Community Learning Development Resource 101 – 09

THE PURPOSES OF WORKING WITH ‘HARD TO REACH’ LEARNERS

 

SUMMARY

The purposes and methodologies of widening participation and community learning work are reviewed.

 

Why do providers want to make contact with ‘hard to reach’ potential learners in local communities and bring them into formal education and training?

Providers are looking for people to fill courses, thus the purpose is recruitment. Statutory providers are concerned to meet funding criteria and target numbers. The evidence of audit suggests that in larger providers, any community outreach work can be heavily steered by the provider need to recruit students in numbers. This can be a limiting factor on the allocation of resource for work with ‘hard-to-reach’ learners.

Implications for work with non-self-referring, hard-to-reach learners:

• Hard-to-reach, non-intending learners often need individual support and encouragement to choose to address their learning needs. Supporting non-confident learners tends to be an intensive engagement for workers. Recruitment outcomes where numbers matter, constrain the willingness and capacity to deliver intensive individual support for hard-target learners.

• Early activity in community learning work with non-intending learners does not quickly produce recruits for providers’ formal learning programmes. Enabling individuals to gain the self-confidence, to self-refer and survive successfully within formal learning and training programmes, takes time.

• Providers need a consultative forum or line of accountability with people who are non-users. Consultative frameworks should set out a clear accountability line and invite evaluative feedback from all sections of the community., including those who do not engage.

• Providers need feedback from non-self-referring learners to help them plan and shape provision. This important strand of needs identification and assessment is a common weakness in provider practice.

 

Potential constraints in enabling hard target people to learn successfully:

• Much provider practice relates to purposes which are determined by national and regional employment activity requirements or a provider led agenda which is about recruitment to those ends. This education and training provision is predominantly driven by the need for economic performance improvement.

• Much activity will inevitably be largely about numbers – volume capture and through-put, and being able to capture coherent numbers – substantial enough to fill courses and / or justify and guarantee provision. This may be the realistic stance that providers perceive that they are forced to take.

• Provider success criteria are principally about programmes delivered and the numbers participating – recruitment, retention, completion, achievement and progression.

• Performance particularly with inexperienced learners who are not confident, comfortable, happy, etc. may be characterised by comparatively poor completion and achievement rates, and repetitive start-up and failure experiences for those individual learners.

• There needs to be a recognition that progression starts at the point of first contact in the community with non-intending learners, not at the point of recruitment into formal learning programmes or at some point, where learning by an individual within a programme is perceived to have been completed and they are moving on.

• Progress for a non-intending learner begins at the beginning – criteria can be identified which recognise learning progress at an early stage. If a non-confident inexperienced learner self-refers, we can assume that they have gained from a learning experience in progressing to the point of self-referral. We need to recognise the early steps of progression, which signal the capturing of non-intending learners and the learning distance they may travel before enrolling into formal education and training.

Potential learners as Soft and Hard Targets

• Soft targets are confident learners – aware and experienced in post school/ lifelong learning

• Hard targets are those learners who are not aware, non-confident as learners, disadvantaged, disenfranchised, marginalized, have a sense of failure as learners, low self-esteem as learners, have learning difficulties or have disabilities.

• Within widening participation strategies with hard targets, performance criteria must be used which identify, measure and evidence success before recruitment into formal education and training

• Rural isolation is not on its own a reliable indicator – those who have chosen to live in rural areas, may not be the hard target – those who have no choice, may well be.

• Progression is a key strand in the capturing process where individual learners can move-forward by their own choice and intent, and at their own pace.

• A numbers driven agenda, for example, reducing unemployment figures,  addressing local labour or skill shortages, or meeting funding targets, may shift the targeting to more fruitful markets, away from the hard-to reach

• Building economic activity and capacity or helping people into training and employment to earn, are not the only reasons for recruiting learners.

• The enhancement of the quality of life for people is not achieved only through access to employment and money. People also gain improvements in the quality of life through access to learning, which is about relationships, citizenship, culture and leisure, and community improvements – regeneration and renewal

 

A CHECKLIST FOR PURPOSEFUL WORK PLANNING

If outreach delivery of learning opportunities and learner support is to develop, do these strategic requirements need to be in place:

• Provision, which is coherent, relevant and responsive to identified learner needs, within the local area of benefit?

• Providers and other stakeholders working together to improve trust and mutual support through collaboration, co-operation and partnerships?

• A framework for the practice underpinned and informed by consistency and clarity of values, principles and mission?

 

Promoting the work as a strategy involving major agencies?

• Sensible collective planning at a local level within a framework – making effective use of resources with coherence and community responsiveness – avoiding duplication and inefficiency?

• Developing a strategic framework, which seeks to ensure  ‘effective provider status’ across a wide range of providers and agencies from different sectors and perspectives – recognising the potential of different types of provider and agency to deliver particular learning and support opportunities most effectively?

• Developing a strategic approach to quality assurance through the shared and agreed identification of criteria, standards, benchmarks and indicators, with quality improvement through monitoring, evaluation, review and action planning, within a strategic framework for validation and verification?

• Having a strategic approach to training and development, the sharing and dissemination of good practice, support networks, and representation of the interests of involved stakeholders?