Local government reorganisation: its impact on adult education
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Local government reorganisation: its impact on adult education
Anna Spackman and Shona Paul, University of Dundee
In 1975 two events, significant for Scottish continuing education, occurred: the implementation of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, which introduced local authorities at district and regional levels, and the presentation of a report, Adult Education: The Challenge of Change, under the chairmanship of Professor K J W Alexander, dealing with leisure courses of an educational, but not vocational, nature. Both affected the existing arrangements for post-compulsory education provided by local authorities, and have continued to do so during the last twenty-one years. That there is the possibility of further major changes to the present provision of leisure learning is the result of the recent reorganisation of local government in April 1996, which has reintroduced a unitary system.
Traditionally, the relationship between Scottish university extra-mural provision and local authority finance has been close, as both the discretionary and statutory provision of further education in Scotland has been the responsibility of local authorities as defined in the Education (Scotland) Acts. Unlike the extra-mural departments of English and Welsh universities, which were recognised as responsible bodies for the delivery of adult education in 1924 and received direct government funding for staffing and teaching costs, Scottish universities have had to rely on the support and collaboration of the local education authorities to access funding through joint committees. Although such committees were established in the 1920s at some Scottish universities enabling them to bid for finance, post-war legislation and reports encouraged greater co-operation. The appointment of university extra-mural staff and the revivification of the committees with membership from the local authorities and other adult educational organisations promoted greater availability of university adult education classes, assisted from 1959 by grant aid from the Scottish Education Department (SED) for the administrative costs of university involvement.
The University of Dundee Extra-Mural Committee for Adult Education was set up in 1968 by the reconstitution of the original University of St Andrews Committee established in 1962. Started by a part-time appointment in 1956 (full-time in 1963) at University College, Dundee, the Extra-Mural Department with one member of academic staff (increasing to two shortly afterwards in 1969) was retained after the establishment of the University in 1967, academic salaries being funded by the University from its ‘general education expenditure’, secretarial assistance by the SED, with the local education authorities setting the level of student fees, setting the level and paying tutors' fees and providing accommodation. Prior to local government reorganisation in 1975, the Department worked, through the Committee, with five authorities - Dundee, Angus, Perth and Kinross-shire, Clackmannanshire and Fife - providing classes at further education centres. Since 1975, the University has been located in an area administered by Tayside Regional Council at first-tier level, and by Dundee, Perth and Kinross, and Angus at a second tier of district council government. The Extra-Mural Committee was reconstituted to reflect these changes and consisted of six university representatives, four members nominated by the Regional Education Authority (one, at least, being an elected member), the Director of Education, and an officer nominated by him, five representatives from local colleges, two from the Workers' Educational Association, one from the Open University, up to four co-opted members, which included representatives from the City Museum, the Regional Recreation Department, the British Council and local radio, with an assessor from the Scottish Education Department. Chaired by a university representative with the Vice-Chairman a representative of the Education Authority (elected annually), the Committee's objective was adult education provision, particularly within Tayside, to be carried out directly by the Committee and in co-operation with the Regional Education Authority, and voluntary bodies. It approved the programmes of work supported by Regional funding, acted as a funding administrator, and as a forum for communication between various educational institutions, both local and national, with standing agenda items for the Open University and the WEA.
One of the Committee's early tasks was a consideration of the Alexander Report, which had recommended, inter alia, that adult education, with community and youth work, should be seen as an aspect of community education and should remain the statutory responsibility of local education authorities. The Committee, recognising the concept of community education and a community education service, acknowledged that part of the existing extra-mural provision fell within that service as a contribution to the wider education of adults, catering both for individual interests and community needs. It indicated a willingness to be involved in schemes to attract non-participants and to participate in training for community education workers. However, these and other supported recommendations were made in the light of the impending expenditure cuts on education to be implemented by the Regional Council.
These restrictions on local government spending resulted in considerable changes for the Extra-Mural Department. Government instructions to reduce expenditure, coupled with sizeable increases in further education part-time tutors' fees to which extra-mural fees had been linked in 1979, provoked an emergency met by the introduction of new arrangements. To maintain its statutory obligation and at the existing level, and implement salary increases within the budget, the Regional Council agreed to transfer the major part of its programme, a programme drawn up by the Committee in consultation with the principals of the Community Education Centres, to a self-financing basis from January 1980. Consequently, it withdrew all financial and administrative support from classes arranged by the Department as the executive agency of the joint Committee. For the Committee, this represented a major change of educational policy, from a public service to a marketable commodity of even more limited appeal, a change which not only ran counter to the Alexander Report, but which allowed any organisation to provide classes. With no support in cash or kind from the Regional Council, a situation unique in Scotland, the nature of the partnership altered, although membership of the Committee remained the same. Such budgetary cuts made throughout Scotland resulted in major local discrepancies and in Tayside no financial assistance was given by the Regional Council between 1980 and 1982, although grant aid for administrative costs was restored on the acceptance of reciprocal free access to premises in 1982. However, the old arrangements had been replaced and the Department remained responsible for the arrangements and provision of its classes.
Paradoxically, as it accompanied government restrictions on university finance, the lack of external support was balanced by the emergence of interest in continuing education within universities because of the predicted decline in undergraduate numbers. Funding arrangements began to alter, the SED informing the Department that for 1986-87 its grant would be cut by more than half and would then cease, such cuts being necessary to fund the new PICKUP schemes. Bids for this funding and for University Funding Council monies were made and in 1991 direct funding from London ensued. As the Committee was no longer required, it was replaced by the Advisory Group on Liberal Adult Education and Access with similar representation, chaired by the Regional Director of Education, who was elected unanimously. Primarily acting as an area forum, it reported, along with the Advisory Group on Continuing Vocational Education, to the Senate Continuing Education Committee. Currently, its successor is being constituted.
