| 4.
The developing policy context |
| 4.1 The
policy fields of prime importance for community education
are lifelong
learning, social inclusion and active citizenship. Lifelong learning provides a comprehensive framework
which puts the learner at the centre of collaborative
endeavour; it emphasises the need for imaginative,
relevant learning experience, tailored to the learner's
needs. Social
inclusion focuses
attention on giving disadvantaged individuals and
communities greater capacity and ensuring that
institutions are open to them. The call for active citizenship is now evident in the commitment
of many fields to community involvement. These policies
call for a new culture of learning to which community
education can bring long experience of personal, social
and community development. |
| 4.2
Radical changes in the general perception, definition,
location and practice of community education are required
by these policies. In broad terms, however, they are
highly compatible with the principles which community
education has tried to pursue through its commitment to
social change. There has been a long-term recognition
that individual development cannot be separated from the
contexts in which individuals live. Community education
has a strong concern for individual development, for
example in helping people return to education and
training, which is integral to its commitment to positive
social change and the involvement of communities in
achieving it. |
| 4.3
Community planning and Best Value will provide a
framework for the effective, efficient and accountable
provision of services by local authorities, and they will
also be relevant to the voluntary sector. Local
authorities are expected to lead the co-ordination of
planning for all public services within their areas,
linking with the voluntary and private sectors. Planning
for individual policy fields will be drawn into the wider
framework. The active involvement of local communities is
to be promoted by community planning, giving community
education a two-fold interest of helping communities to
engage with the overall process and working for the
establishment of integrated local learning plans. |
| 4.4
Community plans will have 3 aspects, namely the overall
strategic plan for the council area, the component plans
of the different fields, such as children's services or
social work, and the involvement of local communities in
the planning process. In 1995 SOED published Circular
6/95 which, among other things, invited Councils to
produce schemes of provision for community education.
Today such a scheme would be a component plan within the
community plan, and be called a community learning plan.
This report will recommend that the production of
community learning plans should be a requirement on local
authorities and these should specifically include the
ideas associated with schemes of provision. (Some
authorities may interpret community learning plans as
having a wider coverage, for example inviting providers
of post-school education to be a part of the community
learning plan in which case the fields with which the
group is concerned should constitute a distinct and
discrete section). |
| 4.5 The
Best Value regime will ensure that policy implementation
is through routes which are the most effective and
efficient. The outcomes and outputs of community
education, and its relationship to policy objectives,
must, therefore, be evaluated and communicated well and
to a degree that will be new and challenging. |
| 4.6
Effective policy development, implementation and review
requires efficient lines of communication within the
fields in which community education works and between
them and The Scottish Office. The need is to secure
policy implementation in fields which are internally
complex and pluralistic, and where a conventional chain
of command or influence through which policy is
implemented does not entirely apply. Implementation of
the objectives outlined in this report call for effective
coordination and support by organisations at different
levels. |
| 4.7
Policy development and implementation should take into
account the particular attributes of community education
in the voluntary sector. Voluntary organisations play a
range of roles in communities and with individuals and
many voluntary organisations use community education
methods of working. The Compact between The Scottish
Office and the Voluntary Sector includes Government
commitments to value role diversity, independence and
community development as a form of active citizenship.
The Group endorses this commitment and urges local and
central government to take into account the particular
attributes of community education when developing policy
with the voluntary sector. |
| 4.8 The
Compact should lead both local and central government to
clarify further, through dialogue with the voluntary
sector, what the latter's major roles should be in
working with young people, in community based adult
learning and in educational support to community
development. There are issues, such as the priorities and
operations of the various grant schemes, which call for
consideration and which are separate from general
concerns relating to inter-disciplinary working. |
| 4.9 The
Group welcomes moves within The Scottish Office to
establish a more coordinated approach which aims to
achieve an integrated response to community and
individual needs, which are seldom one- dimensional.
Building on the excellent precedent of the Social
Inclusion Network, the Group hopes that The Scottish
Office will establish cross departmental strategies for
lifelong learning, youth issues and community
development, reflecting its own vision of community
education as a way of working for many. |
