Management of adult education: LEA sector

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Management of adult education: the LEA sector

Arthur K. Stock, National Institute of Adult Education

It is fashionable in educational management, these days, to identify two distinct nodes of operation in which the LEA manager finds himself operating. The one, and by far the more frequent, is regulatory management, i.e. the interpretation of existing frameworks of statute, regulation (and sometimes case-law) and the devising of operational programmes which reflect the optimum outcome able to be achieved within this pre-determined framework. It is usual, especially on management courses to bemoan the excessive demands of time and energy involved in this aspect of the work. It is especially irksome at plant-management level (Centre/College Principal, F.E. College Head of Department) to have to engage in the substantial amount of organised feed-back - enrolment numbers, detailed breakdowns by age and subject, and the considerable financial accounting required on income and expenditure. The extension of the virement principal, as outlined later in this paper, although welcome as producing greater flexibility in plant or area operations, in many cases increases the load upon those in charge as it requires greater skill and application in cost-management than the former rigid column-by-column systems.

The alternative, more enjoyable, more rewarding mode is often described as creative management, i.e. the devising of new forms, styles, frameworks which upgrade the existing operations, redeploy resources more effectively or widen the scope and range of the services. One of the major aims of central or area educational management might well be to provide suitable frameworks (and preferably incentives) for plant and field managers and to maximise the productively creative and minimise the non-productive regulatory aspects of their works

An interesting development in modern LEA educational management thinking is the identification of the common-ground, a certain degree of unity of experience from the classroom to the director’s office. In the recent past educational administration had been much criticised for promoting good teachers to become indifferent managers. Certainly it does not follow that the charismatic spell-binder, the traditional chalk and talk, all-presentation, centre-stage teacher will automatically become an effective manager, however much he eagerly grasps the reins of power. By contrast, however, the modern teacher required to take up the roles of designer, promoter, conductor and evaluator of learning situations, with the consequent many and varied demands upon him (i.e. the manager of learning situations), is involved in many similar modes of thought and action to the modern services manager. The opportunity for creativity may be larger in the teaching situation, but the critical hard-line evaluation will probably be less than in the case of the college or whole LEA manager. In the experience of the writer, this managerial approach to curriculum development and new methodology when used in in-service training programmes, has been more productive than the former evangelical conversion approach.

The differentiation of role and function at the various managerial levels of LEA adult educational Services needs to be more carefully examined.

Classroom and learning group management. Much has been written and spoken in recent years about this crucial point of sale of educational services. Most of the literature, as so often is the case in education has referred to the school situation. The variations in the sector of adult education from the standard primary and secondary school models are very considerable:

  • the great majority of LEA teachers of adults are part-time only;
  • the full-tine tutorial staff nearly always have supervisory and quality control roles in addition to their direct teaching roles;
  • the classroom framework frequently assumes inappropriate parameters for considering the adult learning situation, particularly in the areas of community development, literacy work and social education;
  • the much discussed advantages and disadvantages of the ‘voluntary’ motivational factor and adult stereotypes respectively, alter the school classroom management model yet again.

Nevertheless much is expected (perhaps too much) of the part-time tutor and it behoves all the other types of management to provide the optimum support, servicing and maintenance at this vital operational level. One discerns, in some areas and at various stages of the professionalisation of adult education staffing, that there has been some neglect of these sustaining functions of management at plant and field level. And it is still an open question as to what is a realistic capability expectation for part-time tutors when the teaching role is such a small part of their life-activity. There is some evidence from in-service training course evaluation that the perceived status and importance of the teaching role is out of all proportion to the time involved many part-tine tutors regard their teaching stint as the most important and worthwhile part of their working lives.

Clearly, the increasing number and variation of LEA full-time tutorial and servicing staff (subject tutors, heads of centres, vice-principals and (vide Russell) educational development officers) will require a variety and upgrading of management patterns. There is, for example, already considerable evidence of the role-conflict experienced by detached workers in community development and youth service projects which might be resolved by a better formulation and understanding of objectives - not least by elected member employers as well as workers. Amongst special subject tutors the stress in terns of tine and priority between the direct teaching and supervisory roles at this present stage of development of the service, is a continual problem and it is accentuated by the large numbers and fairly high turn-over of part-time staff.

Area and plant management levels. I consider these together as they are often the province of one full-time manager (area, principal, HOD in F.E. College or HOD/Department Head in community school.) At the present tine, I discern a concentration on the latter (i.e. plant) rather than former level of management. Many area principals have been recruited from the ranks of the better part-time centre heads, and their style and frame of reference in the new full-tine appointment is frequently conditioned by the limitations of the former role. Again the inability or unwillingness of LEAs to make replacement part-tine appointments as evening centre heads of out-centres, or to appoint more full-tine supporting managers produces an extended regulatory style which tends to inhibit creative nanaa0nent functions such as curriculum development, sensitivity to community needs and methodological innovation. Following the secondment of this type of staff to university advanced diploma courses there can be added frustrations as the taking aboard of new concepts and the defining of new objectives underlines all the more the management deficiencies in personal ability and resources.

