3A:How to achieve success in meeting the needs and interests of learners

Skills for Life teams are often leading the challenge to attract new and under-represented groups of learners. It is well-known that those who have done well in the education system are most likely to continue learning throughout their lives, and that those who have not may want to avoid learning in adult life. Engaging hard-to-reach learners is likely to mean working with partners and intermediaries. The direct appeal, however attractive and well-targeted the marketing, is not always going to be effective.

Colleges need to work with and through other organisations, such as community groups, employers and support agencies that have established a relationship with potential learners, and in contexts in which improving language and number skills seems worthwhile.

Partnership working can present plenty of difficulties. Partners have different priorities. They plan and work to different timescales. They find it hard to understand college funding systems. Working in partnership can be both messy and risky, and many community groups do not operate the same kinds of planning, record-keeping and quality assurance regimes that colleges have developed. Perhaps most importantly, college teams need to tailor their Skills for Life offer to the needs of each community group, employer or service. This requires teams to be sensitive, flexible and resourceful.

Bringing learning to the community and building the community into learning

Outreach literacy, numeracy and ESOL provision should be taught in a range of community locations. What these are will depend on the nature of the local community. One college includes among its partners:

• alcohol recovery projects
• carers’ associations
• community centres
• Foyers for young homeless
• museums
• supermarkets
• refugee centres
• primary schools
• young mothers’ projects.

Successful providers build partnerships with organisations that are already working with groups under-represented in the college.

Opportunities to use their skills in community placements can motivate learners to reach new levels of achievement. This may be particularly relevant for younger learners. Those who have seen themselves as a failure at school can blossom through the chance to contribute. One example of community placement is the Millennium Volunteer programme, which operates countrywide and supports thousands of young people who are working in community settings. Some successful examples appear in section 3B of this Guide.

Millennium Volunteer schemes have good support systems in place, meaning colleges can use them to extend the opportunities for younger learners without taking on all the work of managing the programmes. Such placements are often the trigger to language work and communication skills in particular. They also enable learners to develop and demonstrate the generic skills that all employers want, such as punctuality, initiative and team-working. So community volunteering can also be very helpful in allowing learners to meet their broader progression goals.

Engaging employers

Meeting employer needs is perhaps the biggest challenge currently facing FE providers. In many colleges, enterprise and business-link units are not well connected to the college’s literacy, numeracy and ESOL teams. Yet the skills strategy prioritises the national need for foundation skills for sustainable employment and improved employee skills in literacy and, especially, numeracy. Of the 7 million adults with skills needs, half are in employment. As industries evolve, and as individuals get older, those without literacy, numeracy and ESOL skills are increasingly vulnerable. The literacy and numeracy skills gap may be costing business and Government £10 billion a year, and it can cost individual workers their livelihood. An inclusive and responsive literacy, numeracy and ESOL offer needs to include the specific skills required in the workplace. Colleges that are building up their experience of workplace provision might want to start with their own employees and those of companies to which they outsource services.

The Government's drive to raise the national skill profile means that there is now a range of people who will work with colleges to engage employers and tackle Skills for Life needs. Initiatives include:

• brokerage schemes run by local LSCs and some other local partnerships
• Trade Union Learning Representatives and Skills for Life advocates
• Move On regional advisers.

You may also find opportunities to work with or through:

• Sector Skills Councils
• the Investors in People programme
• Employer Training Pilots
• public sector organisations, including primary care and hospital trusts and your local council.

Effective partnerships with employers start by getting agreement that there is a problem. College staff who are teaching literacy, numeracy and ESOL know the range and sophistication of the coping strategies developed by those with literacy and numeracy difficulties. Many do much more than get by and they can be very effective in an established role. This means that the skills that are needed will only be revealed indirectly: a reluctance to train, go for promotion or use new procedures or technologies. The skills gap will still hit profits through inflexible practice, poor communication and high wastage.

Employers need to be convinced of the business case for investment in training.

The Employer Training Pilots offer an excellent opportunity for raising awareness of these essential skill needs in the workforce. Employers may be persuaded to recognise the need but they will not see the value of literacy, numeracy and language learning unless it is tailored to their business. Each workforce, and each work role within it, will use language and number skills in a particular way. These vary according to the type of business, the technical tasks undertaken, the interaction with customers, the reporting systems and so on. An off-the-shelf literacy, numeracy and ESOL programme won’t have the impact an employer would be right to expect. The starting point must be a job and task analysis that pinpoints the language and number demands of the role and the contexts in which the skills will be applied. Staff in colleges have plenty of guidance and expertise to draw on here:

• their own experience in conducting course language and number skill audits
• college-based experience of training needs analysis
• the training tools in the Skills for Life Employer Toolkit.

Once the training needs of the company have been agreed, delivery models also need to be flexible. Individual employees may also want to learn in different ways. Colleges can offer:

• dedicated literacy, numeracy and ESOL programmes with a workplace focus, for example, dealing with customer complaints and stock audits
• integrated programmes that teach literacy, numeracy and language skills alongside technical training, for example, induction to a new work role or process
• company-based learning centres providing drop-in support and e-learning resources, including learndirect
• training for supervisors or workplace mentors to teach them to provide peer support.

Whatever model is decided upon, there need to be agreed learning outcomes for the programme as a whole and individual learning plans that frame each employee’s route to these outcomes. Some programmes may require college staff to be flexible, for example by going out to the workplace and fitting in with unsocial working hours, and provision needs to be made for these circumstances.