Learning: For All. For Life. A report from the Independent Review of Community Learning and Development (CLD)

Conclusion

Answering the Questions

As a reminder, the Minister asked me to provide recommendations in relation to:

1. Effective and consistently measured outcomes delivered through CLD and reported across the sector. This includes data on the CLD workforce, engagement opportunities and outcomes for learner.

2. Delivering positive outcomes and improved life chances for marginalised and vulnerable learners in communities, in the context of wider education reform and public finance constraints.

3. A strong and suitably professionalised CLD workforce equipped to deliver high quality outcomes for learners.

I can say, without hesitation, that there is strong evidence showing that CLD is delivering positive outcomes and improved life chances for marginalised and vulnerable learners up and down the country. With the recommendations set out in this report, I am confident it can do even more. To help us ensure that it does, action needs to be taken to develop a clear and consistent framework of outcomes, together with a more standardised approach to reporting on those outcomes across the country. All of this can only be done with a workforce of staff and volunteers, who are clear on the standards expected of them, and supported to ensure that they can meet those standards.

Plus ça change...

Reading through the many accounts setting out the history and development of CLD from 1975, I was struck by the recurrent concerns expressed over the situation it faced, both in terms of provision/service and profession. Even more striking was the substantial overlap between issues identified in the past and those impacting on CLD today. The short time given for doing this review meant that I had to develop my framework for gathering evidence in parallel to progressively immersing myself in the history of the sector. Deciding to frame the review against the four key themes: Visibility/ Awareness; Availability/Accessibility; Learning/ Support; and Progression/Pathways, turned out to have mapped well onto what I was learning about the challenges this sector has faced for quite some time. Sporadic strategic leadership. Lack of clarity of purpose and policy cohesion. Poorly resourced and fragmented delivery infrastructure. Overly dependent on annualised and short-term project funding, making it difficult to undertake long-term planning. Lack of parity of esteem and the challenge of 'professionalising' a sector where so much delivery depends on volunteers. The absence of a shared framework to measure and report on the positive outcomes we know that CLD delivers. All have featured regularly in the CLD discourse since the 1970s and are central to what I have learned through this review of the current landscape.

On a far more positive note, those working and volunteering in the sector remain resolute in their conviction about the role that the CLD 'approach', underpinned by a set of values, ethics and principles, can play in tackling the challenges faced by many of those who need the most support. That conviction is universally backed by the messages from learners received as part of this review and the research evidence of what works. I was heartened – and pleasantly surprised – to see the extent of engagement from learners in the online survey and was often moved by the deeply personal individual stories I heard in the learner focus groups explaining how services transform lives for the better and for some it's a 'life-saver'. It all lends weight to the already strong arguments in support of CLD.

Why it's time to act and to keep going

So, if the challenges and the positives are relative constants, what has changed in order to lead me to conclude that immediate and sustained attention is required? Speaking to many of the front-line professionals and volunteers, some of whom have worked in the sector for decades, I got a sense of an existential crisis. A prolonged period of extremely difficult budgets, and all that goes with it, together with an increasing demand and widening scope for where CLD can provide support, have the potential to create a 'perfect storm', a 'tipping point' of potential collapse of a sector that has never enjoyed the investment that would provide the stability and recognition it merits.

In an ideal world, there would be early and significant additional financial resource made available to the sector, but we know that is unrealistic in the current budget context. However, the policy rhetoric about the need to address the attainment gap in educational outcomes, due to the impact of poverty, needs to be backed up by a fairer distribution of existing budget resources. Scotland has been rightly proud of its education system, its schools, Colleges and Universities, with a strong focus on and investment in the formal education sector, which has historically benefited from 99% of all public expenditure on Education.

Unfortunately, investment in the 'informal' education sector seems to be an afterthought, even though we've known since the early 1970's that not all individuals thrive within the formal education system. The evidence demonstrates that those with additional support needs, or from more marginalised communities, require access and support to alternative CLD provision that potentially more readily meets their needs and lifelong learning goals. CLD offers this. I would argue that there needs to be greater equity of resource distribution within a joined up formal and informal lifelong learning system that gives parity of esteem to those being educated as well as educators.

