Personal and Community Development Learning (Pcdl)

PERSONAL AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT LEARNING (PCDL)

GUIDANCE FOR USING THE IMPACTS FRAMEWORK

CONTENTS

Introduction 4

Who is the Guidance for? 4

What does it offer? 5

Section A

What is PCDL? 6

Context and purpose 6

PCDL in practice 7

PCDL planning partnerships 8

Why have an Impacts Framework? 9

Why focus on the wider impact of learning? 9

Telling the ‘story’ of learning 9

Pinpointing the value of PCDL to other services 10

Wider public service reform 10

Recognising public value 10

Section B

What is the Impacts Framework? 11

Figure 1 – PCDL Impacts Framework 12

How do we use it? 13

Interpreting the Impacts Framework: Purpose 14

Interpreting the Impacts Framework: Indicators 15

Key impacts 16

Value for money 16

Collecting evidence 17

Consistency 17

How will the evidence be reported? 18

Section C

Suggestions box 19

Additional features 19

Additional uses 19

Section D

Strategic connections: relevant Frameworks and guidance 21

Frameworks 21

Figure 2 – Framework headings 21

Figure 3 – Framework headings aligned 22

Guidance 23

Section E

Case study 24

Cherry Tree Project 24

Section F

Useful sources 27

Printed Sources 27

Websites 28

Appendix 1

Indicative range of impacts 29

Appendix 2

PCDL Implementation: projected timetable 31

PERSONAL AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT LEARNING (PCDL)

GUIDANCE FOR USING THE IMPACTS FRAMEWORK

Introduction

This Guidance is issued on behalf of the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) National Office and relates to the use of a new Impacts Framework designed to capture the wider impact of Personal and Community Development Learning (PCDL). It is the culmination of a three-phase development process for the Impacts Framework, including field-testing in LSC regions.

The Guidance addresses two fundamental questions.

·  What is the Impacts Framework useful for?

·  How can it be used easily within the scope of existing capacity?

Answers to both are provided through a combination of practice-based advice, examples and ideas.

Who is the Guidance for?

The Guidance is intended for use by:

·  LSC local Partnership Managers, together with other LSC staff responsible for PCDL at area or regional level;

·  members of PCDL planning partnerships[1];

·  providers of PCDL across the Further Education (FE) system – FE colleges, local authorities (in direct or commissioned delivery), voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations, social/private enterprise-based/independent training providers or consortia;

·  PCDL partners from other public services, such as sports, culture and youth services, and Primary Care Trusts (PCTs); and

·  other parties interested in PCDL, including community groups and local residents.

Its structure allows for the possibility that these constituencies may need different levels and types of advice and support, although this is not assumed. Comprehensive contextual and practical information is offered through sections organised by a series of logical questions and clear sub-headings, so readers can find the material most relevant to them quickly and easily.

What does it offer?

Section A - explains the origins and particular purposes of PCDL provision, and the rationale and policy context of the Impacts Framework.

Section B - concentrates on the structure and main functions of the Impacts Framework: planning and assessment.

Section C - offers a ‘Suggestions Box’ of ideas (gathered during field testing) for other, potential functions for the Impacts Framework.

Section D – outlines the strategic connections between the Impacts Framework and other relevant Frameworks and guidance.

Section E – offers a case study of the use of the Impacts Framework (during field testing) as an assessment tool.

Section F - lists useful sources (printed and web based).

Appendices 1 – provides a table of indicative, measurable wider impacts of PCDL provision.

Appendix 2 – sets out a projected timetable for PCDL arrangements and funding allocations.

SECTION A

What is PCDL?

Context and purpose

PCDL is part of a budget for adult safeguarded learning that reflects a “strong” government commitment to support learning for personal fulfilment, civic participation and community development[2], or learning that falls outside the priorities of the Skills Strategy, reiterated in the Leitch review.[3]

The total safeguard is fixed at £210 million annually (2006-08) allocated across four programmes:

·  Personal and Community Development Learning (PCDL) (£153 million);

·  Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities (NLDC) (£20 million);

·  Family Literacy, Language and Numeracy (FLLN) (£25 million); and

·  Wider Family Learning (WFL) (£12 million).

