| SUMMARY
OF RECOMMENDATIONS |
| 1. A new
Scottish Office Circular should be published which firmly
promotes community education as described in this report
and which requires the production of local authority
community learning plans. |
| 2. Community
learning plans should be built from the bottom up; the
timescale for completion of the first version - it will
be continually renewed - must be realistic in this
regard. Targets, target-setting procedures and monitoring
should be very clear. |
| 3. The main
interests should be asked to agree on the overall
approaches to be taken to evaluation and reporting, so
that Ministers, councillors and voluntary sector
management committees can have a clear understanding of
the criteria for success. |
| 4. Those
responsible for community planning should use the skills
and insights of community education to achieve effective
community involvement. |
| 5. All
community education providers should adopt procedures
which seek the maximum involvement of the users of their
services in decisions about how they plan and operate. |
| 6. The
Scottish Office should discuss with CoSLA, SCEC, the
voluntary sector and others the steps which can be taken
to ensure that community education, in the terms set out
in this report, is accorded high priority in delivering
the Government's policies on social inclusion, lifelong
learning and active citizenship. |
| 7. Having
agreed on community education's priority as a method of
delivering key policies, The Scottish Office and CoSLA
should agree an approach to secure and monitor all
expenditure which covers the new agenda, aiming for its
clear identification, transparency, continuity, priority
and collaborative funding commitments. |
| 8. The
Scottish Office should consult with relevant interests,
perhaps using the good offices of the appropriate
umbrella organisations, to explore their needs and the
best ways of continuing to meet them within community
education as now defined. |
| 9. The
Scottish Office should ensure that responsibility is
allocated nationally to appropriate bodies for the
development of joint policy statements among the fields
which already play, could play or should play a larger
role in community education as now defined. |
| 10. The
Scottish Office and providers should make the maximum
possible allocations to the programme of
inter-disciplinary in-service training. |
| 11. Training
for community education should be reviewed in the light
of this report. Initial training should contain a strong
and effective commitment to inter-disciplinary work and
should be relevant to a wider range of context.
Approaches to quality assurance should be reviewed. |
| 12. An
enhanced concern with and a coherent approach to research
should be promoted in order to produce good information
and effective analysis at all levels. |
| 13. The
Scottish Office should continue to extend the development
of its own arrangements for the co-ordination of action
on matters of corporate concern. It should ensure that
its organisation and procedures are clear and accessible
to the interests covered in the report. |
| 14. In
due course the Scottish Executive may wish to consider
any possible legislative requirements. |
