The Learning and Skills Development Agency (LSDA) has announced the launch of 'Involving learners in quality improvement' - a research project to be run in conjunction with NUS.

The main aims of the project are to:

• Identify effective practice in gathering and responding to student feedback, and in ensuring learners are actively, constructively and representatively involved in maintaining and improving the quality of educational provision within the learning and
• Make recommendations for effective ways in which such practice can be extended.

Research to be undertaken will involve interviews and focus groups with NUS reps and other learners, to gather evidence of what works best in ensuring that the student voice is heard and has influence on service quality. It will also examine the lessons to be drawn from the sparqs initiative (Students’ Participation in Quality Scotland) for other parts of the UK. The scheduled reporting date is March 2006.

The project is intended to build on recommendations emerging from Sir Andrew Foster’s review of further education, and to inform the agenda of the new Quality Improvement Agency for Lifelong Learning (QIA), which will replace LSDA from April 2006. If you are interested in providing evidence for the project to consider, please contact me on ellie.russell@nus.org.uk

This is a really exciting project which will hopefully produce interesting outcomes that can provide the basis for building more receptive attitudes from colleges to the idea of students as co-producers of their education and the need for the views of students to be listened to and acted upon. Representatives from LSDA have come to the recent FE Essentials training events to run sessions to feed into this project and the stuff that officers have been coming out with is fascinating!

What is even more fascinating is that there really are people out there who think what students say isn’t worth bothering with (shame on them!). A few months ago I wrote a BLOG about Dennis Hayes who had written an article for the Times Educational Supplement on why “Student evaluations are entirely worthless” I’ve copied my response to Dennis that was printed in the TES a while back:

Like Dennis Hayes (“Don’t ask for an opinion”, Backchat, 7th October) I travel to and from work on trains visiting student representatives in a variety of colleges. On these journeys I also experience a phenomenon, well known to dramatists, of remaining outside the consciousness of these FE Tutors who, sequestered in transit, articulate their innermost thoughts and feelings.

It is hardly eavesdropping if the conversation is loud, uncensored by self- consciousness, etiquette or even the vaguest flickering of political correctness. But such a conversation is hardly representative of the broad brush of input that tutors rightly have into their working conditions and experience.

I’m trying to imagine what would happen if, with his NATFHE hat on, Dennis advocated that the unreconstructed, gossipy views of tutors on a train were equated with the detailed, thoughtful and constructive representation that his union provides collectively and individually.

The truth is that here in 2005, the idea of the tutor as master has gone. At the TES Concorde Symposium last week, a discussion of values revealed that a key “value” in FE is the adult environment it offers - the specific difference in tone, atmosphere, organisation and delivery of learning contrasted with a traditional school based mode of delivery. This has effects for the individual as well as the collective. It means that we recognise and celebrate in FE the notion of the student as co-producer of all those valued ‘outcomes’, as learning is nothing if the learner is not an active producer of their own learning. In the twenty-first century we require more from the learner than their passive acceptance of authority.

A dialogue between learning institution and student body - or tutor and student - needs to take place. For the transfer of knowledge to take place tutors and institutions need to understand what helps students to learn. Similarly, an understanding of what, in that transaction, is in the gift of the tutor and what the institution contributes through ‘effective management of learning’ is crucial to the institution’s success.

That is not to say that “student evaluations” are therefore the be all and end all answer. At a recent workshop on this very subject that NUS ran with the LSDA, students from across the country recognised that so often evaluations were simply a ‘tick box’ exercise - uncontextualised, rarely fed back on and having little impact. This is in no-one’s interests. “Opinions”, of course, don’t exist. All that exists are questions and responses - responses being as dependent on the question and a myriad other factors as are thoughts or views held “internally”. But what does matter is that these questionnaires, feedback sheets and voting forms all start a process that should lead to constructive engagement with learners. In part, this is because asking “why did you say that” help us understand students in 2005, and partly because being asked builds commitment from students to the notion of co-production and putting in some time and effort.

Our members report that what they really want is less of the feedback and more of the representation. They want some power over their experiences, individually and collectively. And most importantly they want to know that their thoughts are valued and that something is done about them, because it is only students who can provide evidence of what works and what does not. Authority and respect in a subject is one thing. But it takes two to transfer.

But don’t believe me, Dennis, I’m just a student. Take Peter Davies, from the LSDA: Students’ experience of all aspects of college life is more likely to be enhanced if they are given an effective voice in the organisation and delivery of their learning.

The most successful FECs seek feedback from their students regularly and systematically, communicate the results effectively and take action accordingly.

This requires more than just the completion and analysis of questionnaires…students are valuable members of course committees, as well as being formally represented in college consultative bodies, and on the governing body.

They may also be involved usefully in wider consultation, review and planning activities, such as the local LSC Strategic Area Reviews. Active and constructive involvement by students in the design and delivery of their learning does not usually happen if arrangements are merely permissive and voluntary.

It requires specific encouragement via such steps as support for the training of student representatives.

From… Foster Review of Further Education- “The student experience of further education” Peter Davies, Research Manager Sector Performance, Learning and Skills Development Agency, April 2005

Of course, as a mere student I may be wrong. Ultimately it is college principals, the LSC, the LSDA and other luminaries Dennis has not raised who are experts in these things. So next time you want to dismiss the views of students, Dennis, remember that one day, using the same, rhetoric, your views with a NATFHE hat on will be dismissed in the same way too.

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