RAISING STANDARDS IN FE

Raising Standards In FE

Raising Standards In FE

INTRODUCTION

Even though formal education is observed to have a strong influence on adult literacy proficiency, there are a number of other factors that may also play an important role in the acquisition, development, maintenance, or even depreciation of literacy proficiency throughout the lifespan. This is evidenced by the imperfect relationship that is observed between education and literacy. Such factors can include those that are associated with one's social and cultural context, individual characteristics such as one's health status, age, gender and motivation as well as current and previous experiences. These factors are not unrelated, however, social, cultural and individual factors are thought to strongly influence and define learning contexts as well as the nature and manner in which individuals interact with their environment

A high quality and responsive further education sector is essential if we are to realise our ambitions of strengthening UK economic performance and transforming the life chances of millions of people. Further education is unique in operating across society, having a real impact on businesses, young people and adults, including those from disadvantaged and minority communities. Traditionally, the concern of FE policy has been with public FE systems, but the questions to be addressed in this paper are whether or not lifelong teaching and learning lends itself to the same kind of analysis. In what sense is lifelong teaching and learning a public FE system, or to what extent could traditional policy analysis treat it as though it were? Is lifelong teaching and learning a policy for public FE at all, or is it rather part of a global trend towards the dismantling of the public sector? (Chapman:Aspin:2005:10)

The discipline of policy analysis, ever since its earliest classic texts such as that of Marshall has paid little attention to FE, and concerned itself exclusively with provisions of the welfare state such as health care, social security, housing and community services (Chapman:Aspin:2000:2). This continues to be largely the case. Even today, social policy pays scant attention to FE amongst its more contemporary concerns such as crime, gender or multiculturalism.

The fact is that FE, for whatever reason, has been seen to be something set apart from the welfare state, and its policies analysed in a quite separate and extensive body of theory and research. This although commonsense might suggest that the FE system constitutes one of the most important mechanisms of social redistribution and social justice which a welfare state entails. (Alheit:Kammler:2007:1) What this suggests is the arbitrariness and instability of the divisions between what have been described as the "foundation disciplines" of social theory. In FE, for example, these have usually been thought of as philosophy, psychology and sociology.

Policy analysis is not a foundation discipline in this sense: its origins are entirely contingent on the fate of the welfare state, the so-called "crisis" of which in many countries is now the primary focus of attention, and in which, as will be suggested, lifelong teaching and learning itself may be ...