Examination of Witnesses (Questions 220
- 226)
TUESDAY 28 MARCH 2006
MR PETER
HINTON, MR
BRIAN AYERS
AND DR
MIKE HEYWORTH
Q220 Helen Southworth: What work
needs to be undertaken to draw new people into the profession
and to give recognition of skills that develop at different levels?
Mr Hinton: One of the things that
we are working on in partnership with the Archaeology Training
Forum is the development of a vocational qualification in archaeological
practice which we hope to be launching during the course of this
year, which will be made available to professionals and the voluntary
sector alike. There does not seem to be a shortage at the moment
of people wishing to come into archaeology; rather the opposite.
It looks like something like 10% of archaeology graduates go on
to practise in the profession. The other 90% go off to pursue
other careers. There is a problem in progression through the profession
and there is certainly a problem with retention, particularly
in the early years of the profession where people find that they
are unable to afford to continue. There is more work that needs
to be done in terms of helping people to develop their skills,
to move on through the profession, and we have been working closely
with English Heritage and indeed the HLF over that. The HLF has
recently granted a very substantial programme of bursaries to
allow people to acquire archaeological skills in the workplace
and new people to come into archaeology or to take up new roles
in archaeology and learn skills almost in a modern apprenticeship
format.
Dr Heyworth: The key is that we
need to look at alternative mechanisms. It has been in the past
very much a graduate entry profession. I think now the Archaeology
Training Forum (which is another group through which we can all
work together) best practice qualification will be a key linked
into occupational standards which we have for archaeology and
which are a very important benchmark in a sense, and we are well
placed now to move forward with that.
Q221 Philip Davies: I think I am
one of the few people who did GCSE archaeology at school, particularly
in a state school as well. How important do you think it is that
archaeology as a subject is taught in schools for archaeology
as a profession and just generally to thrive in this country?
Dr Heyworth: We think it is critical
and it is unfortunate that now nobody can take a GCSE in archaeology
because there is not that option any more. One of the difficulties
with that was that the numbers taking it were quite limited so
the economic argument was that it was not justifiable. The difficulty
with that, and in a sense the reason behind that, was that until
very recently it was very hard as an archaeology graduate to get
into teacher training because archaeology was not defined as a
national curriculum subject and so many teacher training colleges
would not accept archaeology graduates in for teacher training,
which frankly sounds absurd. That now has been catered for, I
think, and that was one of the positive outcomes of the campaign
that we fought over the GCSE. There are lots of ways in which
archaeology can be used within the national curriculum even though
archaeology itself is not a recognised course, and certainly there
is a lot of work going on linking into what are called hybrid
history courses where there is an archaeological dimension in
with history linked with the vocational aspects, and again the
skills and techniques of archaeology can be used in almost anything.
There are some very good examples of teachers from archaeology
backgrounds who use archaeology to teach almost every aspect of
the curriculum because it is at the end of the day a subject that
really fires up kids and there are some fantastic opportunities
around to go out of the classroom as well. This is another area
where the archaeology and heritage outside the classroom manifesto
is something we would all very strongly support. There are a lot
of opportunities for young people to get experiences out of the
classroom and heritage and the historical environment really offers
that.
Mr Ayers: I think it is worth
pointing out that archaeology and the historical environment are
local things and it is a way, particularly with children but also
with others, of getting people to relate to their local environment
and to investigate the world around them. I always remember an
excavation which was within an area of fairly dense housing and
people visiting the excavation were saying, "I did not know
we had any history here", and it was marvellous that people
were suddenly waking up to the fact that history is all around
them. I have recently been visiting a project in Manchester called
Dig Manchester, which has been fantastic and in parts of Manchester
the numbers of people coming in and engaging with archaeology
has been really quite remarkable. It is not that they are learning
to be archaeologists. They are just learning to look at their
environment and appreciate it and understand that the place they
live is special to them.
Q222 Chairman: Can you just say a
quick word about how you view the activities of English Heritage
and HLF in the archaeological area?