Each of these has specific guidance and reporting lines. This Guidance relates to the use of the Impacts Framework for PCDL and does not necessarily apply to the other programmes. However, PCDL partnerships may choose to apply it more widely, if this fits with local arrangements.

The LSC’s Single Statement of Requirements, sets out the agreed definition of PCDL:

(PCDL) is learning for personal development, cultural enrichment, intellectual or creative stimulation and enjoyment. It is also learning developed with local residents and other learners to build the skills, knowledge and understanding for social and community action. There is no requirement that learners must necessarily progress to other learning or achieve accreditation….This approach also recognises the wider benefits of learning in the community, including its contribution to broader government policies such as health (mental and physical well-being) and community cohesion[4].

It also identifies several underpinning principles.

·  There should be a wide range of high quality, challenging and inspiring programmes.

·  Access to PCDL programmes should be for everyone and not be based on prior educational attainment.

·  Most learners will be expected to contribute some or all of the cost of their learning.

·  Greatest access to public funding for PCDL should be for those in most financial need and who have benefited least from education.

PCDL in practice

PCDL encompasses a rich mixture of curriculum content, settings, learners, outcomes, course lengths, and purposes. These will be familiar to many as characteristic of Adult and Community Learning (ACL) – the precursor to PCDL and other elements of the adult safeguard. It operates on a mixed economy of:

·  fee payment with fee concessions and/or bursaries (e.g. part-time day and evening classes and courses for people who want to learn for interest, personal enrichment, health and well-being);

·  low fee with fee concessions and/or bursaries (e.g. outreach and taster courses of all kinds to engage more excluded and uncertain learners);

·  unlikely to be fee bearing but funding shared between learning providers and their partners from other services/agencies with resources (e.g. learning developed with and for community groups, residents and local parents, around their issues and aspirations, and learning that meets other PSA targets, for example, around health, recycling, and community safety); and

·  may not be fee bearing, depending on individual organisational policies (e.g. less formal activity with learning at its heart, such as local history or art history walks, health promotion events, and museum workshops).

On the ground, PCDL programmes might include:

·  cultural studies – art or music history and appreciation, architecture, social, economic or local history, genealogy, languages;

·  arts and crafts – singing, painting, playing an instrument, pottery, furniture making, sugar craft, DIY skills;

·  physical activity – gardening, yoga, walking, dance;

·  community and democratic renewal/development – union representation, committee skills, campaigning and advocacy, cultural diversity, community research, mediation and conflict resolution, community arts, welfare rights, political literacy; and

·  personal development – confidence building, skills for independent living, skills to support access to work or learning, non-accredited Skills for Life and ICT skills, relaxation, and stress management.

Individual and collective learner development is a core expectation of all PCDL programmes. However, fundamental to the PCDL ‘vision’ is an understanding that this learning has an additional, wider value “for the physical, intellectual and emotional well being of our society and for community cohesion”[5]

PCDL planning partnerships

The government’s Further Education White Paper (2006)[6] outlined new arrangements for planning and funding PDCL. Central to these are ‘LSC-involved’[7] multi-agency local partnerships. Their precise composition is left to local discretion but they are expected to include:

·  the main local PCDL providers;

·  VCS bodies engaged in learning; and

·  other agencies and organisations with remits aligned to the scope of PCDL, such as libraries, museums, sports and leisure services, Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), and faith groups.

They are also expected to take account of learners’ views, drawn through either learner representation or an explicit consultation strategy including both current and potential learners.

Partnerships are primarily for planning and mutual exchange. Their roles are likely to include:

·  mapping PCDL-type activity in their area, identifying significant gaps;

·  undertaking collaborative planning, at least for the core parts of the publicly-funded offer;

·  encouraging partners to align or pool funding;

·  levering in additional resources;

·  monitoring, using national and (partnership-developed) local indicators;

·  ensuring LSC funding is focused primarily on disadvantaged learners;

·  ensuring all data is completed and returned on time; and

·  reviewing “ their collective performance over the year in ensuring there is a wide range of high quality, challenging and inspiring PCDL provision locally, and begin to form a view on the impact and social value of such provision.”[8]

The Impacts Framework will be useful to partnerships in delivering many of these functions, but particularly the latter.

