5B: What is 'success' in leadership and management?

 

Patrick is the principal of an adult and community learning centre.

He says, ‘It’s all about values and a sense here of continuity of action. Success comes from leading with a clear sense of purpose.

‘I manage with a real commitment to treat people well and for them to treat each other well.

‘We have to manage a huge range of learners and languages spoken here. Our programme reflects the geographical community and the community’s interests and aspirations. Success comes from working with staff that are experienced, they organise and support each other as well as through staff development. They meet the needs of the learners very well.’

Patrick recalls, ‘In the early 1980s, there was one strategy for the literacy campaign. The centre was involved in that first big national campaign. I can’t remember the name now, Moving On or something! We played a lead role and had a two-year funded Adult Learning and Basic Skills Unit community outreach worker. Here at one time, literacy was run under a voluntary literacy scheme. A volunteer literacy organiser would co-train 30 or 40 volunteers. They would be matched to the learners with literacy needs. When the FEFC and then the LSC, came in we were able to match funding to priorities and so were able to respond. It’s not that the voluntary schemes were unprofessional, but it was an unprofessional way to meet a national problem. We are now given appropriate resource levels so that we can have a professional, properly funded approach to the teaching of English.’

The Sheffield Skills for Life Action Plan 2002-05 commits Sheffield First for Learning, a sub-group of the local strategic partnership, to enabling 10,000 people to gain recognised Skills for Life qualifications. It aims to do this by adopting a range of strategies, including:

• Creating 12,000 learner places in Skills for Life provision and improving support, retention and achievement
• Creating a standardised training framework through which national training standards are met and providing a career structure
• Creating a standardised screening and assessment framework which all partners will use as the basis for referrals and progression
• Improving the quality of provision
• Building the Skills for Life objectives into the action plans of all city partnerships, providers and Government-targeted organisations.

Each of these statements is followed by a set of specific, supporting actions. The Action Plan notes that ‘organisations wishing to receive LSC funds for Skills for Life in future years are required to:

• Contribute to Sheffield Skills for Life Action Plan
• Ensure that their plans fit with the LSC Delivery Plan for Skills for Life
• Work towards the national qualifications.

Portsmouth City Council contracts out most of its ACL provision. The quality and curriculum managers in the adult, community and family learning team provide a programme of support and development for providers called ‘Horses for Courses’. This includes briefing on the council’s and the LSC’s priorities, guidance on how to register an expression of interest and staff development activities on various aspects of quality assurance, including how to carry out self-assessment and lesson observations. The team’s monitoring officer checks how well subcontractors are performing against the contract.

The council operates an internal verification scheme for Skills for Life provision which applies to both non-accredited and accredited learning. This includes the following procedure for checking the quality of tutors’ assessment practices.

• Each term, tutors are asked to submit individual learning plans (ILPs) and evidence forms from two of their students.
  
• The internal verification team samples the ILPs and the evidence to ensure they meet the required standard in terms of SMART goals which can be owned and understood by the student. They look for accurate curriculum references, and sufficient information and evidence to prove that learning has taken place.
  
• Written feedback is provided on specially designed forms. Where the assessment process needs improving, action points are identified. This information is fed back to the tutor by his or her line manager to allow for negotiation and agreement on how to proceed. The tutor’s paperwork is looked at again at the next internal verification session.
  
• A spreadsheet is produced centrally to show when each tutor’s assessment has been verified, and when observations are scheduled.

Claire Mycock is Head of Adult and Community Learning for Bedfordshire County Council.

‘We got a grade 4 at inspection for Skills for Life,’ she says. ‘To turn things around, we took a whole-organisation approach. We made sure Skills for Life featured prominently in our development plan and business plans. We were mindful of the LSC’s priorities about boosting demand, ensuring capacity, raising standards and increasing learners’ achievements.

‘We had an ILP strategy. This meant ensuring that every single learner had an ILP of a decent quality. To achieve this we changed how learners accessed Skills for Life programmes. We put an end to the situation where they were just directed to the nearest class. Instead, every prospective learner was interviewed on a one-to-one basis before starting a course. Once they start attending they have a diagnostic assessment.’

‘We made sure when we developed our quality assurance framework that it had specific features that applied to Skills for Life. For example, we developed a handbook specifically for Skills for Life tutors, setting out what we expected from them in terms of best practice.

‘At the same time we appointed four managers with two specific Skills for Life responsibilities each, for example in literacy, numeracy, family learning, inclusive learning or workplace learning. And we have just started to train our administrative staff in basic skills awareness.

‘We also employed an experienced consultant to help us with the management of change process. And, thank goodness, we got a grade 3 at reinspection. So now we feel we’re on the right road!’