Furthermore, as I hope my recommendations make clear, there are steps that can be taken to help address some of the current challenges and to put the sector onto a more stable footing for the future. Many will seem familiar to those who have been around CLD for a while. That's fine – it simply reflects the fact that previous attempts to 'fix' the problems have not been sustained. For me it is the need for clarity of purpose and sustained strategic leadership that is key. This is required at national and regional levels, as well as more locally. Indeed, the examples of where CLD works at its best all note the importance of collaborative strategic leadership.

As I'm sure most of those who have produced similar independent reviews in the past will recognise, a regular fear throughout this process is that the finished review report sits on a shelf and the recommendations go nowhere. If that happens in this case because my review falls short in some critical way, then I apologise in advance. However, the scale of engagement and the extent of the evidence presented, make me confident that this report presents an accurate picture of the strengths and challenges across CLD. I am also confident that my recommendations flow logically from that. It is now for the Minister to consider them – and I'm pleased that he has committed to do so alongside CoSLA and I would hope that he would want to engage with key stakeholders too – and then decide what happens next. If the Minister accepts the recommendations, then I would caution everyone to not expect to see the problems facing CLD disappear overnight. There is likely to be a prolonged journey to put CLD onto a firmer footing and to deal with the legacy of recent years. Maintaining focus, measuring progress and minimising further disruption are likely to be essential.

Nevertheless, I sincerely hope that anyone looking at the CLD landscape on the 60^th anniversary of the Alexander Report in 2035 will see that the challenges highlighted in this report have been successfully addressed, and that the potential for CLD to be doing even more in helping to deliver positive outcomes for many of Scotland's most marginalised and vulnerable communities has been fully recognised and acted upon.

It will take sustained strategic leadership to get us to the above position by 2035, and I hope the evidence gathered during this review shows why that's an important goal for us all. I noted in the introduction about the Scottish Parliament being an important difference between the Scotland of the 1970s and the Scotland of today. It too needs to be involved in this process, which is why my recommendations include providing regular updates to it on progress in following-up this review.

Concluding Remarks

So much of 1970s Scotland has long since gone, and sometimes our sense of nostalgia can perhaps blind us to the fact that much of this change will have been positive. Nevertheless, the persistence of some of the country's most acute economic and social problems remains striking. In communities up and down Scotland, from rural and island areas through to ex-Council housing estates in or around our towns and cities, dedicated and committed CLD staff and volunteers are doing all they can to help people in need to identify that need, before working with them to agree on how they can best go about meeting it. Often, they are doing so under difficult circumstances and in inadequate settings. For those who are paid to do it, the financial reward compares poorly with similarly qualified or experienced counterparts in other services. For many within the sector the real reward is to see the progress being made by the learners. Often this won't be clear to the learner at the time. I often heard learners and practitioners speak of the 'lightbulb moment', when a learner recognises – possibly many years after being involved with a Youth Group or Adult Learning class, etc – that the positives in their current lives (or perhaps the absence of negatives) can be traced back to their CLD learning. The learner is responsible for the change, but the CLD worker has facilitated it.

As I’ve said before, CLD is not a ‘silver bullet’ to deal with the complex problems that have featured throughout this report, and I apologise if my enthusiasm for what it can and does contribute has inadvertently given that impression at times. The past few months have been a real roller-coaster of emotions as I’ve had the privilege of undertaking this review: sadness that there are still too many people in Scotland who are struggling to survive; fear that the current cost of living crisis and accumulated impacts of austerity are making things worse; alarm that we appear to have neglected a key tool effective in helping tackle those problems; and, pride that there are inspiring professionals and volunteers prepared to ‘go the extra mile’ to help those who need our help the most.

"People here understand what it is like to be me and I meet people here who are like me and I have got to know them well."

Young person

As the work of this review draws to a close, my overriding emotion is hope. It's a hope engendered by the examples set by the learners I have met and listened to. Their strength, stamina and commitment in identifying, meeting and overcoming difficult challenges is a lesson to us all!