But in other cases the university experience can trigger off latent managerial ability, as important objectives are more clearly perceived, and appropriate action follows. Nevertheless, the managerial and operational implications of these new insights engendered by the diploma work need to be carefully considered; and, if possible, suitable managerial skills should be built in to the courses.

Recent reforms in the disposition of finance to LEA area adult educational organisations have increased the load on area managers. Extended virement, student-staff overall ratio systems, membership schemes, block grants and deficiency payment schemes related to fee-income targets, although aimed at greater operational flexibility, transfer a greater degree of cost-control management onto the area and away from the LEA control bureaucracy. In spite of this most of these schemes have been welcomed by adult educators for their intrinsic merits, and the extra work has been shouldered uncomplainingly. In the better authorities, as a second stage of central management support, a much better scale of ancillary clerical staffing has been achieved which has eased the burden on professional staff.

Three other aspects of area management are frequently identified, usually by their inoperation rather than their strength:

  • student member participation in government, curriculum design and social life of the organisation;
  • staff development;
  • quality control and evaluation.

Whilst the ‘man-and-a-boy’ organisational basis for area management persists, it is not possible to undertake all these important functions and to maintain the required level of regulatory supervision and the necessary returns to central management. The delegation of these and other important management activities to suitably recruited full-time staff can make enormous difference to the quality of the service.

LEA central management of adult education. An obvious difference from commercial management with which the LEA educational manager has to cope, is the close relationship with a committee of elected members, the consequently frequent examination of his ideas and performance by people unfamiliar with the aims and infrastructure of the service and the public accountability for all types of expenditure. An important skill of the successful educational manager is his ability to ‘sell’ his schemes to these elected members, or as some prefer to put it, to educate his masters. Increasingly, he has to involve the treasurer’s department at an early stage in the evolution of any innovation, as the room for manoeuvre, financially speaking, is so very small. The greater part of educational finance is spoken for long before the money is raised, and management can do very little to control or redirect this central mass of expenditure which is tied to nationally agreed salaries for a labour intensive service fulfilling the statutory requirements for school places.

Immediately one considers the educational services for post-school leaving age people, the situation changes drastically. Although the Education Act requires authorities to provide services of further and adult education, the specification is not based on a requirement in law for any given person to attend such services. Consequently, the discretionary element of LEA provision comes into its own. Unfortunately, the financial strictures of central government applied through limitations on the Rate Support Grant and through other fiscal devices puts even more pressure on these discretionary sectors of provision as compared to the school sectors. In spite of this, the momentum achievement in the vocational FE sector following the 1956 White Paper has been considerable; and during the 1960s the consequent reorganisation and upgrading of FE work had beneficial side-effects for adult education which were exploited in many authorities. This growth ceased abruptly in the ‘freeze’ in 1967-68-69, when adult education was singled out for financial cuts, restrictive regulations and increased fees. Managerially speaking, this difficult period produced certain benefits, at least in those authorities where there were imaginative, active officers able to devote time to reconsider the whole purpose and form of the service and to design new schemes to meet the changed conditions. Some of these (Study Card, variable staff-student ratio schemes, annual block grant or deficiency payment schemes) have already been mentioned. All of them have the common objectives to transfer more management responsibility and flexibility to the local area or centre whilst maintaining cost ceilings and general regulatory frameworks aimed at whole-authority service objectives.

Much discussion has occurred recently about the possibility of expending Planned Programme Budgeting Systems to education. In the field of adult education for the disadvantaged this approach could be of particular value, providing the outputs were realistically based on what is measurable (e.g. ratio of physically handicapped involved to total number known to exist - and many categories would require ‘weightings’ relating to difficulty of involvement). Even in the general education field some writers (e.g. Birley) regard this approach as more reasonable than the apparently uncontrollable juggernaut ‘advance’ of school education costs. In the long run Planned Programme Budgeting Systems may serve the political dimension of an educational managers work rather bettor than the present system with its annual increnenta1 budgeting system and the annual unseemly interdepartmental squabble.

So the role of the LEA central adult education manager is not an easy one, although an exciting and skilful one in certain authorities. Clearly there is a threshold of resources below which it is impossible to produce a community orientated service. If we are not to see an even more uneven distribution of educational opportunity in the years to come, the Russell Committee’s recommendations for clear ministerial guidance to all LEAs and the rewording of the Act, must be implemented. Without those minima1 resources, especially in the poorer Authorities, the new objectives as spelt out in the Report will be difficult if not impossible to attain even with the best efforts at co-operation. Equally, LEA managers have to learn much more about co-operative structures, to estimate the strengths and weaknesses, their assets and liabilities.

That they, the managers, have much to learn is gradually being accepted by their seniors, their elected members and even themselves. The question mark still regains as to the relevant learning situations available to them.

Reproduced from 1973 Conference Proceedings, pp. 1-4  SCUTREA 1997