http://www.dfee.gov.uk/post16/

THE RESPONSE OF THE LIBRARY ASSOCIATION

1. The Library Association welcomes the opportunity to comment on the proposals contained in the White Paper, Learning to Succeed. We re-affirm our support for the objectives behind lifelong learning and our commitment to work with others to help achieve the goals set out in the Learning Age and other Government papers. We believe that our members - librarians and information specialists working in every part of the UK economy - will play an important part in realising these goals as they have the skills to manage access and advise on learning resources and, increasingly, the mentoring and support skills necessary to facilitate learning and help learners.

2. Achieving the aims of the White Paper will require the widespread adoption of strategies for resource-based and ICT-mediated learning. It will require the provision of learning opportunities in a much wider range of settings than in the past. These developments will be necessary to achieve the required enhancements of accessibility, flexibility, and learner independence; and the required enlargement and diversification of the range of learning opportunities.

3. Our response restates the importance of libraries and librarians to this agenda, and looks at their current contribution to education and learning and the great potential for future enhancement. We comment on the new structures proposed to deliver the learning agenda and consider the needs of library and information services within individual sectors if they are to play their full part in the Learning Age.

4. Our main comments are to do with quality assurance and inspection. The past experience of our members in regard to inspection (including inspections in Higher Education Institutions as well as Further Education Colleges and Schools) has been decidedly mixed - inspection teams have often demonstrated a basic lack of understanding of the true role and contribution of libraries to the teaching and learning process within educational institutions. We believe the recommendation that two inspectorates should cover the whole post-16 education sector provides an ideal opportunity to address this shortcoming. We would wish to explore with the Government and the new inspectorates the joint development of inspection guidelines for library and information services and training modules for inspectors.

5. Library and information services already support learning and learners in a number of ways. Amongst the key advantages and benefits they offer are:

Accessibility

6. There are libraries and information services in just about all parts of UK society. This includes:

• Workplaces - information services in commercial, industrial and professional organisations and other major sectors such as healthcare and Government itself.
• Communities - There are 4000 public libraries in the UK, plus 700 mobile libraries. In addition many voluntary organisations also provide publicly accessible library and information services.
• The educational sector - Libraries or Learning Resource Centres in schools, colleges and higher education institutions, and support services such as Schools Library Services.
• The home - an increasing number of services are becoming available on the world-wide web and accessible from PCs in the home.

Cooperation and Partnership

7. Most, if not all, library and information services are networked formally and informally with other library and information services both locally and regionally. Examples include library access agreements across libraries in all sectors in Sunderland (UfI pilot site), Newcastle, Sheffield and Northamptonshire. Similarly the M25 Group of University Libraries in the London Region is seeking to improve access for all users across member institutions and the UK Library PLUS scheme is starting to create similar access rights for students across all universities.

8. Many library services are also members of their local Regional library System and may contribute to cooperative networks such as local Library and Information Plans (LIPS) or the emerging National Grid for Learning. Such cooperative working offers a starting point for developing flexible services tailored to the needs of individual learners. However further development and resourcing will be required if existing and new library networks are to be robust enough to offer learners support at a time and place suited to their individual needs. Such networking will be essential if the National Learning Targets of the government are to be met.

Social Inclusion

9. The Government rightly emphasizes the importance of tackling the barriers against participation in learning and ensuring social inclusion. Many library services in schools, FE Colleges and HE institutions have a great deal of experience in addressing the learning needs of minority and disadvantaged groups within society. The public library service is used by 60% of the population each year, half of whom use them once a fortnight or more. They attract people from all social groupings roughly in proportion to their representation in the community, with a slight bias to the As and Bs. They are used especially heavily by children, 16-24 year olds, and people who run small businesses or work from home. Public libraries are also important in supporting informal learning, which is not only a valid learning activity in its own right but can often be the gateway to involvement in more formal learning activities. Information services provided by voluntary sector organisations are also key in attracting and supporting minority and disadvantaged sectors of the community to learning opportunities.

