Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
MS LIZ
SMITH, MS
HAYLEY PICKLES,
MS ELLIE
RUSSELL, MR
KENNETH AITCHISON
AND MR
CLINTON RITCHIE
28 FEBRUARY 2007
Q80 Chairman: You ended up on the
course you wanted to be on?
Mr Ritchie: Yes, I did. I had
a very clear idea of where I wanted to go, but speaking directly
to someone who has been through the system similar to what I am
trying to go through was more helpful rather than going through
a brokerage advisory system.
Chairman: Let us get started with the
broader questions. Fiona, you are going to start us off.
Q81 Fiona Mactaggart: I am interested
in what kind of switches people on to learning at work. Hayley,
you gave us a bit of a hint about how women had not been learners
and felt themselves as not learners, but what is it that turns
people on to wanting to go back to learning? Is it the demands
of the job, is it the demands of your family and does what switched
them on affect how you show them the way into what they need to
learn?
Ms Pickles: When I first told
people about Lifelong Learning people were a bit sceptical: "I
have got this far in life and I have managed to get by. Why do
I need to learn now?" Once the first few people start learning
and people are talking about it at work, I have found in the last
year that if somebody, say, needs skills for life or to brush
up on their skills for life, we need to coax them into learning
with other things. Often people are more willing to, say, go to
a cake icing class, or an iPod class, or things like that, and
once they have got the confidence again to start learning what
they really do need to learn, they are more inclined to say, "Actually,
I do need some skills for life. I do need to brush my English
up. I am having a few problems when I fill the logbook in at work."
That is the way we coax people, if you like, and give them little
taster sessions, but I do think going as a group is the key thing,
going with another work colleague. What would be absolutely fabulous,
and really not a great deal of expense to employers, is if they
would do matched learning. If a member of staff said, "I
really do need to brush up my English; I have got problems. If
I put in two hours a week of my time, can you match that and give
me two hours?" That is a very low-cost to the employer, and
a lot of people are doing that. Some of the big companies in Scarborough
(the Council, McCains) are doing that now because they see the
benefit, it gives people more confidence. Employers have said
to me that people are not leaving the company—because retention
is the key thing in retail; it is just paramount—and what
they are finding is that people are now going up the industrial
ladder in store, the internal ladder. They are moving up and being
team leaders now, and that kind of thing.
Q82 Fiona Mactaggart: The CLAiT course
that you talked about, who started it? Was it you? Was it Tesco?
Who was it?
Ms Pickles: I found an outside
provider. I went to see Open Doors, which is adult education,
and said, "I have 32 people on my books who want a basic
computer course but cannot afford to pay." In retail the
average wage is £10,000 a year, which is not a lot. There
is no money left for learning. Even if there are two incomes,
learning is not on your agenda when you have got to buy shoes
and clothes, learning is not what you have got money spare for.
I literally begged for free basic computer courses, and I have
now had seven of them because they have seen the progression of
people once they have started moving on.
Q83 Fiona Mactaggart: Who is funding
it?
Ms Pickles: Adult education. She
knocked £100 off for everybody, plus she lets them pay in
instalments. Every month when they get paid I take the cheques
round to her, because people cannot afford £90 out of their
wages.
Q84 Fiona Mactaggart: So your workers
are spending £90?
Ms Pickles: On a CLAiT course,
which is still very good value, and the same for CLAiT Plus. We
have also had 10 free customer service NVQs off Learn Direct,
and the TUC have come over from Hull and put courses on for us,
because we are 60 miles away from Hull, and they are quite good
at coming over and putting courses on for free. "Free"
is the key thing, I am afraid, for our members.
Q85 Fiona Mactaggart: If the Government
put the funding of this sort of thing through employers, do you
think Tesco would have done that?
Ms Pickles: I think they would,
actually, yes, because in our store certainly they can see how
people are coming on and progressing, and when jobs go up on the
board, they are transferring jobs in the store. People who have
been stuck in the same job maybe on the deli for 20 years suddenly
think, "Well, actually, I feel I could go on stock control
now and do jobs like that", because they have got that extra
bit of confidence.
Q86 Fiona Mactaggart: Did you need
to show them that, or did they know that before they started?
I am sorry, I am picking on you, but I am interested in this.
Ms Pickles: No, I think sometimes
we accept this as our lot in life. That was me until a few years
ago when I became shop steward. I was a mum with five children
and quite happy to support my husband and the kids going to uni
and everything and I was just the mum, and now I see things so
differently because that door has been opened to me. So, they
have shown me there is something different and I have stepped
into a different life now and seen that actually I do not have
to stop learning, learning is for the rest of my life if I want
it to be.
