Up-skilling the community learning and development (CLD) workforce
The Scottish Government has invested in developing the community learning and development (CLD) workforce across Scotland. Resources have been identified for 2009-10 and 2010-11. Learning Connections has commissioned Lifelong Learning UK (LLUK) to manage the delivery of the first stage of the programme up until March 2010. For further information please contact Christine Fitton from LLUK or the Learning Connections team.
The Standards Council for CLD is leading work to establish a National CLD Workforce Development Strategy as a key part of the programme. A substantial portion of the £1 million investment in 2009-10 will be available to the CLD Partnerships in the 32 local authority areas to develop local strategies for workforce development and improved access to continuing professional development (CPD). Other early work includes mapping existing learning opportunities across Scotland and identifying the gaps.
Growing Excellence: a programme to support the up-skilling of the community learning and development workforce outlines the principles that have been identified as guiding the programme and the outcomes that it is intended to achieve.
These outcomes are:
Outcome 1: A national CLD workforce development strategy is in place and supports local planning and delivery.
Outcome 2: All CLD Partnerships have been supported to develop local strategies for workforce development and improved access to CPD for CLD practitioners across sectors.
Outcome 3: A coherent system of CPD opportunities to support development of the CLD workforce has been established.
Outcome 4: Resources and tools to support continuing workforce development have been created
Outcome 5: Evidence on the outcomes of the programme, and on the inputs, processes and outputs leading to these, has been gathered and analysed; the experience of the programme has been evaluated to inform future development, identify future needs and assess any resource requirements arising from these.
For further information on how we aim to deliver on these outcomes, please look at the full paper on Growing Excellence.
Learning Connections will be monitoring the grant funding and reporting to Ministers on progress.
CLD Workforce Up-skilling Programme - Outcomes
Planning of the programme has been informed by a report produced by Blake Stevenson for Learning Connections. The report details the findings of an exercise to scope out the requirements for the programme. It of course reflects the views and opinions of Blake Stevenson, based on the feedback they gathered from the CLD field. Please access the report here.