw on. Your quality improvement plan certainly needs to state how you plan to tackle key areas for improvement, but it should also indicate how you are going to build on your strengths.

For each item, set clear, achievable targets. Work out appropriate strategies for achieving all the targets. Allocate the responsibility for carrying out the work to an individual or a group, and write in an agreed timescale. The development plan might look like the extract given below.

DEVELOPMENT PLAN EXTRACT

Role of staff in quality improvement

All staff, including part-time tutors, volunteers and support workers, should understand the organisation’s quality improvement process and be in a position to contribute to it. Increasing numbers of providers see the value of including lesson observations as a feature of their quality improvement arrangements.

Many use CIF Question 2 as the basis for making judgements about the quality of teaching and learning and for awarding self-assessment grades in this area.

Your organisation should have a staff development policy and a staff development plan linked to its strategic priorities, which take account of the staff development and training needs of particular individuals and groups of staff. Your organisation should have effective arrangements for helping staff review their performance. These should be tailored to take account of the circumstances of part-time tutors and volunteers as well as of full-time staff. (In other words, different groups of staff might have different performance review arrangements.) The review process provides a good opportunity to help staff consider how they might develop their professional practice and to identify what staff development and training they might find helpful. All staff should have the opportunity to undertake training and professional development related to the Skills for Life strategy and its implementation, and to develop and share their practice.

In local authorities, staff may well be able to take advantage of development opportunities available elsewhere within the council including, for example, training in interview skills and equal opportunities practice. Remember that work-shadowing, job-swap arrangements and mentoring are all forms of professional development, so don’t feel you must stick to training courses alone when planning staff development activities.

People

Check that your organisation has enough tutors for learners to receive the level of individual attention they need. Group size should not become a barrier to learning. Make sure that there are enough support staff, volunteers and bilingual workers to provide an appropriate level of support for learners throughout their educational experience.

Some parts of the country are experiencing shortages of appropriately qualified and experienced tutors, particularly in numeracy. Consider what special action you may need to take to tackle this. If you can’t afford a recruitment and training drive alone, consider working jointly with other providers. In some parts of the country, local LSCs are supporting the development of centres of excellence in professional development for tutors of literacy, numeracy and ESOL to adults. Bids are made by consortia of providers in partnership with a higher education establishment. The aim is to raise standards in teaching and learning by developing professional training referenced to the FENTO standards, and to help overcome the shortfall in staff numbers in some areas. If this development is happening in your area, make sure you are part of it.

In some areas, local learning partnerships have taken the lead in developing fast-track training programmes for graduates who are potential tutors of literacy, numeracy and ESOL for adults. Check whether your local learning partnership would be willing to adopt this model.

Aim to increase steadily the proportion of tutors with nationally recognised qualifications mapped to the FENTO standards. But take account of the prior learning and experience and existing qualifications of job applicants when recruiting and selecting staff. Higher level qualifications in linguistics or language development are relevant, for example, to the teaching of literacy and language skills to adults. Higher level qualifications in education or adult learning, or relating to specific learning difficulties are also relevant. Higher level qualifications in community education or youth and community work have a direct bearing on literacy, numeracy and ESOL teaching carried out in community contexts. Encourage tutors to gain further, appropriate qualifications while in post.

Staff development

Ensure that your organisation has a staff development plan that is linked to its strategic plan for the development of literacy, numeracy and language work. Create opportunities for tutors to share effective practice and develop their expertise through in-house training and professional development, as well as through external training programmes and events, such as the training offered as part of the LSC’s Skills for Life Quality Initiative.

Consider how best to support tutors working at a distance or who work on a part-time basis. Many local authorities, for example, are developing computer-based grids for learning across wide geographical areas. It may be possible to use these to support the training and development of tutors.

Ensure that voluntary staff and part-time paid staff have access to career routes that lead to qualified status. Ensure that volunteers undertake training that defines their role and its responsibilities clearly and enables them to implement it effectively.

Premises

Aim to achieve the situation where you are using premises that members of the public can reach easily, and that they recognise easily. For example, when beginning work in a community, check that the premises you are planning to use are on well-used public transport or pedestrian routes, and that they are clearly signposted. In multi-racial communities, signage should be multilingual. The signposting inside buildings should be clear, and where buildings have more than one user-group, the materials on display should clearly convey the message that learning literacy, numeracy and ESOL skills is a highly valued activity. Display learners’ work to provide an insight for other users of the building into what learning in literacy, numeracy and ESOL involves, and to provide an incentive for them to take part if they so wish.

