This Month's Contents

Next year's conference title and venue announced

With delegates from every part of the UK and beyond, York St John University proved a fantastic host for this year's annual conference. Both new and regular conference attendees agreed this was a really memorable FACE conference. We would like to thank again the Vice Chancellor and the York conference team for all their work in organising the conference.

The opening keynote session comprised of an excellent presentation from York St John Vice Chancellor Professor Dianne Willcocks during which she not only warmly welcomed delegates but also provided a detailed overview of the university and its mission in the context of York and nationally.

The FACE Chair Professor John Storan followed and he briefly outlined the broader context for FACE members and their institutions noting the progress report from the UK against the Lisbon objectives and also making reference to the recommendations and conclusions from the recent NAO report on WP and the implications these might have for HE access and participation. More information on the Lisbon report can be found in John's Chair's report to members on the website.

"Best conference I have been to for as long as I can remember. I understand next year's conference is at Staffordshire University and on the evidence of this year I will be booking as soon as possible . . . . "

The keynote on the closing day was one of the most popular of the entire event when Professor Stuart Billingham, Pro-Vice Chancellor of York St. John University, spoke on "Challenging Rural Isolation: building partnerships for lifelong learning".

The Gala Dinner this year was a particularly impressive one because of the splendid surroundings of the Merchant Adventurers Hall in York, the Medieval hall of the company of Merchant Adventurers, built between 1357 and 1361, which is said to be the finest building of its date and type in Europe.

"A really memorable conference. Excellent keynotes, impressive and wide ranging workshop sessions and a social programme which included dinner in a historic building . . ."

As a member-oriented organisation FACE would like to invite individual colleagues to have their say on any issue of concern in UK education policy and practice. This is a purely personal point of view and should not be thought to represent any institution, organisation, or official body. To have your say, email James.Tate@uwe.ac.uk

This month's contribution is from Paul Grainger, who fears for the future of further education. Here's why.

"I’ve spent my professional life trying to dodge the messes spilt from the unintended consequences of policy.

Now I fear for the future of Further Education: the sector concerned with access, training and the second chance.  FE is a mite beset. Strategic responsibility for 14-19 is passing to Local Authorities with their knee jerk favouring of sixth forms.  Decent ‘License to Practice’ courses are being diluted into bland vocationalism. The work force is being sanitised. This concerns me most.

FE Colleges are coherent entities: they do not fall into teen and adult portions. The weakening of one is a threat to the other. A great strength of FE has been its talented, varied workforce, bringing a passion for skills and craft, developed later in life, equally to teenagers and adult returners. These lecturers often have a rich past, a successful first career behind them, and a new desire to bring their skills to learners. When I wanted to employ a catering lecturer, I didn’t go to a teacher training college, I went to a restaurant. Many of these inspiring lecturers had a negative experience at school, and found new life chances through interacting with, and developing, their professional skills. They could look a disaffected teenager, or an apprehensive return to learning adult, in the eye and say, ‘Where you are now, so once was I’.

Now we have Lifelong Learning UK which insists on an apparatus of professional qualifications to be obtained within a strict timescale and peppered with the essays, tests and bibliographies that were a turn off at school. We have viciously probing CRB checks dredging up embarrassing and irrelevant details from the distant past. We have an imposed (not professional) body, the Institute for Learning, membership of which is compulsory for FE lecturers. This body proposes to require confession to all driving offences, including parking tickets.

Now it is just possible that the rich and colourful pasts I have valued may embrace having parked on a double yellow line. Faced with such barriers and potential embarrassment, many of those whose lives have been transformed by a rich love of their trade may respond with a colourful phrase at the thought of going into teaching.  Which is our loss.

I’m not looking for full deregulation: just the preservation of a culture which tolerates and promotes a second chance. I fear a sanitised future: empty college corridors smelling of dettol."

Paul Grainger,
Institute of Education, London
P.Grainger@ioe.ac.uk