Impact Forums – Summary

Digital inclusion

1. Key policy drivers – in country

Country / Information
Wales / Data gathering pro-forma completed by Welsh government and shared with others for additional information; a rich contribution offering the policy landscape in relation to digital skills and inclusion.
N Ireland / PIAAC data; Make or Break;
England / PIAAC data drawn on to identify latest digital inclusion data for England.
Make or Break – the UK’s Digital Future; the select committee on digital skills; work of FELTAG (Further Education Learning and Technology Action Group)
Benefit claims and job-searching must be ‘on line’; this is driving demand.
Scotland / Over-arching policy – by 2020 – to be a world-class digital nation
SCVO charged with increasing digital participation; building capacity in 3rd sector.
Digitally agile – Digitally able; national framework of 9 guiding principles for the use of digital technology; essentially to build capacity amongst organisation in Community Learning.
On-line universal credit drives demand for skills
House of Lords report: Make or Break

2. Participation and engagement

Country / Information
Wales / Focus of digital inclusion agenda at this meeting, was on excluded groups including: unemployed, older and disabled people; those in social housing.
N Ireland / Invest NI working on behalf of employers to engage employees in digital learning even when employers were unclear about the exact nature of what that learning should be; skills gap re software assessment. Employers adapt easily to on-line learning for compliance reasons eg Health and Safety or Digital Security and for the economic development and growth of their businesses. Toolkit on a theme eg music, for organisations to adopt and adapt to their users or clients, being piloted by NIACE in NI. Information about FELTAG shared.
BBC NI has a ‘Make it digital’ campaign linked to BBC learning in Salford to embed across ‘soaps’ as well as learning opportunities. ‘Bite-sized’ and film-making developed with younger people; encouraging link up with hobbies on phones. Links to BBC ‘I wonder’ offering a wide range of topice and a framework for download to all sectors – see
NIACE participation survey, 2015, shared indicating small rise in participation but emphasising inequalities re health, poverty, age etc
England / Examples of working with and motivating different groups were shared: Health literacy and the Community Health and learning Foundation; Citizens’ Curriculum pilot on a public housing estate in Rochdale, working with LA, police and domestic abuse agencies; Northern College working with 2nd chance learners; WEA learner impact surveys identifying who engaged, where and how.
Scotland / Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations – digital participation – Mori poll to try and find out more about those people not included.
70 funded projects being tracked;
3rd sector in touch with many people; they know how to engage in gentle, trusted ways.

3. Wider outcomes processes

Country / Information
Wales / Many of the groups and communities being targeted are because of another policy agenda such as welfare; services such as housing; managing chronic health conditions; social care.
N Ireland / Presentation on Inspiring Impact initiative funded by Lottery fund et al revealed a process used across different parts of the third sector to demonstrate impact, not only to funders but for service development and improvement. The process helps organisations to focus on outcomes rather than activity and outputs.
England / WEA – Annual impact survey using telephone follow-up after 6 months after end of learning;
Northern College – CHANGE process: Confidence, Health and happiness, Aspiration; New thinking; Getting involved and Empowerment; survey of 1k students.
Rochdale – used the Greater Manchester New Economy Strategic Framework Cost-benefit analysis model
Community Health and learning foundation – on-going evaluation and data collation.
Scotland / SCVO - On-web pages from the 70 projects;

4. Evidence of impact on other policy areas eg health, housing, crime, citizenship, environment

Country / Information
Wales / See item 3.
N Ireland / Digital learning developed in various contexts eg with homeless people; with disadvantaged women; with employees in SMEs; indicating wider impact than simply associated with following a ‘course’.
Strong links between digital exclusion and lower levels of adult basic skills.
England / See impact processes as outlines in 3 above.
Scotland / Digitally excluded population – high numbers with no qualifications, retired, disabled; cohorts of people who are excluded are being supported by these policies and programmes.
Welfare – Universal Credit drives need for digital skills.
120 interns placed with small organisations/businesses to increase digital skills/knowledge;
Skilled workers – Skilled Citizens Scotland

5. Policy influence: local, regional and national

Country / Information
Wales / See Impact Framework document on Wales’ key policy drivers for all aspects of adult learning, including ditigal learning.
N Ireland
England / Adult learning supports digital learning to help claimants and increase effectiveness of England’s digital inclusion policies.
Scotland

6. Sharing of policies and practices from other UK countries

Country / Information
Wales / Susan Easton (NIACE) shared work on the policy responses in England;
N Ireland / Kevin Campbell-Wright (NIACE) shared work on the policy development and responses in England which had been heavily influenced by representation to the select committee in the House of Lords by the CEO, David Hughes.
Digital badging could be helpful in offering ‘stepping stones’ to progression
FE Learning and Technology Action Group (FELTAG), England, driving to 10% of learning on-line in 2015 and 50% by 2017.
Inspiring Impact links with work in England on different forms of capturing impact.
BBC cross-cutting campaigning approach using direct learning opportunities as well as embedded or integrated approaches to raise awareness eg in soaps.
WEA Impact reports shared; NIACE booklet, What employers want (young people looking for work) shared.
England
Scotland / Go-On UK (Martha Lane Fox); developing basic digital skills and adopted by SCVO: 5 core digital skills.
NIACE’s work in England in partnership with SLP; Wales strategy: 2.0; Presentation by NIACE on developments and issues.
Sharing programmes across administrations.