Check that rooms are spacious and that the furniture is suitable for adult learners. Tutors need rooms that are appropriately equipped for teaching and learning, and that have enough space to store resources. Rooms should be properly heated, lit and ventilated. They should not be unduly cluttered with resources belonging to other groups.

Wherever possible, make sure that there are good facilities for learners with young children. Examples include pushchair parks, crèches, playgroups, homework clubs and junior youth clubs.

If your organisation manages the premises you are using, check all the above points regularly. Where the premises are under the management of another organisation or another part of your local authority, enter into a formal agreement that ensures that the managing agent takes responsibility for monitoring the state of the building, and deals promptly with any shortcomings.

Where it is impossible to find suitable premises in an area, consider a mobile facility.

If your organisation manages the premises you are using, make sure that health and safety checks and risk assessments are carried out regularly, and that the findings are acted upon. Where the premises are under the management of another organisation or another part of your local authority, make sure that these responsibilities are carried out by the managing agent and written into a formal agreement.

Where literacy, numeracy and ESOL tuition takes place alongside other community activities, make sure that timetabling avoids conflicts of interest or unhelpful disruptions. For example, avoid the situation where the acappella choir rehearses next door to the ESOL class, or beer barrels are trundled through the neighbouring hall to the bar while numeracy students are doing their initial assessment.

Independent study

Many adult learners attend lessons for only a few hours a week, and may well appreciate the opportunity to study independently as their family and work commitments permit. Many local authorities and community organisations will have difficulty setting aside dedicated space for this purpose. However, there have been some developments in recent years that might be helpful. Many local learning partnerships have taken major steps to connect communities electronically. In some local authorities, community centres are now online. In others, the library service is at the centre of developments in interconnectivity. Find out what use you can make of these developments to enhance the opportunities for independent study by learners.

Some local authorities have grouped their services together in ways that have made it easier for adult education staff and library and museum staff to work more closely together. Literacy, numeracy and ESOL tutors sometimes work alongside library staff in the libraries’ open learning suites to provide support for learners who study on a drop-in basis. See if this model would work in your area.

Check that local libraries hold printed resources that are suitable for literacy, numeracy and ESOL learners.

If your service is managed by a further education college, it might be possible for learners to use the facilities in the college’s learning resource centre for independent study. Remember, a number of colleges have developed successful distance learning programmes, such as those of the National Extension College.

Resources

Providers meeting the standards in this area ensure that learners studying locally are not getting a poorer quality of service than those who study in large educational institutions. The quality of the learners’ experience, and the standard of the work they are able to produce, should not be compromised by where they study or by the nature of the staff employed. Although there is a temptation to settle for whatever premises are available in some communities in the interests of widening participation, resist the urge to accept lower standards.

The standard of learners’ work should not be compromised by poor resources. Think imaginatively about how to make sure that adult learners studying in community settings have access to the same standard of equipment and materials as others studying elsewhere. This includes ICT hardware and software. Consider using laptops where computer suites are not available. Consider distributing resources electronically to tutors. Where a local authority has installed an wide-area networked ICT grid for learning, or is in the process of planning one, ensure that appropriate community-based learning facilities are part of this development and consider how you could make best use of this major opportunity to benefit your learners.

Work out how to provide the necessary level of technical support in the preparation of materials and the maintenance of audio-visual and ICT equipment. Audit the resources periodically to make sure that they are current, referenced to the national standards, in good condition and meet equal opportunities criteria.

Financial management

Your organisation’s strategic plan should be supported by a business plan. Financial planning needs to take account of the fact that the organisation needs an appropriate number of staff to carry forward responsibilities for curriculum development, quality assurance and management information. It needs to take account of your responsibility for supporting part-time tutors and volunteers through professional development, the need for support services for learners and the importance of investing in appropriate resources for teaching and learning.

Increasingly, funding from external sources plays a part in supporting services for literacy, numeracy and ESOL learners. Budgets, in large organisations in particular, have become increasingly complex. Your organisation needs the capacity not only to secure this funding, but also to be able to monitor income and expenditure effectively. It also needs the financial know-how to ensure that resources are allocated in a way that means that strategic priorities will be achieved. In local authorities, senior managers and elected members need clear and accurate information to allow them to consider various financial options and make sound decisions.