Throughout the last twenty years the University and the Regional Education Committee have been linked by finance, by course provision, by training for Regional employees, by community-based courses, and more recently by bursary support for adult access and summer school students and membership of networks. Because of its geographical location, the University has close links with Dundee but the Centre for Continuing Education has maintained and increased contact with the more rural and smaller urban areas of the Region. The composition of Tayside shows a mixture of urban and rural areas, of declining industry and wealthy countryside, of eprivation and privilege. The political complexion of the Region and Districts has also been different: Dundee was dominated by a Labour council, Angus and Perth and Kinross by SNP, which meant that in the recent past the Regional Council was SNP controlled.
Under the current local government re-organisation, Tayside has been divided approximately into its district components and, in common with other new authorities, Perth and Angus Councils are maintaining the Scottish structure of locating community education services within the education departments. Dundee has reclassified Community Education and divided services between three departments. Responsibility for leisure and recreational and leisure facilities such as sports centres, school halls and playing fields will now lie with the Director of Leisure and Parks. All arts functions of the old Community Education Service will now move to the Chief Arts Officer. However the core elements of the Community Education Service of adult education and youth work are to be grouped with library services, welfare rights, and community councils in a new Neighbourhood Resources and Development Department. This decision was taken against the advice of the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities who favoured all educational services being kept together in a single department, but local circumstances were considered paramount and it was felt that the future of adult education was best safeguarded by this arrangement.
The new Dundee City Council felt that by allowing services to remain scattered between different departments it would prove more difficult to focus on community needs. The needs of the community would always remain subservient to the main areas of departmental work and so be in a precarious position if funding cuts were to be made. The new council is already looking at over capacity in Dundee schools, and discussing the possibility of school closures. Although there was initial unease within the Education Department at the loss of the Community Education Service, the new arrangement would allow the Director of Education to concentrate specifically on primary and secondary education. When compared to the national average Dundee schools were showing a lower rate of achievement and it is hoped that by solely focusing on schools this trend would be reversed. The Centre for Continuing Education will continue to have direct contact with the Education Department in Dundee and also in Angus and Perth and Kinross as they will continue to partially finance the Access Summer School. They have also been invited to provide representation on the Access Summer School Board of Studies.
Within the new Neighbourhood Resources and Development Department there has been a complete restructuring of services under its control in order for the new department to be seen as a cohesive unit with a clear focus and not just as a collection of services. The most obvious example of this change to the public is the renaming of the professionals working in the department, whereby they are now all known as either development or resource workers, instead of community education workers or librarians. It is in ways like this that the new director hopes to effectively bridge and integrate all services and to fully exploit the synergy that exists between them.
Although community education had to be at the core of the new department it was to have a new focus in order to clarify its position for the future. There is a move away from any aspect of education for its own sake towards education as a development tool within an overall programme of social and economic regeneration, this ethos being behind the original concept of Community Education. It is now to be far more closely akin to community development. Under the regional structure the Community Development section, although a clearly identifiable team in its own right, was under the direct management of the Community Education Service. Now under the new unitary authority there is far less distinction between the two services; indeed with the community development function taking a lead over the community education function, the two are now synonymous and the whole department has an emphasis on a community development dynamic.
Not only will the relationship between the Centre for Continuing Education and Neighbourhood Resources and Development Department have to be reconsidered, but there is a situation now arisen whereby there is an increasing polarisation of what each service wants to offer and what it is able to offer. Although the Alexander Report recommended that ‘Universities should develop a community development approach in stimulating demand for adult education’, it never said how this could be resourced and this continues to be a problem for the university in planning any communit- based adult education especially with the emphasis now on accredited courses. The changing nature of mainstream funding being dependent on accredited provision does not allow the Centre to offer classes and provision that is purely of a developmental nature without seeking external funding for this. In a period of stringent budget allocation for the Centre and also for the new councils there is little extra money available for the development of new projects and new provision and developments are now often dependant on creative allocation of money that is already there. In this new department much emphasis is being placed on youth work and, as well as a tightening of funds available, adult education is not seen as the main focus of future work which could make a comprehensive working relationship even more difficult. The provision that the Centre is able to offer and what the Neighbourhood services want to develop may be two different things. This is not to say that a future working relationship is not possible but close attention will have to be paid to the changing nature of provision of the two providers and a new partnership will then be able to be formed.
If the Centre for Continuing Education is to maintain its broad based provision over the same geographical area it will now have to work with three separate unitary authorities each of whom will be organising their adult educational provision in a slightly different way from what has gone before (Dundee being the most extreme example of this), and also in different ways to each other. The political make up of the three authorities will also influence their future plans and this is something that the Centre must remain aware of. One way forward with this is to bring the new authorities together in the newly reconstituted advisory group, now to be called the Continuing Personal Education Liaison Group. Another area which must also be addressed through time is not just how the new authorities and the Centre for Continuing Education will work together but also the relationship each authority develops with its local college of further education. Alongside this, within a population centre of 175,000 Dundee has two universities and this will have implications for future developments.
References
Alexander, K J W (1975) Adult Education The Challenge of Change. Edinburgh, HMSO.
University of Dundee Committee of Adult Education Minutes, 1974-1991.
Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973, Chapter 65, London, HMSO.
Education (Scotland) Act 1980, Chapter 44, London, HMSO.
Further and Higher Education (Scotland) Act 1992, Chapter 37, London, HMSO.
Local Government etc. (Scotland) Act 1994, Chapter 39, London, HMSO.
Reproduced from 1996 Conference Proceedings, pp. 176-178 SCUTREA 1997