Mr Hinton: We are very concerned,
like the previous group you have just taken evidence from, about
the level of funding that English Heritage is receiving. We see
that as an organisation it has responded to the criticisms in
the Quinquennial Review. It certainly seems to us to have become
a much more responsive, much more publicly focused, much more
outward looking, much more accountable organisation and it is
a little bit unclear to us quite what it is now being punished
for and the cut in funds is having a real impact on some of the
activities we talked about earlier that English Heritage have
funded in the past. Its Historic Environment Enabling Programme
is a very good source of strategic funding and it is being eroded
year on year in terms of the size of the budget but also more
and more demands are being made upon that budget, so we are very
concerned about that. We do rather feel that English Heritage
has been through an enormous amount of upheaval in recent years,
no doubt much of it necessary, but we have a feeling now that
it has proved itself and it needs to be given an adequate amount
of resources and be left alone for a bit and not go through any
more turbulence.
Dr Heyworth: On the HLF, we are
very supportive of HLF and certainly believe it should maintain
the income stream it has. Perhaps from some of our evidence you
will have seen that the number of specific archaeology projects
has been quite low within the HLF. That perhaps slightly misrepresents
the situation in that a lot of HLF funded projects have archaeology
in them and one of those difficulties is how you badge something
as archaeology or not, so an awful lot more archaeological work
has been undertaken. One of the things that we would certainly
want to flag up, certainly from my point of view, is that one
of the most valuable parts is the Local Heritage Initiative, which
has been a relatively small pot of money, up to £25,000 per
application, where people can do very much community based archaeology,
and a lot of the active engagement at a local level in the last
few years has come up through LHI funded projects. The LHI is
due to finish later on this year and we are waiting with bated
breath at the moment to see whether there will be some sort of
successor programme to that, as we hope there will be. One of
the real advantages of LHI is that it has been relatively hands-off
from an application bureaucracy point of view and that is certainly
something that we want to make sure is maintained in any future
programme, which I am sure will be forthcoming. We really would
like to see some evidence of what that successor programme is
going to be. Certainly in overall terms, as it were, we are a
very strong supporter of the HLF.
Q223 Mr Hall: If I can follow directly
on from that, who have you made representations to about the replacement
for the initiative?
Dr Heyworth: We have been speaking
to the HLF themselves. As you know, they are going through a programme
at the moment of reviewing their own strategy so we have been
speaking to them about that, but we have also been engaging with
DCMS through the programme they have been working on to try and
look at the future shares of the lottery. One of the reasons it
is coming to an end is that it was done through the Countryside
Agency, so I think there is just a bit of an issue of succession
and which organisation is going to pick it up or if the HLF are
going to take it back in-house and manage it themselves, so I
think they have that dialogue going on internally at the moment.
Q224 Mr Hall: But the Council for
British Archaeology would like to see it replaced with something
very similar?
Dr Heyworth: Absolutely.
Q225 Mr Hall: A mirror image, if
you like?
Dr Heyworth: The key is to have
pots of money that are relatively easy to apply for because a
lot of these community groups are not in a position to put together
significant bids, and that has certainly been one of the barriers
for some organisations, but they are very much enabling grants.
Where they work really well is where you have local facilitators
and local community archaeologists. That would be another great
asset if we could put in place, as there are in some parts of
the country, community archaeologist posts funded through the
HLF which can support and enhance the work of local community
groups, not imposing on them but supporting them and responding
to their needs. Certainly in places like York that has been hugely
successful and one of the things we have argued that HLF should
be looking at is in a sense more capacity building rather than
just looking at things as specific projects.
Q226 Mr Hall: If I can just widen
it a little bit, are you concerned that Heritage Lottery Fund
trustees and expert opinion are going to be used less in decision-making
about lottery grants in future?
Dr Heyworth: There is this move
towards trying to understand what the public want and get the
public much more involved in decision-making, and that is something
that I think we would want to encourage and support, but I think
the key thing is that it is never a replacement for that expert
knowledge. One of the difficulties often for the public is how
to make an informed judgment and that is where the role of professionals
and expert panels becomes so important. We want to make sure that
people are making informed choices rather than just using standard
vox pop type techniques which may look attractive on the surface
but perhaps do not understand the full reality of the situation.
Mr Hall: I agree with you.
Chairman: I think that is it. Thank you
very much indeed.
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