21 March 2007

The cliché 'tipping point' has its origins in sociology. It is now applied widely in many fields from economics to architecture, from engineering to epidemiology. It is used to describe any process that, beyond a certain point, rapidly increases in rate and does so irreversibly - the point at which something that previously was rare becomes dramatically more common.

Thus we read that we are at a tipping point in climate change; that September 11 was a tipping point in American foreign policy; and that the tipping point for a worldwide influenza pandemic will come from migratory birds.

Of course, not all tipping points are negative. The Salk polio vaccine, universal suffrage and the end of the Cold War are tipping points that have been of enormous benefit.

What are really big tipping points in education and training in this country? What are the points at which we might say that from that time on, change for the better will proceed rapidly and irreversibly? How might we bring forward the timing of those points, to achieve the benefits as early as possible?

The national agenda for education and skills is so extensive and complex that a thousand or more potential tipping points might be identified: the reform of GCEs and GCSEs; a second maths GCSE; the Diplomas; the Dearing Review; on-line, on-demand testing; the academies; raising the participation age to 18; and so on. Each clearly has the capacity to bring much benefit, in its own way.

But what are the mega-trends, the educational equivalents of global warming, which will alter the very landscape of education and skills development?

In terms of scale and impact, I think there are two tipping points that stand above all others as potentially seismic in the profound effect they could have on the national condition in education and training.

The first will be the point at which we have successfully brought together, in classrooms across the nation, personalised learning and diagnostic assessment as envisaged in the Gilbert Report on teaching and learning in 2020.

The purpose of personalised learning is not widely understood. Indeed, the term is sometimes regarded as the catch-cry of a left-liberal educational establishment, which would like to return to the days of the curriculum as a secret garden, and believes that all must have prizes. It is taken to imply the casting aside of content and structure in teaching and learning. That view of personalised learning has probably been suggested by its common characterisation as putting the pupil in charge of his or her own learning.

The learning theory on which personalised learning is based goes back thirty years: that for each individual in each domain of learning there is a zone of proximal development - or achievable challenge - in which learning can occur. Teaching is effective only when it is sufficiently precise and focused to build directly on what the individual pupil knows, and takes him or her to the next level of attainment. If the learning task is beyond the zone of achievable challenge, no learning will occur, and the child will be frustrated and disaffected. If the learning task is too easy and does not extend the child, again no learning will occur, and the child will be bored.

At the present time, the curriculum - and much teaching - is aimed at the middle ground of average students. But even these children miss out, because all students have different needs. Personalised learning has a big part to play in shifting the D grade student to a C, the C to a B, and the B to an A grade.

Personalised learning is in fact strongly teacher-directed. It is disciplined, structured, systematic, content-specific individualised bespoke teaching. It is soundly based in curriculum. The starting points are not determined by what the curriculum specifies all children must do at a particular point in time, but by the readiness of individual children to learn.

'Focused teaching' is perhaps a much better term than personalised learning: building on what children already know, and extending them into their zones of proximal development so that classroom time is not wasted on activities that are too easy for some and too difficult for others. By aligning competence and challenge for each individual, real learning is achieved for all.

In order to focus the teaching in this manner, the teacher needs three things: a curriculum designed to support personalised learning; the assessment tools needed to measure individual performance and progress; and the skills to bring the two together to shape the learning programme.

The Secondary Curriculum Review is under way. It will provide a curriculum foundation at key stages 3 and 4 on which focussed teaching can be built. It combines flexibility with clear specification of content. Thus, from the canon of literature specified in the key stage 3 English curriculum, the teacher might begin some pupils with Arthur Conan Doyle, HG Wells or John Masefield, and others with more demanding works by Thomas Hardy, George Eliot or Geoffrey Chaucer. At key stages 1 and 2, much work needs to be done to support teachers to use the considerable flexibility that already exists.

In terms of assessment tools, teachers need constantly at hand a range of simple, easily administered tests to measure achievement whenever it suits. Many of these tests could be on-line, and could be taken at the pupil's choice if he or she felt ready. The objective is precision and timeliness: teachers do not want masses of data, but focussed, diagnostic information when it is needed. And the purpose of the testing is to produce better learning tomorrow, not some time in the future.

