New Reports on HE in FE

Many foundation degrees are delivered at Further Education colleges and two recent reports provide new data and insights on teaching HE in FE. Inspiring Individuals: teaching higher education in a further education college by Madeleine King and John Widdowson has been published by the Higher Education Academy while Understanding Higher Education in Further Education Colleges by Gareth Parry, Claire Callender, Peter Scott and Paul Temple is a BIS research paper. Both make recommendations for developing practice that will be of interest.

Farewell FDF

FDF (Foundation Degree Forward) is set to close at the end of July. Those involved in developing and delivering Foundation Degrees will be aware of the help, support, advice and encouragement provided by FDF over the years. The achievement of the target of 100,000 learners enrolled on Foundation Degrees demonstrates the success of the qualification and its ability to provide attractive learning opportunities to a wide range of people. FDF has done a great job in spearheading this development and, like many others, I 'd like to thank all those involved in the organisation for this.

PSA Conference - London 2011

The Political Studies Association Annual Conference takes place in London next week. I will be chairing a panel on ‘Politics as a Professional Education’ which will include papers from Katherine Brown (Kings, London) on ‘A Learning Institution? The politics of Professional Military Education’ and Brid Quinn (Limerick) on ‘Reflection and research: reflection on research’. Other papers that are also of particular interest to those interested in work-based and experiential learning and the social sciences are Sarah Hale (Birkbeck, London) ‘Workplace Politics: Foundation Degrees in Local Government and the Public Sector’, David Bates (Canterbury Christchurch)‘Teaching Engagement’ and Annabel Kiernan (Manchester Met) ‘Connecting communities: Community Engagement and the Big Society at MMU’

Some recent QAA publications

The QAA has published an information bulletin summarising some of the findings from the IQER process relating to Foundation Degrees. While a significant number of areas of good practice and innovation are identified, areas around assessment, work-based learning, student support and public information continue to be areas in which significant scope for improvement is identified. As highlighted in the publication of another recent report by QAA Scotland ‘Making it work – a guidebook to work-based learning’ – the challenges of developing such learning are not unique to Foundation Degrees. There is much still to learn in all these areas.

The third most popular FD choice

HEFCE have just published the latest edition of Foundation degrees: Key Statistics. Much of the initial focus is on the overall number of students now enrolled on FDs - 99,475 - which is very close to the government's target for 2010-11.

Looking at the stats for subject areas Social Studies come in as the third most popular area for part-time students with 12% of 2008-09 entrants (behind Education and Business and Administrative Studies) and third for full-time students at 10% of entrants (behind Creative Arts and Design). No breakdown is given for the different areas of study within the Social Studies which includes economics, politics, sociology and social work.

Work-based learning survey

fdf has commissioned the Student Assessment and Classification Working Group (SACWG) to produce a Guide to good practice in the during 2010.

The Guide will include a series of examples of effective, different or innovative assessment that have been or are being used in this aspect of assessment of Foundation degree students. We are therefore interested in specific examples of assessment practice rather than assessment strategies and policies concerning how work-based learning is or should be assessed.

If you have an example of assessment practice that you would be willing to share with colleagues please complete the brief survey at:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=blMEa3qUMepm6dLrVfh8yg_3d_3d

Every example that is included in the Guide will be formally acknowledged with the name of the institution, the title of the Foundation degree concerned and the name of the contact.

If you have any questions about the Guide in particular, or about SACWG more generally, please contact Harvey Woolf at H.Woolf@wlv.ac.uk

Research and Foundation Degrees

A review of research literature relating to Foundation degrees has recently been published on the fdf website. I've not had a chance to read it all yet - but from what I have seen, it provides an excellent survey of publications up to the start of this year.

Lib Dems Call for Big Expansion of FDs

Last week the Lib Dems called for 50,000 more Foundation Degree places to be made available to help tackle unemployment among younger adults. Given that they estimate that around 82,000 students were enrolled on these courses in 2008/09, this is substantial commitment to expand numbers. The focus of the proposal is on the FE sector and the proposal specifically refers to “college based foundation degree places”. It is true that around two-thirds of FD students are taught at Further Education Colleges, but much FD provision (particularly for part-time students) is in the university sector and it is important that this is not overlooked. The Lib Dems also propose to make it easier for FECs to gain Foundation Degree awarding powers individually or collectively. My personal view is that the positive approach of the current government towards extending of awarding should be supported. However, I would fear that the scale of what the Lib Dems propose would put quantity before quality and put at risk the reputation of the sector.

Applicantion Patterns

UCAS figures published yesterday for applications to higher education course for 2009-10 show some interesting patterns for applications for social science degrees and foundation degrees.

Overall, there is a rise of 8.1% in applications for BA/BSc course, with politics achieving a 16.7% rise and Sociology a 4.3% rise. Social Policy applications, by contrast, have fallen by 2.8%.

Foundation degrees applications overall show an overall rise of around 20%, but the numbers applying to most social science Foundation degrees that are included in these figures is low. One application for a politics foundation degree and thirty three for sociology. Social Policy once again is rather different with a 64.2% increase in foundation degree applications at 944 overall.

Clearly there are many stories behind these figures. Some foundation degrees may use direct applications and there are technical points about the number of choices made by students on UCAS forms. For me, the key questions are whether the social sciences are making the most of the increased interest by applicants in foundation degree courses? Does the low application rate reflect the lack of interest by applicants in more vocational pathways within our subject areas or a lack attractive provision on our part?

Of course the outcome of all these applications depends in part on the degree to which the government may or may not fund further increases in student numbers – which is of course a political question.

Who’s the customer? Who’s the employer?

Within higher education these days, we often come across the idea that students should be seen as customers. This can sometimes become a rather polemic debate, with the best and worst implications of the term becoming centre stage. However, whether we recoil from the idea of our students seeing our modules as just another item on the supermarket shelf or embrace the notion of students taking a more active role in choosing what and how they want to study, in both cases it is the student who remains at the centre of attention. Contrast this with the idea expressed in the CBI report Stepping Higher (supported by UUK and HEFCE) that we should “re-think that traditional university-student relationship to give employers a central role” (p.11). The dangers of an approach that replaces a student focus with an employer focus is highlighted in a recent paper published in Education and Training by Julie Drake, Joanne Blake and Wayne Swallow. Drawing on a case study of a Foundation Degree produced in partnership by the University of Huddersfield and First Direct, they argue convincingly that the higher skills agenda “has to include engagement of employees rather than just engaging employers” (p.40).

Of course, in some cases, it can be difficult to identify who the employer is at all. In a paper that Sarah Hale and I presented to the Higher Education Academy conference in 2008 we considered the result of work that Sarah had undertaken exploring the experiences of local councillors studying higher education courses. The elected councillors are not ‘employees’ in any normal sense and might well be considered the employers themselves, as they have overall charge of the council. Yet, they are often cast in the role of employees and the object of training and development programmes. If all this shows us anything, it is that the identities of all those involved in the higher skills agenda are perhaps more complicated and fluid than simple definitions may suggest. All the more work for us social scientists to try and make some sense out of then – as both researchers and teachers.