The LSC is expected to take account of partnership planning in its arrangements for commissioning PCDL, ensuring this is not planned in isolation from the rest of adult learning. The final PCDL allocations to providers will be determined by the LSC, which holds the budget.

Why have an Impacts Framework?

A PCDL Task Group (consisting of a number of stakeholders including DIUS (formerly DfES and LSC) was set up to advise on strategy for this area of work, including the development of the management information and reporting requirements. It recommended a two-part approach. – national and local.

National - key performance indicators (KPIs) are to be applied nationally to the PCDL element of the safeguarded budget. These will be derived from data currently collected via the Individual Learner Record (ILR) from providers funded already by the LSC. Where possible, this will be augmented by data on PCDL-type activity funded through other public sources, such as Department of Health (DoH), or Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Work is ongoing to develop the KPIs.

Local - local evaluation of PCDL activity is to be based on an agreed framework that will disclose, amongst other things, the wider impact and public value of investment in this area. The Impacts Framework and this Guidance are intended to deliver this second strand.[9]

The agreed principles underpinning both national and local arrangements require the reporting regimes to be:

·  proportionate to the size of the safeguard;

·  congruent with other information regimes, including the Common Inspection Framework and Framework for Excellence;

·  expressed in clear language;

·  understandable by organisations unfamiliar with LSC ways of working, and for whom adult learning is not their primary aim (such as health, sport and cultural services); and

·  of minimal bureaucracy.

Why focus on the wider impact of learning?

Telling the ‘story’ of learning

The Impacts Framework’s focus on the wider benefits of PCDL may seem unfamiliar, particularly to LSC staff more accustomed to performance assessment based on aggregated quantitative data. In contrast, wider impacts are unpredictable, more subjective, and difficult to measure. Assessing them therefore involves judgements based on diverse sources of evidence that are often qualitative in nature. Compiling and analysing such material can be problematic[10], but doing so will provide the government, LSC, partnerships, providers and other interested services and agencies (including service users and potential learners), with a more powerful and enlightening ‘story’ about the complex value of learning, and – given its purposes - of PCDL in particular. Nurturing these benefits was described by the Adult Learning Inspectorate, in its survey report, Unqualified Success (2005), as a “golden thread” running through much adult learning.[11]

Pinpointing the value of PCDL to other services

The recognition in the White Paper (2006) of the civilising and enriching civic, social and personal consequences of learning reflects an historical weight of qualitative evidence and learning theory. Since 1999, the work of the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning has given additional authority to such conclusions. Its findings confirm that participation in adult learning is an important force for beneficial change in a range of areas: smoking, exercise, life satisfaction, race tolerance, authoritarian attitudes, political cynicism, political interest, number of organisational memberships and voting behaviour[12].

A method of capturing this at local level (through the Impacts Framework) is of potential interest not just to education providers, but also to public services focusing on health, well-being, community cohesion and democratic renewal. Pinpointing the contribution of PCDL to their objectives and PSA targets could help to lever additional funding and identify the relevance of PCDL to other planning processes, for example, Local Area Agreements (LAAs) (see Section D). Interestingly, the research suggests that taking non-vocational courses impacts on a much broader range of outcomes than either vocational or academic courses leading to accreditation.

Wider public service reform

Capturing the social as well as individual value of PCDL should also be viewed in the context of the government’s overarching public service reforms. Here, the drive towards maximising the return on public investment is not just to improve the bottom line. It reflects also a desire to tackle social exclusion through more appropriate and targeted services, and the achievement of a public consensus about how to prioritise competing needs. In this context, calculations of value for money become more holistic (including social value), and therefore more complex (see Section B).

Recognising public value

The kind of performance analysis offered by the Impacts Framework aligns with a growing body of thinking on public value. This asserts that economic, social and environmental well-being are legitimate considerations in public service assessments (along with more familiar target-based data). It highlights the importance of endorsement and support by service users and their communities. Evidence gathered by using the Impacts Framework as an assessment tool will augment the learner feedback all providers are now required to gather through a developing range of consultation methods linked to the responsiveness dimension in the Framework for Excellence[13].