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Representation to the Communities and Local Government Committee: Planning Skills
Background
My name is Jon Talbot and I have been a member of the Royal Town Planning Institute since gaining a Masters degree in Planning in 1982. My experience of planning practice and education has been gained in a variety of settings in Northern England and Wales over a twenty five year period, dividing my time between practice and higher education. I have always been an active member of the RTPI, especially in the field of education and CPD. I have delivered planning education and training in a wide variety of contexts, both formal and informal to a wide range of groups, including young people and adults.
My current job is to deliver demand based, flexible work based learning to adults in the work place using e-learning and other methods. I maintain involvement in planning through a variety of means outside my full time job-active involvement in the RTPI, volunteering and a small amount of commercial work. My comments are based on experience and observations over many years. My sole motivation is that planning education is improved to meet the challenges of the twenty first century.
Observations for the Committee
There are three observations I wish to make which l hope will help your deliberations. The first of these concerns the nature of planning education for full time students, based upon my own experiences and those of others. In my view, the universities are largely ill equipped to deliver the kind of skills envisaged as essential for the delivery of proposed legislation.
My second observations are on the pattern of provision for those already in work. The pattern here is more complex, as the needs include those seeking professional status as well as people wishing to upgrade their knowledge and skills.
My final observation is that l believe the Committee should as a matter of priority investigate the potential for university accredited Work Based Learning as a means of facilitating anticipated (and unanticipated) learning for planners and reviving the link between practitioners and academics.
Experiences of planning education: undergraduates
I understand your committee is concerned with ensuring planners have the skills to create sustainable communities and can meet the demands placed on them by legislation. I am concerned by the large gap which already exists between planning schools in universities and practice and the way in which the planning schools will deal with new requirements.
I was a student on the now defunct course at the University of Nottingham. The course was well regarded but my experience was disappointing. From young people currently on programmes I hear similar complaints l made 25 years ago- an over emphasis on the academic and theoretical and not enough emphasis on the skills people need to do a job. While accepting that a graduate is at best 'semi- finished' l feel that in comparison with programmes for allied professions, such as housing and surveying there is an over-emphasis on theory and insufficient preparation for working life. This weakness is most evident at the more 'academic' institutions where the pressure on staff to generate research income has created a generation of planning academics who are often not planners and have little contact with practice.
There are university departments l know of with a majority of staff who have never practised in any context, who are not members of the profession, never attend professional events and show little interest in or regard for issues which affect practitioners. I attend many professional events in the North West and Wales. It is rare to meet an academic at such events. There are none actively involved in the management and direction of the profession in the North West and only one in Wales. Equally, it is rare to meet practitioners at academic events. The two groups are essentially isolated one from another because they are engaged in two separate activities. Academics have skills in research and lecturing; these are a set of practical skills in their own right but they are not relevant to the needs of practitioners.
As a result, many university departments rely on practitioners employed as Visiting Lecturers for practical subjects. I am not opposed to this in principle but there are limitations. To begin with, there are simply too few practical subjects taught and second practitioners often over-rely on direct experience and are not sufficiently broad or critical in their outlook. An ex-student of mine recently relayed an experience at a 5* rated department. A part time practitioner set an assignment which was to prepare a physical regeneration strategy but was unable to tell her what is meant by 'strategy', except by reference to what is commonly done.
I vividly remember a very eminent professor of planning commenting that the only reason planning academics are tolerated is because they deliver accredited programmes. Although the remark was a joke, it has remained with me for 25 years because of the truth it contained. For too long, the professional body and universities have paid insufficient regard for the practical and the applied in education. Most planners will tell you they started learning about their profession once they left university, not at it.
As a result, l foresee the universities delivering on financial and negotiation skills, and carbon neutral technology because they will be forced to rather than as a result of an appraisal of the skills their students require. In fact, l am sure your Committee will be instrumental in the process of forcing relevance. They will do it in the way they always do- buy in practitioners, who will not be members of the faculty and most of whom will not be planners. The effect of this will be a further distancing of academics from practitioners and a continuing failure to design wholly relevant curricula.
