100 years ago on June 4th 1913 Emily Wilding Davison walked in front of the King’s horse in the Derby at Epsom to protest against the continuing denial of votes for women in Britain. She died four days later from... Continue reading

I attended the Solidar network meeting in Paris with WEA President, Colin Barnes. The WEA has had little involvement for a number of years with international sister organisations. Recently, including at our 2011 Conference in Nottingham, we’ve begun to meet... Continue reading

A voluntary sector adult education charity with over 60,000 members, thousands of volunteers in local areas, branches and projects, all supporting programmes of classes across the country, professionally taught, bringing thousands of adults back into education each year. This statement,... Continue reading

With the passing of New Labour and the recession, government through ‘big (rubber) levers of power’ has largely been discredited. Years before David Cameron launched the ‘Big Society’ and the localism agenda, David Miliband had talked about ‘double devolution’ of... Continue reading

At last week's LSIS Strategy Day the Council and Board heard from Sue Pember (BIS), Geoff Russell (soon to retired CEO of Skills Funding Agency) and Lorna Fitzjohn (Ofsted). There was a lot their short presentation had in common and... Continue reading

The 10:10 annual update (instead of an annual report) shows that, even after two years, there is momentum in the idea of making efforts around percentage reductions in CO2  You can read their update here - very enjoyable and... Continue reading

FE Providers around the country got an early Christmas present today as their results from 'learner views survey' of the Framework for Excellence (FFE) were put into the provider gateway for them to check before publication. Once out, learners will... Continue reading

New WEA Interim Strategy for Membership, Volunteering & Marketing was approved this week. It was the outcome of work across the autumn with colleagues around the WEA. The Strategy has the usual three year goals and one year action schedule.... Continue reading

Ofsted's Annual Report has some key messages on Adult Community Learning. Holex has identified these: - that over 75% of the ACL providers inspected during 2010/11 were found to be good or outstanding (compared with 55% across the learning and... Continue reading

Just read the HOLEX extract from in the BIS New Challenges New Chances Reform Plan published today: http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/further-education-skills/docs/f/11-1380-further-education-skills-system-reform-plan.pdf Here's the bits on Informal Adult & Community Learning: Community Learning BIS funding will continue to support a universal a community learning... Continue reading

I'm three days into my new role in the WEA: Director of Membership, Volunteering and Marketing. A big change for me in an organisation I've been involved with for over 30 years. Not the first change though; I've been a... Continue reading

The consultation on the review of Informal Adult Community Learning is still not out - but on its way. In a discussion last week I was reminded that there are already potentially useful ways of assessing the benefit of this... Continue reading

Last Friday I saw the National Theatre production of The Pitmen Painters at the Theatre Royal in Bath. It was a complete sell out and tickets had been hard to get. The play was very warmly received and the audience... Continue reading

The Department of Business Innovation & Skills (BIS) has published the Skills Investment Strategy for the funding of Further Education in 2010-11. This is what has been called the Funding Priorities statement. The contents were trailed in the 'Observer' recently.... Continue reading

The WEA's conference at the beginning of October was a success. The Friday event, open to many, covered items around Skills for Social Justice and emphasised, to me, how this seems a more real issue in Scotland than it often... Continue reading