The skills to bring personalised learning and incidental testing into the daily routine of the classroom involve replacing the concept of professional development for teachers with that of professional learning - learning in the settings in which they work. It means knowing how to use precise formative assessment to identify the learning needs of each child, and knowing how to shape the response. Clearly, support for teachers to do this is needed at school, local authority and national level.

Personalised learning, supported by incidental, no-stakes diagnostic testing, and delivered by teachers with the skills to do so is not new, radical or unproven. There are many teachers who work in this way and have done so for many years, and schools in which such an approach is practised in every classroom, with real improvements in learning. No new process needs to be invented.

The tipping point will come when those improvements in learning become systemic and ubiquitous - when our national results at key stages 2, 3 and 4 shift from their gently upward plateau, and potentially soar from proficiency levels of about 80 per cent to well into the 90s.

How can we hurry that on?

This is of course a task for the DfES and its non-departmental public bodies as a whole. But as the curriculum, testing, regulatory and standards-setting authority, QCA has a critical partnership role to play. The Gilbert Report, which seeks to close the performance gap by focusing on system-wide achievement for all, is the pathway to take us to the tipping point. We should run, not saunter: the nation cannot wait until 2020 to get there.

The second of the two giant tipping points that has the potential to transform education and training is in the area of skills.

The Leitch targets are extraordinarily demanding - over and above current targets, by 2020 an additional 7.4 million adults achieving basic literacy and numeracy; an additional 5.7 million adults achieving Level 2 qualifications; an additional 1.9 million achieving Level 3 qualifications; a doubling of apprenticeships, to 500,000; and forty per cent of the adult population qualified at Level 4 and above.

Our current strategy for achieving such growth in qualifications is to encourage employers to support training by further education colleges or private providers, or provide it themselves; for that training to be in accordance with specifications determined by an awarding body recognised by the QCA; for the qualification to be accredited within the national qualifications framework; for the qualification to be awarded by the awarding body under its own brand; and for Government funding to be directed in the main to the supply side (the provider) not the demand side (business and employees). If the qualification is to be accredited as a national qualification - a credential recognised beyond the employer and thus having national currency - it has to be awarded by one of the 117 awarding bodies recognised by the QCA.

Training for accredited qualifications is just the tip of the iceberg of the national training enterprise. There are currently 5800 nationally accredited qualifications. Some of these are redundant, there is much duplication and overlap, and the training pathways through the existing qualifications framework are confused and unclear. As Lord Leitch notes, they require rationalisation, and the process for doing so is through the emerging Qualifications and Credit Framework.

Government spends £12 billion on adult skills each year, of which £4.5 billion is on further education and £7.4 billion on higher education. Virtually all of it is for accredited qualifications.

The bulk of the training undertaken nationally is not accredited, leads to no national qualification, and is below the waterline.

There are some non-accredited but nevertheless publicly funded qualifications, which are unregulated - although the number of them is diminishing. These include qualifications such as the Level 2 General Certificate in Horticulture (Royal Horticultural Society), and certificates in electrical installation and forklift truck training.

There are many more non-accredited qualifications provided by awarding bodies, but which are not regulated by QCA because accreditation has not been sought. Many of these are of very high quality.

There is company training and a range of other products, which lead to in-house qualifications. Much of this training is excellent. Examples are the huge array of in-house qualifications provided by the Ministry of Defence, especially in the engineering sector; company training undertaken by banks, leading retailers, food processing companies and manufacturers; and qualifications such the Prince 2 project management qualification.

And there is a host of other training programmes, such as management training programmes - many of them excellent, which do not lead to a qualification at all.

There are almost 500 awarding bodies operating below the water line. Most have not sought recognition from the regulatory authorities: the qualifications they award are outside the qualifications framework. Some of them are professional bodies in fields such as engineering and accountancy. The total number of qualifications, some of which are in the form of licences to practise, is about 17,500. Altogether, business spends £33 billion annually on training.

The submerged mass of the iceberg is unregulated. But £33 billion, 500 awarding bodies outside the framework, and 17,500 qualifications that have not been recognised nationally, represent an enormous demand for training and very significant delivery in response.