Planning education or those in work
The second issue is an examination of provision for those in work. Here provision is divided between courses (usually day release but some distance learning) for those seeking professional membership and those topping up their knowledge and skills. As the Committee is aware, the usual method of delivery (day release, core modules and options, written assessment) has in recent years been supplemented by a similar approach using distance learning methods. My concern is that reliance on these methods will not deliver the skills the Committee seeks.
Universities offer a very limited range of learning, usually divorced from practice, often at a time, place and in a way which suits them. They do not consider it their role to find out what the learner or employer wants either in terms of content or delivery. Adult learning is a fundamentally different exercise to teaching undergraduates. Adult attitudes are far more driven by specific needs in terms of skill requirements and career plans. They are sensitive to price, are more discriminating about the relevance of what is being taught, often have considerably more experience and knowledge than those who 'teach' them and are time pressured. 'Relevance' is essential- learning is valued in direct proportion to the extent to which it can be applied and improve performance.
Unlike undergraduates, adult learners also have consumer choice and often exercise it by going to private providers. The recent Leitch report did not stray into these challenges but it is widely recognised that there has to be a cultural revolution if universities are to adapt to their needs.
Alternative provision
Current university programmes are effectively underwritten by the accreditation provided the professional body- the RTPI, as the professor referred to above, acknowledged. Students are attracted to programmes because professional accreditation is seen as ensuring employment. The blame for the lack of relevance identified above must be equally shared by the professional body, which has adopted an essentially static view of the learning needs of the profession and has been content to rely on existing patterns of provision. The RTPI is not unusual in this respect: most professional bodies aim to restrict access to and direct the content of education as a means of protecting the interests of members. What it has been less successful at is recognising the learning needs of its practitioners.
To some extent this has been mitigated by the adoption of a commitment to compulsory CPD for all members. However, for the majority of planners CPD is something which is knowledge rather than skills based. Planners routinely attend day events at a local hotel where a variety of expert speakers give their opinions, followed by discussions. I have been involved in CPD in the RTPI for many years, both regionally and locally, so speak from experience. I also know from feedback to events, there is demand for more involving, skills based CPD.
Traditional providers of such events have been supplemented in recent years by a number of private providers. Some are organisations such as the RTPI itself, others for profit companies or non profit making bodies such as the Planning Summer School. Whatever the provider, the format is essentially the same- knowledge based, delivered by expert speakers.
Some planners, recognising the need to expand their skills, undertake additional qualifications, typically in generic management subjects, such as a Diploma in Management Studies or MBA. More recently, the RTPI recognising the need for generic skills in management disciplines has developed its own suite of distance learning packages. They are cheaper than attending a course but they are un-accredited, generic (in the sense they are unrelated to practice) and essentially un-involving.
These forms of lifelong learning will and should continue. However, as presently constituted they will not provide the kind of skills the Committee regards as essential for professionals in future.
Alternative university provision: Flexible Work Based Learning¹
Again, based upon my own experience, l believe the Committee should seriously consider investigating the methods developed in a number of UK Universities to facilitate Work Based Learning (WBL). In recent years a small number of Universities have developed WBL but their methods have not yet been applied in the field of planning. No university which is engaged in planning education is also a significant deliverer of WBL. As a result, it is not widely understood in planning education or practice and its potential for delivering more focussed and relevant education unacknowledged. WBL represents a paradigm shift in the way learning occurs. In my view it offers the best means of facilitating genuine learning, relevant to the needs of anyone in work, whether a planner or anyone else.
WBL differs in a numbers of respects from conventional education and training. There are many variations in practice, so l will describe it as l have experience of it.
WBL begins by recognising of the centrality of the learner, not the deliverer. It therefore seeks to discover the learners' own learning needs, based on their existing knowledge and abilities. Thereafter it is a process of identifying learning requirements and finding ways to accommodate them. Learners are accorded a great deal more respect because their own learning achievements are acknowledged at the outset. I am sure members of the Committee understand this, as you are used to learning from the practical experience of others.