7 Sharing of policies and practices from other EU countries

Country / Information
Wales / Susan Easton shared the work undertaken by NIACE as the National Coordinator for the UK , including webinars on technological approaches to English/Language and Numeracy across the EU and digital tools for delivering basic skills; a resource kit for self-organised learning groups was also developed.
N Ireland / Kevin Campbell-Wright shared the NIACE work – as above
England / EU report on digital skills expected shortly
Scotland / EU-wide webinar organised by NIACE, England – polls and surveys identified barriers to use of technology ie access and support for staff, across most countries;
EPALE presentation - European Platform for Adult learning

8. Actions and issues

Country / Information
Wales /
  • Digital skills, ICT, digital skills for learning, amongst other terms, are used inter-changeably and lead to diversity of meaning; this adds to complexity and lack of coherence;
  • It is unclear what skills are needed for different life-stages, employability, in different jobs and job roles; how far should digital skills policies and development stretch?
  • Is there a working definition of ‘digital exclusion?’
  • Do we know the demographic analysis of who is excluded?
  • Do we know who is ‘missing’?
  • Strong links between digital exclusion and those with low levels of achievement in literacy and numeracy;
  • Partnerships are key to effective implementation but who are the partners? Where are they meeting? How are they meeting? How do we develop them?
  • How do we identify gaps but also avoid unnecessary duplication of effort/provision?
  • Volunteering is a high priority to deliver policy ambitions; this is a huge challenge re training, support, availability, reliability

N Ireland /
  • NI is predominantly rural and issues of access to broadband etc are significant
  • Capacity-development amongst staff in organisations which are interested in developing skills and knowledge is an issue
  • There appears to be no process for co-ordinating and sharing information about opportunities, resources and on-line materials, many of which are Open Source; BBC a powerful influence but many groups and organisatons unclear about how to ‘join up’
  • Employers often say that they are short of digital skills in the workplace but can find it difficult to articulate exactly what skillsthey need to further their businesses; Invest NI helps with this.
  • Clients in such contexts as homelessness, health, women’s group et al do not generally seek digital learning per se but have wider purposes eg accessing a GP; accessing benefits; learning how to use digital cameras which can be supported with digital skills. We should tap into these wider purposes and motivations.
  • The terms ‘learning’ and ‘digital learning’ or ‘computer learning’ can be off-putting for some participants as they perceive that learning is for other people; we must use wider motivations and purposes to help to gradually build people’s identities as learners
  • The Inspiring Impact initiative, across the voluntary sector (developed with NICVA) puts the emphasis on outcomes rather than activity and outputs – this resonates with the work gathered in the England forum on ways of capturing wider outcomes.

England /
  • A workshop to be held prior to next Impact Forum to share details of wider impact assessment, data gathering processes
  • Digital skills development must engage the support of employers - what do they need/want from employees in different sectors/job roles?
  • Strong links between low levels of basic skills and digital inclusion
  • Are we empowering people to become ‘Amazon low paid workers’ or to add digital skills to other skills for specific sectors and roles?

Scotland /
  • Terminology is inconsistent – digital skills; basic digital skills; ICT skills; digital skills for employment; etc etc But skills range from generic to advanced…
  • How do we prepare people for digital skills for work? Enormous diversity of digital skills needed for different job roles – and at many levels.
  • How can we support more people – future-proof – to prevent an even greater gap between those who can/can’t use digital skills.
  • Capacity-building for staff/organisations in adult and community learning is vital…where does this come from; who funds?
  • Diversity of hardware – infrastructure…how do we respond? Community learning has little ‘new’ hardware/software.
  • How do adult learning organisations respond to the diversity of needs of people for developing digital skills?
  • Should we be looking at social practice approaches – digital development is so rapid that it’s impossible to keep up with the ‘usual learning group’ approach – outreach and partnering. People in work will get development/training but unemployed/older people will not.
  • What partnerships should adult learning organisations developed? Eg health, housing, older people and younger people buddying.
  • On-line learning/moodles etc are only one of the responses – not necessarily cheap – and don’t suit everyone.