There is far more high quality training taking place outside the managed, funded market we have created through regulation and accreditation then there is within it. It is not some failing in business that keeps so much training largely outside the regulated system, but a failing of the system to demonstrate and deliver added value to business.

The essence of the Leitch Review is that skills training should be market led, and that national growth in skills should be defined in terms of recognised, completed qualifications. We know however that demand-side business training will not respond to a supply-side strategy.

The tipping point in the achievement of the Leitch targets will come when we find a way for training provided by employers to be recognised within the national Qualifications and Credit Framework, without unnecessary bureaucracy, cost or change. It seems to me that we must find a way for Marks and Spencer, or British Airways, or the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants, for example, to have - if they wish - their training programmes accredited and recognised nationally.

What is standing in the way of that?

Traditionally, within the domain of nationally accredited skills qualifications, it has been held that the provision of training should be separate from the assessment of performance and the awarding of the qualification. Thus further education colleges have done the teaching, and the awarding bodies the assessment and awarding. The QCA has been responsible for accrediting the awarding body qualifications, ensuring that standards are maintained across awarding bodies and from year to year, and ensuring that individual learners and providers are properly dealt with by awarding bodies.

The need for such separation must be questioned in the light of the Leitch Review. Quite the opposite applies in higher education, where universities are both the provider and the awarding body for qualifications, while being subject to regulation and peer review. Proposals are well advanced now for further education colleges to both teach and award foundation degrees. Why should they not also teach and award other qualifications?

A second factor working against national accreditation of employer-based training is that we have traditionally regarded qualifications as a proxy for skills. Employers essentially want job-specific skills training for particular functions within their business. That training might well fall short of a full qualification, and for that reason cannot presently be recognised nationally, nor does the person completing the training gain a credential which has currency outside the company in which he works.

Why should companies presently providing high quality training below the water line, such as British Airways, Lloyds TSB Bank and Boots, not provide their own training at an accredited level within the Qualifications and Credit Framework, and award a national qualification in whole or in part - or deliver both the teaching and the qualification through a strategic alliance with an awarding body of their own choosing?

Why should courses of professional training offered by the Institute of Directors not lead to national qualifications, or their component units count towards national qualifications? Why should the Jaguar company, whose apprenticeship programmes develop first class motor vehicle engineers and designers, not provide qualifications or units directly accredited into the Qualifications and Credit Framework? Or TESCO, which is a major national provider of training?

Why should further education colleges not expand into the awarding of qualifications, and awarding bodies expand into the provision of teaching, either directly or through strategic alliances, if they so choose?

Consider a possible qualification such as a British Airways Level 2 Certificate in Customer Relations and Airline Passenger Handling. It might consist of ten units of different sizes. Six units might be taught and assessed by British Airways, and four by other providers - two by a further education college, and two by a presently unrecognised awarding body. The qualification would be built up from combinations of units, each of which would carry a number of credit points reflecting its size and level of demand, and would be awarded by British Airways.

In some cases, the employer might want to provide particular job-specific training modules, but not a full qualification. In such a case, the employee would have the option of completing the remaining units at his own time and expense through - for example - a further education college, with the qualification being awarded by the college or an awarding body. No longer would the value of any learning that is less than a complete qualification be lost.

The accreditation of employer-provided training would allow targets to be set in terms of job-specific training being done, as well as in terms of full qualifications being completed, to give a more accurate measure of what is being achieved. Thus, a target might be that the proportion of the workforce being trained at Level 4 should increase by 10 per cent per annum over the next five years, or that 70 per cent of the workforce have achieved at least 20 qualifying credits at level 2.

So, how might this be achieved? Here we enter what is still in the realms of speculation, but one that urgently needs to become a specific programme of work in the implementation of Leitch.

One possible solution might be along the following lines.

Business access to funding streams.

The redirection of some Government funding from above waterline to below waterline seems to me to be a necessary condition for any solution to bring employer-based training into the Qualifications and Credit Framework.