Q87 Fiona Mactaggart: You have given
me a really good question. What for you opened the door?
Ms Pickles: The Christmas Day
Bill actually. Somebody said, "They want us to open on Christmas
Day", and I was outraged. I rang my union and asked what
I could do as a lay member to get involved, and they said, "Become
a shop steward." So I did, and I have never looked back.
Q88 Fiona Mactaggart: Liz, tell me
about opening the doors for people. I think this is a key thing
that we need to get to. One of the things that the TUC evidence
says is that the lower skill levels are least likely to receive
any workplace learning. From what Hayley says, it is also true
that people at the lower skill levels are least likely to be pushing
at the door, so they need them thrown open, whether it is by the
Christmas Day Trading Bill, or whatever. What is pushing doors
open for people?
Ms Smith: There are two or three
points. I think at the heart of it, like many things that are
complicated it is quite a simple message, which is: like recruits
like. So people like Hayley up and down the country in their context
are role models for other people. I think the way you get 500
learners in a year of people who have not done anything before
is because they see their mates and that, within the context of
the union learning rep structure, means it is not just their mates,
it is their mates that have got a job that means that they can
persuade employers to open doors to give bits of time and that
they can persuade providers to do things, as Hayley did, that
are around their hours. So I think how you hook people is through
this sort of peer group approach, but certainly our experience
is that the lowest paid people who have had the least skills before
need the biggest assistance. In a context like Tesco, which is
obviously a big company and a good company, still union learning
reps really only have the powers of persuasion to get the company
on board, and an awful lot happens around the edges; so Opening
Doors and also things like employers being incentivised to get
engaged with training. For example the new Train to Gain offer,
which has got all sorts of issues, is a way in which employers
can be encouraged to open the door. I think learners like the
support of their peer group, they like to hear employers say,
"We think it is a good thing if you train." They do
not necessarily need the employers always to do it for them, but
they want to feel it is something positive, and then they want
to achieve something at the end of it, which could be some kind
of accreditation or certification that opens other doors; but
I think it is the structural problems which mean that people cannot
get time off, they cannot get access to provision and then there
are the confidence, inspiration things, which I think very much
come from the workforce itself.
Q89 Fiona Mactaggart: Kenneth, your
members are people who have been through some of the learning
doors before?
Mr Aitchison: Yes.
Q90 Fiona Mactaggart: But who then
might need more clarity about where to go to next.
Mr Aitchison: Yes, I think so.
In the cultural sector in general, it is normally graduate entry.
Ninety per cent of archaeologists have a degree and 97% of archaeologists
aged in their twenties have a degree. These are people who already
have a good, positive attitude to learning having been through
this. They have come out with good academic knowledge and understanding
but not necessarily the skills to do the job, and that is the
one big area that we want to help people develop and we want to
work with employers to help develop those kinds of learning opportunities.
We have developed a new NVQ in archaeological practice, which
will be developed with the Sector Skills Council. It is exactly
fit for purpose, but the problem is we cannot attract funding
to get people to go to take that Level 3 or Level 4 qualification.
Q91 Fiona Mactaggart: So it is money
rather than understanding.
Mr Aitchison: Money is the problem,
because archaeology is primarily a private sector enterprise.
It does not have a lot of money in it. The Times published
a little study that suggested archaeology graduates were the least
well paid in 48 different subjects, and it is dominated by micro-businesses.
There are typically only six or eight people working for any company,
so there is not the slack to let someone go off on day release
for the company to keep working and there are not the funds coming
in to help support people in doing that.
Chairman: I want to bring David in, but
Helen has a quick supplementary to Hayley.
Q92 Helen Jones: You may think you
are getting all the questions, Hayley, but we are interested in
what happens on the ground. You said that you got motivated and
you went off and set this all up. Who supported you in doing that?
Most of it seems to be down to you going round and finding the
courses. Where did you get the support and information you needed
to put all that into place?
Ms Pickles: My union, Usdaw, have
already been the forefront runners really with the Union, Return
to Learn and everything, and I have a project manager who looks
after me and we have quite a good network. What I probably did
not say is that I do not just look after people in Tesco, I go
round 16 shops in Scarborough; some have got canteen facilities;
some have got little more than a broom cupboard. People, obviously,
in those situations cannot do learning there, and so what I have
to do is get in touch with all the providers in my area, find
them all, find what courses they are putting on and I have to
repeatedly go back, survey the members of staff. Also I work in
a regeneration area, so I work with the community as well, and
then I have to do sheets: what do they want to learn, when do
they want to learn it and how do they you want to learn it? I
have to collate all that information, and it takes quite a bit
of time, and then go and find the providers for best value.
Q93 Helen Jones: That is a lot of
work for a volunteer?
