South West Regional Skills Enterprise and Employment Analysis 2007/2008

Final Report

4.14 Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG)

4.14.5 Digital Technology and skills and learning

Virtually all Government policy on skills and learning published in the last eight years has signalled the developing influence of information and communications technology (ICT).

In skills and learning, the role of ICT is no longer confined to e-learning. In the workplace, effective deployment of ICT increasingly drives the business development agenda and is the means by which continuing professional development, at both formal and informal levels, is managed. Similarly, not only does ICT underpin education providers' management information systems but increasingly it is at the heart of the way in which learners access information.

The last five years has seen the communications element of ICT driving the way in which collaboration is managed both across business and within the skills and learning sector, not only in the UK but in the wider Europe. It is accepted that ICT is central to personalised learning and individual progression and key to development and competitiveness in the knowledge economy. The revised European Union’s Lisbon Strategy of March 2005(79) highlighted the role of knowledge and innovation in promoting lifelong learning, to which the e-Skills Group of CEDEFOP (the European Centre for Vocational Education and Training) responded by recommending the following actions(80):

• Monitoring the supply and demand of e-skills;
• Developing a reference framework for e-competence;
• Encouraging multi-stakeholder partnerships and joint initiatives with ICT companies;
• Promoting training resources in e-learning and e-skills and the networking of e-learning and training centres.

In the UK, over the past eight years the Government has provided policies directed at technology and learning. For some time, this has been largely concerned with direct central government action on capital provision, technical infrastructure and staff development. It has been also a process of working through the various education sectors, from schools, HE, FE, and Adult and Community Learning. The position is now that in the medium term all learning providers and employers who offer training to their staff will be operating in an environment that places a premium on the use made of ICT and e-learning to deliver government strategies, e.g. the skills agenda, targets for improving staying on and attainment rates at post-16, while meeting quality improvement targets.

The implications at regional level are a refocusing on a key role in meeting the skills needs of the economy and responses to wider initiatives in collaboration with schools and HE partners. The new developments in inspection and quality assurance are supported by changes in teacher training to introduce qualified teacher status for learning and skills (QTLS). The e-Skills SSC is aiming to have achieved 50,000 new iTQs (IT Qualifications) by mid-2008 and to have many times that number on the journey to an iTQ. ICT and e-Learning are seen in all of the recent government statements as being a critical medium for delivery and institutional development, enabling transfer of learner data, recording learner achievement and supporting staff and institutional development as well as providing the medium for e-government and e-citizenship.

Within the broad developments envisaged by government, is an assumption that ICT and e-Learning will be critical in transforming the learning experiences of adults and in providing the basis for skills training and business development to meet national targets and respond, via regional initiatives, to the process of globalisation. ICT is now woven into the fabric of the environment and includes the way in which we learn informally, develop communications networks, manage information and develop knowledge.

Over the past decade, the focus on ICT at regional level has justifiably been a matter of concentrating on technical infrastructure. More recently, the RSP has acknowledged the cross-cutting importance of ICT in learning and skills for regional competitiveness. Increasingly, empowering business, communities and individual citizens to function effectively in the information society and knowledge economy is far more than simply providing technology and training on computer applications. Accessibility to technology is an issue of business and enterprises' understanding and adoption of e-business; an issue of learner capacity, not of counting workstations, and recognition that developing 'ICT comfort' is not ICT learning. Although IT is not a 'priority sector' in the South West, it underpins several that are, and is gaining momentum as an enabler for widespread capacity-building activities across sectors.

The RSP Task and Finish Group on Digital Technologies has suggested that the RSP consider:

• Learners, both in the workplace and at home, who are already creating personalised learning environments using digital resources.
• The implications of acknowledging ICT skills as one of the 'skills for life'.
• The extent to which digital technology is reinforcing and reproducing existing inequalities in skills and learning or conversely may enable the disadvantaged and disenfranchised.
• The way in which digital technologies themselves, rather than any policy, can enable business, particularly smaller businesses, to be heard in order to reshape skills and learning provision.
• The role of digital technology in:
  - learners' choices (IAG and career choice and development);
  - skills and knowledge (curriculum);
  - learning environments (pedagogical, institutional, and including collaborative environments);
  - feedback (assessment and recognition).

• The range of pressures and opportunities posed by digital technology in supporting the range of skills and learning agendas;
• The comparative position of the South West region in the context of the other English regions, Europe, and the international scene;
• The implications for the region's strategic management of digital technology developments in the context of government policies;
• Specific advice regarding programmes and projects to assist the positive development of digital technologies in the region supporting skills and learning and the knowledge economy.
• How digital technologies can enable the disadvantaged and disenfranchised to have a voice and improve their opportunities.
• Input to Local Area Agreements.

Current initiatives in the South West that offer scope to investigate and develop practice include:

• Train to Gain Broker Training - where Business Link brokers are tasked with assisting and supporting employers, both via technology and offering guidance to improve the use of technology, its strategic implications and impact.
• Connecting South West - after SWRDA's completion of infrastructure development in the seven sub-regions, businesses will be followed up via a database of those assisted; brokers then facilitate access to a business advisor. Work is nearly completed across the sub-regions to identify the extent of uptake of ICT within business systems.

The Task and Finish Group has also recommended mapping work across existing public sector-funded initiatives to survey what initiatives are active at present, across which timescales they are operating, their anticipated impact, existing linkages between them and emerging good practice. This would enable development of good practice criteria in uptake and use of digital technologies that could then be applied to inform future funding applications across funding streams. Drawing together results from a range of projects would help to avoid duplication, validate evidence, strengthen existing partnerships and improve sustainability of work currently in hand. To ensure inclusion of aspects of digital initiatives at local level, the LSC recommend that such a mapping exercise should also cover ICT and digital strategies present in Local Area Agreements - as recently highlighted in Swindon Borough Council’s Digital City Challenge.

Conclusions

Digital technology has the potential for far-reaching impact on skills and learning and on business development. This is particularly the case for the South West which has a more dispersed population.

The RSP needs to understand further the nature and impact of digital technology on the region.

(79) www.eu2005.lu/en/actualites/conseil/2005/03/23conseileuropen/ceconcl.pdf
(80) European e-Skills Newsletter, first semester 2006. CEDEFOP, Issue No 5, 2006. (http://eskills.cedefop.europa.eu/nl/eSkills_NL5.pdf)