Community Learning (formerly known as Informal Adult and Community Learning)
What is Community learning?
Community Learning describes a broad range of learning that brings together adults, often of different ages and backgrounds, to pursue an interest, address a need, acquire a new skill, become healthier or learn how to support their children. Community Learning is part of a rich tradition dating back to the early 19th century when it was delivered through family, community, social and religious organisations. Movements for the vote, trades unions, ‘mutual improvement societies’, cooperative societies, women’s suffrage groups, independent lending libraries and non-conformist religious groups all offered opportunities for adults to improve their chances in life. This kind of learning has gone by, and continues to go by, many different names - including adult education, adult and community learning, informal adult learning and personal and community development learning - during its long history.
Community Learning, usually unaccredited, is an important part of the wider learning continuum. It can be undertaken for its own sake or as a step towards other learning/training. It covers structured adult education courses taught by professionally qualified teachers, independent study online and self-organised study groups. Some learning will be in very short episodes and some takes place over a term, a year, or longer.
It may happen in personal or work time and be delivered by providers in the public, voluntary or private sectors, or organised by people for themselves through the many groups, clubs and societies where people get together to learn.
Who’s involved?
All sorts of individuals and organisations are actively involved in helping to make this kind of ‘non-formal’ and ‘informal ’ learning happen. Some people are paid but many others are volunteers. Some organisations are funded by the tax payer but many are not. Lots of local voluntary organisations and community networks deliver and support the non-formal and informal community learning found in libraries, museums, community centres, union learning centres, universities, extended schools, children’s centres, colleges and workplaces.
Many people learn in clubs and groups organised by their own members. We call this self-organised learning. There’s a dedicated website with lots of guidance, advice and resources to help people set up a self-organised group and keep it going. You can find the resource at www.selforganisedlearning.com. The Voluntary Arts Network has also produced a very useful toolkit, Running Your Group, that’s designed to answer the most common questions about setting up and running a voluntary arts group.
Public funding for informal learning
BIS supports Community Learning in England through its £210 million per year Community Learning budget. Historically, the budget funded four broad categories of learning:
• Personal and Community Development Learning
• Family Literacy, Language and Numeracy
• Wider Family Learning
• Neighbourhood Learning in Deprived Communities.
Since 2011-12, BIS-funded learning providers have received a single community learning funding allocation to enable them to use this budget more flexibly to meet local needs, while maintaining a balanced offer across their community.
BIS also supports ten Specialist Designated Institutions (SDIs) – colleges with a particularly long and rich tradition of attracting disadvantaged adults to non-formal adult learning, and other kinds of learning, in order to transform individual lives and benefit local communities. Many SDIs deliver community learning.
Other Government departments and local government also support this kind of activity, though it may not always be described as ‘learning’. They support museums, libraries, archives, sports activities, arts, culture, healthy living and environmental awareness, much of which involves grassroots learning activity. Local services, including activity to support citizenship, build stronger families, improve mental and physical wellbeing and raise environmental awareness, all contribute to a rich and diverse tapestry of community learning.
The 2011 Review
Community Learning supports many government agendas, including national wellbeing, community participation, digital inclusion, supporting families and healthy ageing. In November 2010, Skills for Sustainable Growth announced that the £210m Adult Safeguarded Learning budget would be protected, and reviewed to maximise its role in supporting these wider policy objectives and motivating people from disadvantaged groups to learn and progress.
Stakeholder involvement
The review began in Spring 2011, when BIS hosted seven policy roundtable meetings attended by invited representatives from key stakeholder organisations. The policy roundtables focused on specific areas for reform, including:
1. Access: looked at how we can engage and motivate disadvantaged groups including defining who our ‘disadvantaged’ people/groups are and eligibility for public funding. It also considered the role of intermediaries such as community learning champions and union learning reps.
2. Learning to support the Big Society: discussed models and types of IACL which support and enable people to play their part in the Big Society, such as getting involved in community decision making and planning, scrutinising public services, community organising and volunteering.
3. Progression: looked at ways of improving progression pathways towards the wider learning continuum including learning towards literacy, language and numeracy, community and family engagement, skills-focused training and employment
4. Infrastructure: considered key issues such as strategic leadership/planning at the local level, current and future providers of BIS-funded learning, voluntary sector involvement in outreach/delivery, linkages with other public services, self organised groups and the open spaces movement.
5. Funding: addressed a number of key issues around future funding for IACL including defining what should be ‘safeguarded’, fee policies, reforms to address historical inequalities in funding across areas/providers and reforms to Specialist Designated Institutions (SDIs) funding for informal learning.
6. Quality and workforce development: discussed how we define and assure quality in IACL and what training, qualifications and workforce development are appropriate.
7. Capturing impact, audit, data collection: discussed possible indicators of success, impact measurement and methods for collecting evidence.
In addition to the round tables we also held informal ‘thinking outside the box’ discussions to stimulate fresh thinking, challenge the status quo and look at creative community learning approaches.
Online consultation
On 16 August we launched a national consultation seeking the views of wider stakeholders and held four consultation meetings in different parts of England. The consultation closed on 21 October 2011 but you can still access the questions at www.bis.gov.uk/newchallenges. We received 185 responses from providers, representative groups and community organisations, as well as more than 6,000 responses from individuals to a companion ‘Citizen’s Survey’. In December 2011, BIS announced headline proposals for Community Learning in New Challenges, New Chances Further Education and Skills System Reform Plan: building a world class skills system, including:
• a new, clearer commitment to use the public funding subsidy to support access, and progression in its widest sense, for people who are disadvantaged, furthest from learning and least likely to participate.
• the piloting of different locally-based ‘community learning trust’ models in 2012/13 to channel BIS funding for community learning and lead the planning of local provision in cities, towns and rural settings.
The full response can be found at: www.bis.gov.uk/newchallenges.
On 11 April, the Community Learning Trust Pilot Prospectus was launched inviting community learning providers in receipt of an allocation from the £210m Community Learning budget to work in partnership with local organisations and others to put forward a proposal. Please see www.bis.gov.uk/community-learning-trust-pilots for further details.
1 ‘Non-formal’ learning sits in between (and overlaps) ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ learning and is increasing recognised alongside the concept of life-long learning by the OECD, EU and employers. See
Recognition of Non-formal and Informal learning
for a full explanation.
2 The Voluntary Arts Network comprises
Voluntary Arts England
,
Voluntary Arts Ireland
,
Voluntary Arts Scotland
,
Voluntary Arts Wales
and Voluntary Arts Link (the department set up to work with national voluntary arts umbrella bodies)