Ms Pickles: It is a lot of work.
Q94 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask Ellie
about advice and guidance. What is your impression of the availability
of advice and guidance for young workers and for students in FE
colleges?
Ms Russell: I think, again, it
depends what type of provider you are going to and what sort of
course you want to do. If you already have in mind clearly what
you want to go on to do—you know you want to do A levels
or something like that—there is probably quite a lot of
guidance available to you, but often our members report to us
that when they are having to make a crucial choice at 16 about
where they want to study and what they want to study they need
to know vital things like, "What is the benefit of me going
into a provider when I could go into work? Why should I not get
a job and get on to the job ladder? What is the point of me continuing
my learning?" They want to know what the environment is going
to be like in their provider. They want to know whether they are
going to be treated differently from when they were at school.
Are they going to be treated like an adult? Are they going to
have flexibility in their courses? It is all of those kinds of
things. It is a very varied picture and, as someone was saying
earlier, quite patchy in some places, but I think that is why
we welcome the reforms that are happening to the 14—16 IAG,
because with the introduction of 14—19 Diplomas and things
like that students want to have a wide range of accessible information
so that they can make appropriate choices at 14 and then at 16.
That is the trouble sometimes, that once you get to the learning
providers there are too many people, and our members often report
to us that they wish they had chosen a different course or gone
to a different provider, and that is the kind of thing you want
to stop. You want people to be satisfied and to make the appropriate
choices before they enter the system.
Q95 Mr Chaytor: Whose advice are
they taking at the moment? Do you think that the majority of 16,
18 and 19 year-olds listen more to their parents, or to their
tutors, or to their peer group? There is not a unified comprehensive
national advice service in every town in the country, and so who
do people listen to?
Ms Russell: Again, it really does
vary. For some people it is there but their parents have a huge
influence. They will go along with them and visit different providers,
and things like that. Your peer group is quite an important aspect,
because you want to continue those social networks when you go
on, and things like that as well, but I really think it depends
on the type of provision that you are looking to enter into. If
you are looking to go into a college, the likelihood is your parents,
and if you want to go on to study an academic course, that a lot
of your peer group, your parents, and stuff like that, that is
an easy transition to make from a school environment. If you want
to go into a web-based learning place or a private training provider,
you want to do some work and then some learning, your choices
are going to be very different and the type of information you
want is going to be very different as well.
Q96 Mr Chaytor: Clinton, you said
you would have preferred more advice from your tutor than from
some independent advice service. How did you find negotiating
your way round the system? Given that you are doing a degree in
IT, would a website have been the most useful thing that you could
log on to and find out what is available?
Mr Ritchie: I must say, having
quite a lot of experience already with even building websites
myself and doing a lot of stuff, I know how they operate. When
I look for certain specific things and they are not there, then
it does not make sense. If a lot of information is in front of
me and it is not properly presented, then it does not make sense
for me to even look at it at all, because that is too much work
coming from a student point of view. I found it quite easy just
to talk with the person who is actually going to teach me and
who has also been through that channel before. Can I say this,
quickly. Dealing with over 14,000 students at the college as student
governor—a lot of them are between the ages of 14—19-years-old—I
must say that listening to their views it gives you a very wide
range of how they access that, and it depends, again, on their
situation. Some of them may access it because of being an offender,
some of them may access it because they are just coming out of
school; it depends on their situation. I have been getting feedback
from some of them, and just yesterday I was in a meeting with
quite a few of them and we had two scenarios. The first scenario
dealt with two new students who came in two weeks ago. One came
in through a peer, his sister, and then when he came in he came
to the college and he got very good advice. We have a very good
structure. The other one came in from the fact that his parents
played a very strong role. He came through Connexions, he came
through the college, and Connexions was not that helpful to him
because he had a question mark on his profile as a young person/offender,
but he could still fit in because of how we assessed him. He was
able to be given that opportunity. The other end of the stick
was someone who was at the college 20 years ago who came back
because he wanted to retrain, and the question was asked: why
did he choose the college? He said he thought the college was
the best college, but then specifically zeroing in on the guy
we said to him, "What specifically about what you want to
do made you choose to come back here?" He said he researched
what he wanted to do specifically and he found that Lewisham College
was the best college to come to, but when he came in the advice
and guidance he was given by the college and, again, by the tutor
who will be teaching the course was more useful than going to
tons of other websites that could offer that.
Q97 Mr Chaytor: The advice is provided
by the college?
Mr Ritchie: Yes.
Q98 Mr Chaytor: Or the school?
Mr Ritchie: Yes.
Q99 Mr Chaytor: Or the company?
Mr Ritchie: Yes.
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