Where a local authority contracts out literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision for adults to another provider, or delegates them to an external institution, the financial basis of this arrangement should be clearly specified in a written contract, or memorandum of agreement. The same applies where an FE college contracts out provision. Where funding has been secured on a partnership basis, the allocations to the various partners should be clearly specified.

Your organisation should subject its running costs to regular scrutiny to make sure that its various aspects are operating cost-effectively. Although there are no financial benchmarks for literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision at present, you need to have a view about what constitutes cost-effective provision. It may be possible to set up financial benchmarking groups with providers who operate provision on a similar basis to your own. Within this, measures of cost-efficiency may vary for different types of provision. For example, are you clear about how much time and energy you are prepared to invest in the activities that must precede the development of provision in hard-to-reach communities? How low are you prepared to let learner numbers go before you decide that a group in a remote rural community isn’t viable? What measures can you take to make sure that buildings are not standing empty for large parts of the year?

Using resources cost-efficiently and cost-effectively also means taking account of environmental issues such as waste disposal, recycling and energy conservation. You may wish to develop a policy and action plan that covers these issues.

Local authority finances and services are subject to external scrutiny through ‘best-value’ reviews. Although the Audit Commission has set out an extensive framework of best-value performance indicators against which councils are expected to monitor and evaluate their performance, none of these relates to Skills for Life, nor to adult and community learning.

Of the few local authorities that have carried out best-value reviews of their ACL provision, the vast majority have confined the exercise to the scrutiny of LSC-funded ACL provision. However, the best-value methodology provides a means for councils to look at what they are investing across all departments in supporting and delivering Skills for Life learning and then to evaluate whether or not this is an efficient and effective use of resources.

For example, a council may not only deliver Skills for Life provision through ACL, but may be supporting Skills for Life learners through healthy lifestyle activities, regeneration initiatives, Apprenticeship programmes and workforce development programmes, carried out in partnership with the trades unions.

All organisations are expected to achieve value for money in the way that they provide services or commission them from others.

Equality of opportunity

Your organisation should have an equal opportunities policy. The activities of local authority service providers will be set within the context of the overall council policy. Similarly, community-based provision made by FE colleges will be governed by the college’s policy. There may be scope to customise these policies to reflect the specific needs of literacy, numeracy and ESOL learners. Policy documents should be easy to read and readily available. Where appropriate, they should be available in languages other than English, and in Braille or in audio form.

Your equal opportunities policy should be accompanied by an equal opportunities strategy and action plan. This is likely to include targets for increasing participation by priority groups, and for improving the retention and achievement rates for these groups. It should also cover areas such as staff recruitment, equality of opportunity training for staff and plans to upgrade buildings to meet the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995. Progress against these targets should be regularly monitored, evaluated and reported. It is not enough to make sure that minority groups participate in learning – you need to check that they are achieving at least as well as other learners. Teaching and learning resources and activities need to be regularly audited to ensure that they represent and recognise the perspectives of a diverse community. This should be an aspect of your quality assurance procedures. Staff may also be set equality of opportunity targets through the staff performance review process.

Disability Discrimination Act 1995

All providers should be working towards full compliance with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, as amended by the Special Educational Needs and Disability Act 2001 (SENDA). Free staff training and explanatory leaflets are available from local LSCs.

Make sure that enlarging facilities, large print texts, coloured transparencies, induction loops and Sign interpreters are available for those who need them. Some learners will need an appropriately adapted study space.

All teaching and learning accommodation, social areas and toilet facilities should be accessible to people with mobility difficulties or visual impairment. This includes older learners with acquired mobility difficulties.

Where the premises are managed by another organisation, for example, a community centre management committee, or another part of your local authority, make sure that the managing agent understands its responsibilities in relation to the Act. All premises used by colleges and local education authorities are subject to Part IV of the Act.

Codes of practice

You need a clear code of practice for tackling all forms of harassment, for example, harassment on the grounds of gender, race or ethnicity, age, class, mental health, disability or sexual orientation. Staff and learners should know what this code of practice is and be confident about using it. Its implementation should be monitored and evaluated.

Where provision in literacy, numeracy and ESOL for adults is contracted out, the managing agent is responsible for ensuring that equal opportunities are effectively promoted and that subcontractors comply fully with equal opportunities policies.

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