Commission for the Land-based Learning Review minutes: December 2021

Attendees and apologies

Commission

• Liz Barron-Majerik
• Ishabel Bremner
• Bernard Chisholm
• Rachel Cowper
• Steven Grier
• George Jamieson
• Heather Jones
• Lesley Laird
• Andy Leitch
• Gail Robertson
• David Thomson

Scottish Government

• Amanda Fox
• Muriel Mackenzie

Apologies

Commission

• Chris Brodie
• Jamie Newbold
• Amy Jo Reid
• Claudia Rowse
• James Wylie

Items and actions

Mapping the policy landscape (paper one)

The Secretariat introduced the policy mapping exercise they had undertaken with Scottish Government colleagues. It will help to inform the relative timings of bringing particular Commission workstreams forward to enable them to feed into policy at key points and ensure that the work of the Commission is being informed in a timely manner by policy outputs from other areas. The Commission agreed this will be a very useful exercise in scoping out and delivering the review.

Commission work priorities (paper two)

The Commission agreed that its work would be broken into four main areas:

• defining barriers
• dialogue
• solutions
• recommendations

This meeting focused on the initial stage of defining barriers, which will focus on identifying, gathering and where necessary commissioning evidence to reach a clear understanding of the principal issues that underpin the need for change to aid delivery of the Land-Based Learning Review’s outputs. During the first meeting of the Commission members identified a range of barriers in learning pathways that impact on people entering the land based sectors. These barriers were brigaded into 5 themes:

• awareness and perception
• delivery
• exposure
• place
• structure

At this meeting the Commission looked at these themes in more detail, drilling down into the barriers and to begin to identify areas for further exploration and any gaps in evidence which could inform research. Members explored what questions should be asked to identify the principal barriers and challenges for each theme, relevant to stages in the learning pathways. Each theme is being developed into a work stream.

Further actions on workstreams, following this meeting are:

•  identifying workstream leads and group members
• meeting (virtually) between Commission meetings
• agreeing mechanisms to report back to the Commission on workstream activity

Stakeholder engagement

Commission members discussed how, when and who to engage with as part of the review. They recognised that it is essential to seek evidence from a broad range of stakeholders including those that provide learning opportunities and those that use different aspects of the sectors learning pathways. They agreed that initial stakeholder engagement should take place in Spring 2022. Commission members shared initial suggestions for engagement and agreed this will be taken forward through the workstream groups. The Commission, supported by the secretariat will establish an engagement plan to enable them to seek views from a wide range of stakeholders with an interest in the area.

Secretariat update

Members noted that a Knowledge Hub group has been set up as a private space for discussion, sharing Commission papers, research and policy documents.

The Secretariat is compiling a list of potential Knowledge Circle members to support Commission workstreams and this information will be shared via the Knowledge Hub.

Actions and next steps

Secretariat will share policy mapping document via the Commission’s Knowledge Hub group

• the secretariat will prepare a draft engagement plan for stakeholder consultation and share with the Commission
• Commission members agreed to indicate to the secretariat which workstream groups they wish to lead or join, based on the themes agreed at agenda item 4. Members have the opportunity to join more than one workstream group