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

One highly successful college has brought together discrete and embedded literacy and numeracy, key skills and additional learning support under the umbrella of Curriculum Support. Although the college is organised into three very different sub-colleges – the Adult and Community College, the Sixth Form College and the Skills and Enterprise College – the process of curriculum support is shared.

There are strong ties to vocational and academic delivery. Each of the three college centres is represented on the Curriculum Support Management Committee by the Director or Deputy. A very detailed Curriculum Support Implementation Plan is agreed annually with each section head by the Deputy Director of Student Services and signed off by the Deputy Principal. The approach to curriculum support may vary to fit with particular curriculum needs, but all sections are expected to meet the agreed standards and reach high levels of learner achievement.

During induction, learners are diagnostically assessed and, in discussion with Skills for Life specialists, section heads use the outcomes to inform course placement. A common ILP is used for literacy, numeracy, key skills, additional learning support and E2E. At the beginning of their second term, learners review their progress and complete a Curriculum Entitlement Agreement that sets out their target Skills for Life qualifications. This Agreement is negotiated with their English, number and ICT teachers and their personal tutor. Target accreditation will be matched to individual learners and may be literacy, numeracy or key skills. All learners are working towards qualifications. There is also a value-added system that tracks soft as well as hard learning gain for each individual.

Rigorous performance evaluation is central to the way the college works and quality processes reflect the centrality of Skills for Life. Generic processes such as lecturer self-assessment, teaching and learning observation and learner feedback each address language and number development and reinforce college messages about the contribution of Skills for Life to effective learning.

Another highly successful college is reaping the benefits of a fundamental restructuring of its Skills for Life leadership and activities. The college recognised the critical impact of literacy, numeracy and language skills on learner success across the offer and appointed a senior manager to lead on key and basic skills and additional learning support. The Director of Access to Learning sits on the Executive and leads the range of Skills for Life activities across the college: discrete and outreach literacy and numeracy, ESOL, supported learning, additional learning support and key skills. This clear overview of all Skills for Life programmes is considered essential to drive up quality. It was decided to pull together these responsibilities at every level. Specialist teams were set up in each of the schools to deliver key skills, literacy and numeracy learning support and – where they were offered - discrete literacy and numeracy programmes and GCSE English and Maths. Each team leader took responsibility for:

• initial and diagnostic assessment
• ILPs for key or basic skills and additional learning support
• delivery of underpinning key skills, literacy and numeracy, additional learning support, basic skills, GCSE Maths and English, and some dyslexia support
• developing and maintaining a bank of learning resources
• checking or writing key skills assignments
• helping to assess key skills work and supporting portfolio development
• preparing learners for key skills, literacy or numeracy tests
• internal moderation and quality control.

These team leaders are responsible for the specialist teams in vocational schools. They are managed within each school but co-ordinated centrally by the Key Skills Manager who works very closely with the manager responsible for literacy and numeracy. The Key Skills Manager and the ESOL manager report to the Director of Access to Learning. Although some members of school teams have a vocational specialism, there was an early decision that they should not have mixed job descriptions or teaching responsibilities. All their work is concerned with Skills for Life whether delivered as key skills, additional learning support, literacy, numeracy or GCSE Maths or English.

Each of the vocational schools has clear targets for Skills for Life achievement. Members of the specialist Skills for Life teams work to standard job descriptions but they are line-managed within the schools. The school has discretion about the shape of the team, such as the balance of lecturers to learning support officers, within the agreed resource. Each school has a key skill resource centre to support contextualised delivery. The leaders of these school teams meet every week with the cross-college Skills for Life managers. Although the specialist teams belong to their host schools, this team co-ordinates practice and unifies standards across the eight schools. There is also a regular termly meeting for vocational school managers to review Skills for Life progress across their schools.

A third Beacon college manages its Skills for Life offer through the Faculty for Foundation Studies, delivering supported learning, ESOL, basic and key skills and Skills for Life professional development. This is one of just three faculties and has a large team of around 105 full-time equivalent staff. In addition, the Key Skills and Skills Upgrade teams lead and support broader teams within the vocational schools. The mission of the faculty is ‘to build excellent Skills for Life learning into as many student pathways as we can’. This aspiration relies on flexibility and partnership. There is no single model of planning and delivery as this depends on the needs and aspirations of the individual and the demands and practices of any main learning programme. The faculty aims to maintain shared standards through core processes but to have the flexibility to make learning relevant and responsive.

The college sees literacy, numeracy and language as the building blocks of success for all learners and believes that the success of Skills for Life rests on the contribution of vocational, academic and support teams and the shared responsibility for meeting learners’ need. The Skills for Life Strategy Group includes all key managers including both vice-principals, the directors of each faculty, and those who lead planning and quality teams. Extensive training and development have helped to devolve responsibility across the college. Every vocational school and student support service sets out its Skills for Life remit, provision and resources in the college’s Skills for Life Handbook. The college has established a very successful professional development centre and offers extensive training to colleagues from across the college. Staff from all areas of learning are explicitly required to judge how well the Skills for Life needs of their learners have been recognised and met through the criteria that frame the course annual review and the self-assessment process.