Resources for Learning

10. Most libraries will offer some resources (books, periodical literature, videos, CD Roms, online services etc) for learning. Those services which are part of educational institutions will have this as their primary focus and public libraries will also give this aspect of their work a high priority. The presence of these resources make libraries an attractive environment for learning for many learners. As most formal courses rely more heavily on project based work and all informal and self-directed learning is reliant on the availability of such resources, the importance of libraries of all types in delivering learning opportunities and outcomes has increased substantially. Public libraries and library services within educational institutions are also important sources of information, and increasingly advice, on the learning opportunities that exist - a number are part of consortia bidding to provide information, advice and guidance networks.

National Grid for Learning

11. Libraries and librarians are taking a leading part in the development of a number of the networks that will form core parts of the National Grid for Learning. These include Janet, the Joint Academic Network for HE which will soon cover FE as well; the People’s Network (the Public Library Network); NHS Net and the National Electronic Library of Health; and the developing schools’ network. Libraries in many sectors are also likely to become UfI Learning Centres.

Skills of the Librarian

12. Library staff already possess skills in the location and retrieval of information and learning resources. Librarians in schools, FE Colleges and universities have also developed skills in supporting learners and learning activities. In some cases library staff now join with teachers and lecturers in designing curriculum, developing learning resources to support courses, establishing learning goals for courses and the learning skills that will be gained by students, and assessing the performance of students or learners on the course. New skills in learning support are being developed in other sectors as well, notably within public libraries as the People’s Network is rolled out.

13. We believe that libraries already make an immense contribution to learning. However that contribution could be greatly magnified provided there is an appropriate recognition of their role, the involvement of the library sector in the planning of local learning networks, and the provision of the necessary resources to underpin joint working between library services in all sectors. Our comments on the White Paper reflect this conviction.

14. The Library Association appreciates the Government’s determination to bring greater coherence to the structures underpinning post-16 education. We welcome many aspects of the proposals especially the creation of a National Learning and Skills Council with local counterparts, bringing all parts of post-16 education (other than higher education) together. We are also pleased at the new prominence given to adult and community education which, in our view, has received scant recognition and acknowledgement in the past.

15. Our concerns relate to:

• Over-emphasis on business involvement - Business and private sector involvement is vital if Learning & Skills Councils are to be effective. However the continued insistence that business representation should be in the majority suggests that the agenda of Learning and Skills Councils will be dominated by vocational education and training and the wider agenda of encouraging "learning to learn" skills through a variety of programmes and sources may be lost sight of.
• Definition of new responsibilities - recent Government initiatives have resulted in an array of new organisations and it can be quite difficult to map the appropriate relationships between them. More thought needs to be given to the precise roles of Learning Partnerships, Regional Development Agencies, and other bodies and their relationships to the Learning and Skills Councils. We would also like reassurance that the role of local authorities within lifelong learning will not be diminished.

16. Learning and Skills Councils must be aware of the learning resource provision implications of their decisions. They will need to put into place the support mechanisms required to facilitate cross-institutional provision of learning resources and access to those resources by learners. They will also need to consider the extent of informal and self-directed learning in their areas and how this fits into the wider learning picture. It is most important that library services and local library networks have methods of engaging effectively with the deliberations and work of local Learning and Skills Councils. We would hope to see librarians appointed either as full members of their local Council or as members of one of the proposed Standing Committees.

17. As more providers adopt learning & teaching strategies which include resource-based, ICT mediated and independent learning as core, the importance of adequate inspection and quality assurance arrangements for non-classroom based learning increases. The heavy investment that the post-16 sector is now making in ICT-based learning, and the concomitant need to demonstrate the cost-effectiveness of this investment, underscore the point.

Libraries & learning resources provision in educational institutions: Inspection frameworks and inspector competences

18. The current inspection arrangements for post-16 provision within educational institutions remain heavily biased towards classroom teaching. The OFSTED and the FEFC Inspectorates are primarily teaching inspectorates, and their inspection frameworks and the expertise of their inspectors reflect this. We question whether the existing inspection arrangements are capable of dealing with the integrated learning strategies and environments of the future as they embrace the opportunities of resource-based, ICT-mediated learning to the full.