Recognition of employer-based training has advantages for business other than funding: national recognition of bespoke, demand-led training; simplification of the complexity and bureaucracy of the system for delivering skills, as emphasised by Leitch; and the attraction which high quality training organisations have for high quality employees. But the key driver for reform would need to be direct access to Train to Gain and other possible funding streams, for programmes delivered and awarded by business itself.

In practical terms, the public purse might pay for Level 2 training, and employers and individuals for Level 3 training and above. That would have the benefit for UK PLC of focusing publicly funded intervention on relevant learning and skills that lead to more sustainable employment. There is a clear link between lack of a qualification at Level 1 or Level 2, and economic inactivity: in the West Midlands for example, 11 per cent of employed people, 21 per cent of the unemployed, and 35 per cent of the economically inactive have no qualification at all. Funding for employer training thus needs to be used to stimulate the market to get those who are not doing any training to do some for the first time, and to pump prime the progressive conversion of in-house programmes to ones with national recognition.

Registered training organisations

There could be a system under which businesses, professional associations, unions, awarding bodies and other organisations, along with further education colleges and other current providers, can apply to be recognised as registered training organisations (RTOs).

Training and/or assessment and /or awarding, alone or in alliance

Not all RTOs need have the same role: some might be concerned with the provision of training only; others with the provision, assessment and awarding of training; and some with assessment and awarding only. They might do any of these either alone or in strategic alliance with another registered training organisation.

Approval of RTOs

There would need to be a process for approval of RTOs, to verify the quality of their provision and their quality assurance processes.

National kitemark for RTOs

On approval, a national kitemark similar to that of the British Standards Institute or Investors in People could be conferred, to denote national recognition as an RTO.

Qualifications and Credit Framework

The Qualifications and Credit Framework would recognise all quality training, regardless of who delivers it, how it is delivered, who funds it, or who awards it.

Regulation, and continuous review and modification

There would be a process to guarantee the maintenance of standards and the assurance of quality, across different units and qualifications at each level of the Qualifications and Credit Framework, and to provide for their continuous review and modification in response to the emerging needs of employer.

Accountability to the Commission for Employment and Skills

The agencies managing the various components of this system, if it or something similar were put into place, should be accountable in some way to the new Commission for Employment and Skills.

There are many possible variations to such an approach, and possibly entirely better solutions which might produce the same outcome.

It does seem clear to me however that the inevitable change in qualifications strategy needed to deliver the Leitch agenda will require a change in the structure by which we currently manage the provision of qualifications.

The awarding bodies have a particularly critical leadership role in achieving such a transformation. They have built up over a long period of time unsurpassed expertise in the design and assessment of qualifications, and in the provision of support to providers. The 600 awarding bodies, and in particular the 117 of them which have built a critical bank of intellectual property in the construction of accredited qualifications, are an immense national resource. The application of their skill and expertise within the processes of a new structural framework is essential to the Leitch outcomes.

The roles, relationships and responsibilities of other organisations would also need to change. In the QCA, the functions of the Qualifications and Skills Division and the Regulation and Standards Division would be profoundly changed by national recognition of employer-provided training. The Learning and Skills Council would need to include RTOs of all types as potential recipients of funding. The Sector Skills Councils, following Leitch, would play an expanded and critical role in the approval of qualifications for funding.

It would be essential to harness the special expertise of each of these bodies, built up over many years, to deliver the new agenda. But is also essential that the Qualifications and Credit Framework become the tool and instrument of business, and the national tally-room of the growth of skill and human capital across the board.

My two tipping points - personalised learning backed by diagnostic assessment in classrooms, and national accreditation of employer-provided training - have much in common. They both provide bespoke learning to meet individual needs and circumstances. They both build progressively and sequentially to higher levels of knowledge, skill, understanding and competence. They are both driven by demand not supply: in the classroom, the teaching programme is shaped by learning needs of the pupil, not by what an inflexible supply-side curriculum says must be taught to all on that day; in the workplace, the job-specific needs of the employee are met by an employer-led training programme tailor-made to meet them, not a generic supply-side qualification picked up from the rack.

If - by good management, creativity and hard work - we can reach both tipping points, we will transform education and training in this country.

Ken Boston