In WBL practical experience is valued but it is not regarded as complete. Learners are sensitised to their own knowledge and abilities through a process of formal reflection and then assisted to build on that knowledge. Their learning is individualised, tailored to their requirements; they are not one of a batch to be processed on a standardised product. Nor does WBL make arbitrary assumptions about 'skills' and 'knowledge'- it simply tries to accommodate all forms of learning need and build upon existing knowledge, in ways which are useful and relevant to the learner. It encourages learners to take responsibility for their own, continuous learning by emphasising the value of reflection. It seeks to break down the gulf between the skills and knowledge of practitioners and the more formal knowledge in universities as a means of generating new ways of doing. It aims to be flexible by allowing learners to design their own programmes (and title awards), begin and end when they want, learn where and when they want and study at their own pace. It enables people to study small chunks (single modules) or larger awards, it is flexible in terms of providing academic credit for prior learning and enables learners to submit practical examples of work (with accompanying reflective commentary) for assessment.
The emphasis on flexibility enables WBL frameworks to respond quickly (literally- start tomorrow) to new demands in the workplace. At Chester, we can accommodate any new learning demand as it arises, whether it is for one person or a hundred. Delivery within the framework of a university means that WBL is quality assured and meets the rigorous academic standards of internal mechanisms and overseeing bodies, such as the Quality Assurance Agency.
The importance off demand led education
The ability to respond to learning demand is one of the most important features of WBL because it ends the guessing game Committees like yours engage in of trying to determine in advance what it is people need to learn, as a cue to deliverers. The problem with this approach is that it is easy to get it wrong and putting it right is harder to rectify than the proverbial mis-directed oil tanker. I will give you a practical example of this.
During the past two years we have been using our WBL framework to deliver pathways within it tailored for the needs of regeneration practitioners. Although learners can study what they want, we thought it prudent before we started to develop a menu of modules which was likely to be of interest to practitioners. We studied the research which pointed us broadly in the direction of a set of generic skills- such as project management, leadership, partnership working and so on. However we guessed that some people might also like more contextual/theoretical/academic topics, such as policy, economic and social theory. In practice, these have proved far more popular than the generic/skill based modules than the seven pieces of research we reviewed led us to believe. We have also had to develop other modules in response to demand, on subjects of specific interest to our learners but identified in no research I have seen.
Without consider demand led models of education you will only deal with one of Donald Rumsfeld's three future scenarios- the known. You will struggle with the known unknown and be completely unable to specify what to do about the unknown unknowns.
The danger for your Committee is that you if you do not investigate alternative means of provision you will simply recommend a programme of learning which might suit some people in planning but not all and will be delivered on a large scale to everyone because that is what suits providers. Equally, there is the danger you recommend learning for particular legislation, which is then incorporated into university syllabuses but which a future government may overturn. And you will fail completely to specify how to provide the unknown unknowns.
What would be more useful than trying to guess what the learning needs of an entire profession is going to be would be to investigate ways in which providers can be encouraged to become far more focussed on individual learning needs, whatever they are and however they arise. An approach which emphasised meeting those needs would transform the culture and practices of university departments. Instead of being divorced from practice and practitioners, it would become, as it should, the focus of their attention.
¹ The comments made here are based largely on personal experience at the University of Chester, where there are currently about a 1000 learners on our WBL framework. These include individually negotiated pathways for Regeneration Practitioners and it is our intention to begin tailoring pathways for Housing Practitioners from Autumn 2008. Other leading providers are the Universities of Middlesex, Derby and Portsmouth. At time of writing the Open University are about to create a WBL function. For a review of practice see: Higher Education Academy (2006) Work Based Learning in the Higher Education landscape: final report. London: HEA Personal details
Jon Talbot 4 willow Cottages New Brighton Minera Wrexham LL11 3DT
Tel: 01978 753341
Faculty of Lifelong Learning University of Chester Parkgate Road Chester CH1 4BJ
Tel: 01244 221458
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