19. The inspection arrangements which accompany the advent of the Learning & Skills Council should be designed to deal with the "mixed economy" learning delivery strategies of the future rather than the classroom teaching models of the past. It would be a wasted opportunity to create new inspection arrangements which simply carried over the frameworks and specialisms of the existing agencies. Such a situation could retard rather than promote the adoption of learning strategies designed for accessibility, flexibility and learner independence.

20. In order to reflect and promote the new strategies for the delivery of learning, the inspection arrangements should have the following characteristics.

• The inspection and reporting process should be structured so as to integrate the consideration of learning resources with learning & teaching. The current FEFC inspection and reporting structure, for example, locates learning resources with physical resources and estates rather than with curriculum activity. This is inappropriate in the light of recent and likely future developments in learning & teaching, and cuts across the organisational and reporting arrangements in best-practice colleges.
• The inspection and reporting process should give due weight to learning resources as a key determinant of the quality of the learning environment. (There have recently been improvements in the extent to which FEFC inspection reports reflect this, but learning resources still lacks a discrete grading. This serves to obscure both excellence and inadequacy of provision).
• The inspection and reporting process should give due weight to the importance of cross-professional teamwork in the provision of learning and teaching. Effective delivery of learning and teaching increasingly depends on inputs from staff with a range of specialisms - such as information & learning resources management, software design, and IT skills - as well as didactic skills.
• Crucially, inspectors should be equipped with the understanding and skills to enable them to make expert judgements about the quality of learning resources provision in relation to learning & teaching. Current experience indicates that the quality of the inspection of library and learning resources services in FE college varies widely. The new inspection regime should aim to reduce this variability. This could be tackled in a number of ways, such as
• provision of specialist training and development for inspectors
• the creation of a cohort of inspectors with specific responsibility for, and expertise in, provision for learning resources and resource-based learning
• the creation of a support and advisory unit within the inspectorate for resource-based learning
• partnership with bodies such as the Library Association and the Council of Learning Resources in Colleges which could contribute expertise and advice in this area

21. As we note more fully below, The Library Association is keen to contribute to the development of quality frameworks for learning resources provision and independent learning environments.

Dual inspection

22. The White Paper leaves it very unclear as to how the dual inspection arrangements for FE colleges will work in practice. In particular it is unclear as to how the line will be drawn between provision for 16 - 19 year olds for which OFSTED will be responsible, and that for post-19 for which the new Inspectorate will be responsible. A dual inspection regime for FE with a dividing line at age 19 bears no relation to how learning & teaching is organised in colleges.

23. The difficulty of drawing a line of division on the basis of age group applies both to classroom settings and to other learning environments such as libraries and learning resources centres. Many classes will contain a range of age groups which cuts across the proposed line of division. Library and learning resources services are designed around the full range of curriculum requirements and learning styles (e.g. individual study, group-work, ICT-based learning) rather than around age-group.

24. In the absence of greater clarity in the White Paper it seems reasonable to suggest that the division of responsibility between the two inspectorates should be on the basis of curriculum area rather than age group. Thus OFSTED would take responsibility for all provision leading to any qualification which can be acquired at school; while the new Inspecorate would have responsibility for all other provision.

Quality Assurance arrangements: libraries & learning resources provision outside educational institutions

25. So far, the issues of quality assurance for resource-based and independent learning has been discussed in the context of educational institutions. These issues take on a wider significance when the development of resource-based learning in settings outside educational institutions is considered. Such settings include public libraries, open learning centres, workplace libraries and learning centres, and Ufi learning centres. The development of such settings will receive significant impetus from such programmes as Community Access to Lifelong Learning, the Capital Modernisation Fund and the Public Library Network.

26. There is a pressing need to develop systems of quality assurance and inspection which are able to deal with resource-based learning as integral to learning and teaching and which can be applied across a range of independent learning settings. There are a number of existing initiatives which could contribute to this, such as The Guidance Council Standards for Information, Advice and Guidance on Learning & Work, UfI accreditation of Learning Centres, the development of Public Library Standards by DCMS (Department for Culture, Media and Sport) and The Library Association, and the introduction of Best Value to local authority services.

