The papers for the CPCA’s Skills & Employment Committee meeting have been released – and there are a host of questions that arise from the papers linked to my blogposts over this summer.
But as the standing orders only allow one question per person, I’m inviting readers living in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough to pick up on an issue that’s they think is worthy of a response from the Combined Authority, and table a question for officers to ask on their behalf at the meeting. To ask a public question, click here and fill in the details. The relevant meeting is the Employment and Skills Committee Meeting on 4th Sept 2023 at 11am (See here)
This isn’t a “Please copy-and-paste this politically-loaded Q that I’ve typed here and ask on my behalf” sort of move. Instead this picks up on very long term issues that inevitably won’t be solved overnight.
In the olden days I might have rocked up to the county council at Shire Hall and put all the Qs in myself but because ministers decided to fragment local governance structures, and county Tories decided to move the county council’s HQ from Cambridge to Alconbury, west of Huntingdon without actually building a public transport link from Cambridge to the site, and additionally bringing in a one-person-one-meeting-one-question rule, I have to do things this way. Sorry.
Four core issues affecting Cambridgeshire.
- The over-concentration of further education places within one Cambridge ward (Queen Edith’s)
- The lack of a large lifelong learning centre covering specialist training, broader vocational training, and leisure/hobby courses since policy changes in the 1980s & 1990s
- The lack of a city-wide and county-wide consistent approach towards engaging with employers about both their training needs and their willingness to contribute towards new state-of-the-art facilities for retraining older workers and those wanting to switch careers
- The lack of workshops and courses educating the public about democracy and citizenship issues – highlighted in a recent academic paper by Qasir Shah of University College London.
Let’s take each one at a time:
The over-concentration of 16-19 academic further education places in South Cambridge
“[Queen Edith’s ward has] over half of the sixth-form students from the whole of Cambridgeshire, studying at six schools and colleges”
Queen Edith’s Magazine, Autumn 2020
Furthermore:
“Over the past decade, I’ve noticed the Cambridge Central Library becoming increasingly popular with teenagers. Why? [One student] told me that it was because there are not nearly enough group working facilities for teenagers in their colleges. Not only that, their own college libraries close far too early for commuting students. They told me that once they turn 18, those in year 13 use local pubs as places for study as well as socialising because that is how acute the shortage of space is.”
CTO: 18 June 2023
At the same time, note that Hills Road SFC has a consultation on opening a new campus north of Cambridge, a site still to be identified. See https://www.hillsroadnorth.co.uk/our-vision
Questions could include what conversations the CPCA has had with the institutions concerned regarding their student numbers and lack of sufficient facilities. What are the policy options available? What is the role of central government and local employers to make up the funding gaps? How will the experiences here go into shaping the proposals for new facilities elsewhere in the county eg Ely & St Neots? Especially on location (close to public transport hubs) and study & leisure facilities?
The lack of a large lifelong learning centre
The House of Commons Education Select Committee has recommended that each town has a lifelong learning centre. (December 2020). Cambridge used to have CCAT (now part of ARU, with some functions going to Cambridge Regional College following government policy changes over the 1980s & 1990s).
“In 1925 personal visits were made to all the big firms in town. In addition, advisory committees consisting of members of the printing and building trades were formed, and both of these committees give their cordial support to the school. Miss Enright also succeeded in getting some of the large businesses to encourage their employees to take courses at the school, by paying their students’ fees.”
Lost Cambridge 27 Oct 2022
Questions could include:
- What consideration has the CPCA made to separate the budgets specifically used for basic skills and employment-preparation training, from those that indirectly support other government policy objectives (such as on loneliness, obesity, fitness) and those that are for the good of society – such as learning the essentials about democracy and the law, and even town planning!
- What consideration has the CPCA made to carry out a county-wide survey on what sort of courses and workshops the public would like to see put on – and furthermore what assessment has it made of the provision made by previous generations of councils and organisations such as Cambridgeshire County Council in the mid-1990s, to CCAT in the mid-1950s?
The lack of a city-wide and county-wide consistent approach towards engaging with employers
The culture that the first woman to lead a technical college in England, Dorothy Enright instilled on East Road nearly a hundred years ago is one we seem to have lost. Can we revive this with a much more comprehensive and co-ordinated system of consulting and negotiating with employers?
- What consideration has the CPCA made to repeat Dorothy Enright’s example of personal visits to all of the major employers in Cambridge (irrespective of sector) to discuss
- their training needs,
- the extent that Cambridgeshire provides the facilities and services to meet those needs
- their willingness and ability to contribute financially and/or in kind to improving the existing offer, whether funding new buildings/centres, to subsidising courses and/or paying for their staff to undertake training courses offered by new or expanded institutions
- Having consulted with the major employers to see how much can be raised to contribute towards new capital spending (eg new buildings, new workshops and specialist equipment), what further provision is needed to meet the needs of smaller employers?
- How can small firms, sole traders and freelancers both make use of any new facilities for their own training needs, and provide goods/services for them?
The lack of workshops and courses educating the public about democracy and citizenship issues
I wrote about this here. Basically there’s citizenship education for children and teenagers, and a very partial course that migrants seeking British Citizenship have to go through involving the widely-criticised ‘Life in the UK’ tests. There isn’t anything however for those generations including my own that did not get any citizenship education on the essentials of how institutions of government, and the rule of law function. This despite mantras such as ‘Ignorance of the law is no excuse.’
While I’m not convinced that simply offering the GCSE in Citizenship in adult education classes alone is a magical solution, the core content from the most recent student workbook on Citizenship Studies (2023) written by Jenny Wales is of a high enough standard to enable it to form the basis of a new generation of courses and workshops introducing citizenship, politics, democracy, and law. (It does have some gaps – such as public health and town planning. But then there’s only so much a GCSE can cover).
Questions could include:
- What considerations has the CPCA made regarding the provision of citizenship education for lifelong learners who did not cover the issues in the present GCSE syllabus when they were at school?
- What assessment has the CPCA made of the uptake and attainment of teenagers in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough taking GCSE Citizenship, mindful that the qualification. has to be one accessible to students of a range of academic abilities – as opposed to, say, A-level in further mathematics?
And finally, on the WEA – the Workers’ Educational Association – a revival?
I wrote about their small presence compared to previous eras in this post.
The CPCA has commissioned the WEA to set up a new centre in East Cambridgeshire District.
“WEA adult learning centre in Ely – working with ECDC, premises are being sought to enable WEA to establish a permanent home in Cambridgeshire to grow the learning offer for adults. Given the Cold Spots and declining rates of participation in adult education in East Cambridgeshire, WEA have been directed to set-up a new centre in the district.”
CPCA Agenda Item 7
Questions could include:
- What conversations has the CPCA had with the larger trade unions regarding support in establishing such a new centre, and whether they use such a facility to provide their own training and lifelong learning courses open not just to trade union members but. to the public generally?
- What conversations has the CPCA had with transport colleagues to ensure that the location of the site is close to existing public transport hubs?
Feel free to add your own pre-ambles and change the wording of the questions to suit your own interests and experiences. I hope that by tabling these questions we can widen the debate on lifelong learning and raise its prominence within political, industry, and civic/community circles too.
Food for thought?
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