Challenging Rural Isolation: Building Partnerships for Lifelong Learning

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Challenging Rural Isolation Building
Partnerships for Lifelong Learning

• Professor Stuart Billingham
• FACE Annual Conference
• 2-4 July 2008

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Lifelong Education

• ...adult education is a permanent national
  necessity, an inseparable aspect of citizenship,
  and therefore should be both universal and
  lifelong.
• Source Ministry of Reconstruction (1919) Final
  Report of the Adult Education Committee, London,
  HMSO, p.55 also quoted in Burke and Jackson
  (2007), p.13

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High Level Skills

• High level skills are not simply about knowledge
  and expertise, but also the intellectual capacity
  of the individual to apply them in a range of
  different and changing environments and to learn
  from the experience. The HE sector is able to
  develop the thinking workforce, working
  intelligently that employers are increasingly
  looking for
• Source HEFCE (2007), Higher Education
  Delivering on the Leitch Agenda, September, p25,
  p.9

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Individualisation

• Far more adult learning is being designed and
  developed by learners themselves. More people
  want to choose what, where, when and how they
  want to learn. New technologies make new ways of
  learning accessible, but the most radical
  possibilities are only just beginning to be
  understood
• Source DIUS (2008), Foreword, in Informal Adult
  Learning Shaping the Way Ahead, January, p.2

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Education Partnerships to Challenge Rural (and
other) Isolation

• Its happening everywhere.
• ..UHI Millennium
• ..Suffolk
• ..Cornwall
• ..Cumbria
• ..North Yorkshire?

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Building New Partnerships

• North Yorkshire a live case study
• The development of Universities North Yorkshire
  (UNY) or should it be HENY?
• The development of a new SPACE Centre NOT
  putting men or women on mars but Sustainable
  Partnerships And Community Engagement

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The Mission ?

• Find ways to better align and, where appropriate
  and possible, integrate existing partnerships to
  deliver demand-led lifelong learning in context

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Yorkshire Rural Academy
How can it help support delivery of the Sector
Skills Agreement?
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(No Transcript)
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Higher York The Lifelong Learning Networkfor
York North Yorkshire

• Core partners
• Askham Bryan College
• The University of York
• York College
• York St John University
• Craven College
• The City of York Council

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Aims

• Higher York aims to enable more people to
  progress into Higher
• Education in York by
• Developing curriculum and progression
  arrangements in the priority curriculum areas.
• Working with employers to identify and address
  higher level skills needs
• Linking up Information, Advice Guidance (IAG)
• Ensure vocational and work based learners have
  access to support
• Including the voice of the learner in planning

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Other Key Partnerships

• Aimhigher North Yorkshire
• Yorkshire Humber East Lifelong Learning Network
  (YHELLN)
• Learning City (York)
• North Yorkshire Learning partnership

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Rural Areas in North Yorkshire Districts
Scarborough
Richmondshire
Hambleton
Ryedale
Craven
Harrogate
York
Selby
Village, Hamlet and Isolated Dwellings
Town and fringe
Urban, more than 10,000 population
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POLAR 2007 Participation Quintiles
Scotton
Scarborough
Richmondshire
Hambleton
Ryedale
Craven
Harrogate
York (Westfield, Bootham)
York
Skipton
Tadcaster East
Selby
gt43 participation in HE
32 - 43 participation in HE
24 - 32 participation in HE
16 - 24 participation in HE
lt16 participation in HE
Source POLAR 2 www.hefce.ac.uk
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POLAR 2007 HE entrants from low social classes
Scarborough
Richmondshire
Hambleton
Ryedale
Craven
Harrogate
York
Selby
lt National average (26.2)
gt National average (26.2)
Source POLAR 2 www.hefce.ac.uk
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POLAR 2007 of population with low/no A-level
qualifications
Scarborough
Richmondshire
Hambleton
Ryedale
Craven
Harrogate
York
Selby
lt National average (50.2)
gt National average (50.2)
Source POLAR 2 www.hefce.ac.uk
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Rural Areas in North Yorkshire Districts plus
YSJ students
Scarborough
Richmondshire
Hambleton
Ryedale
Craven
Harrogate
York
Selby
Village, Hamlet and Isolated Dwellings
Town and fringe
YSJ Student
Urban, more than 10,000 population
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YSJ Students from North Yorkshire (1st June 2008)
by district
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Rural Advocate Report

• We need to find modern and appropriate responses
  to disadvantages of distance, weaknesses in
  service provision, ageing populations and
  environmental shocks (p.9)
• We should createnew partnerships to strengthen
  innovation. We need to develop new forms of
  brokerage, networks and clusters (p.3)
• Englands rural areas steps to release their
  potential, Advice from the Rural Advocate to the
  Prime Minister, Commission for Rural Communities,
  CRC67, May 2008

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SPACE Centre

• The physical co-location of key independent
  partnerships to encourage and stimulate enhanced
  and innovative lifelong learning developments
• Initially composed of Aimhigher, Learning City
  and Higher York with some staff from the
  University too

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UNY or HENY?

• An umbrella strategic partnership to help align
  individual institutional widening participation
  and lifelong learning strategies/delivery across
  North Yorkshire
• An initial focus on stretched CPD
• Partners at the table include Universities of
  Bradford, Open, YSJ, Teesside, York and Hull
  (through their LLNs) FE Colleges Selby,
  Craven, York and Askham Bryan Darlington
  (through Teesside)

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Outcome of the Student Experience
Graduates as Lifelong Knowledge- Producers
Graduates as Global Citizens
Graduates as Collaborative Learners