27. The change from predominantly class-room based models of learning delivery to models which integrate class-room teaching with resource-based and independent learning also calls into question current funding mechanisms in Further Education. Currently, funding units are allocated to colleges on the basis of Guided Learning Hours. In practice the interpretation of GLH still rests heavily on the model of class-room based teaching. This interpretation gives insufficient recognition to, and encouragement of, approaches which integrate resource-based and independent learning with teaching. The funding mechanism should give explicit recognition to all forms of learning activity, whether classroom based or not, whether teacher led or not.

28. The new arrangements for funding and inspection should be based on the learning and training delivery strategies of the future, rather than the classroom based models of the past. These arrangements should have the learner experience and the total learning environment as their focus rather than teaching and the classroom. Only if this is the case can they make their full contribution to the learning revolution which the government is seeking to create.

29. The potential for libraries to raise standards in literacy, learning and personal goals for young people outside of mainstream learning should be recognised in Connexions as a crucial strand of the Learning Gateway.

30. Chapter 6 of the White Paper highlights the need for continuity of support and advice for young people from the age of 13 onwards in order to increase participation in post 16 education and training. The school library/learning resource centre and the public library are available to children and young people throughout their school career and beyond.

31. The school and public library working together provide a focus and continuity for independent learning and access to information which is learner driven and embedded in the principle of equity of access and tackling social exclusion. One example of the dynamics of the integrated approach to library services to children and young people is the provision of out of hours study facilities/ homework clubs in public libraries which are linked to the learning aims and objectives of local schools

32. It is important that any future funding arrangements for sixth forms does not damage pre-16 school library resources and staffing, and that the pre-16 school library acts as a sign-posting service to wider learning resources and future career and training opportunities. Standards of provision for school libraries pre and post 16 should be established in order to guarantee that young people in every school have access to sufficient high quality learning resources and that school libraries can contribute to the full in the vision of Learning to Succeed.

33. Libraries should be highlighted as an important part of the jigsaw of flexible and outward looking learning environments for young people - public libraries are on the doorstep, accessible after school, at weekends and in the holidays. School libraries are widening their remit to include after hour provision and wider community use. Indeed Libraries could be seen as appropriate venues for the accommodation of the proposed Personal Advisers because of their accessibility and impartial nature.

34. Any Career Service and Information Strategy for young people should include the information networks of the public library. Every public library has information for teenagers from career information to subjects tackling issues such as prevention of teenage pregnancies, drug abuse and other personal issues. By working closely with youth groups, Information Shops and schools, Libraries maximise the effectiveness of these resources. Information is also available from computer ‘village information points’ and increasingly on the Internet as the National Grid for Learning is established, as well as on library mobile vans and other outreach programmes.

35. These information sources are further accessed by young people through library-based activities such as Teenage Reading Groups where young people explore personal issues through reading in a non-threatening environment. Young people themselves are often involved as mentors and in focus groups for library-based activities.

36. We believe that library and information services are part of the solution to reaching the goals set out in Learning to Succeed and other Government papers. The members we represent will be at the sharp end in delivering learning opportunities and experiences no matter what sector they work in. We, as they, share the vision of a learning and inclusive society and are committed to using our expertise and skills to help realise this vision. Our response has shown what libraries and librarians already do and indicated the types of action that are required if libraries are to contribute to their full potential. In particular we have commented on quality assurance and inspection and we reiterate our offer to work with Government and the new inspectorates to develop effective guidelines for the inspection of libraries (or learning resource centres). The Library Association will also be pleased to elaborate further on the other points made in this response if required, or to assist in any other appropriate way as the professional body for library and information specialists in the UK.

Note

The Library Association is the professional body for library and information specialists in the UK. It has 26,000 members working in all sectors of economy - in schools, colleges and Higher Education Institutions; in healthcare and Government; in business, commerce, industry and the media; in learned and professional societies; and in public library services, the voluntary sector and cultural organisations. Under the terms of its Royal Charter it has, amongst other obligations, a duty to promote the better management of library and information services, to facilitate the development of the knowledge and skills of its members, to encourage the appropriate provision of library and information services in all sectors, and to scrutinise legislation and other proposals of Government and the policies and actions of other bodies.