Evaluation, statistics and OR

All change at the Department for Education and Skills

A new Prime Minister with a new Cabinet and a new way of looking at education and skills!  While Jacqui Smith as Home Secretary got the big headlines yesterday, the abolition of the Department for Education and Skills was hidden away rather, but will have a significant impact on the sector.  The BBC article "Brown shakes up education arena" focused on the wonders of Ed Balls and his new Department for Children, Schools and Families, once again leaving adult learning and skills as the Cinderella sector.

The new Department of Innovation, Universities and Skills covers the Higher Education sector, Science, Innovation and the skills sector, but the key delivery agents for skills in many areas - the Further Education Colleges - have more than one master, as their 16 - 19 remit sits with the Department for Children.  The Learning and Skills Council would appear to have some change to its remit, although not yet in the public domain as far as I can tell, as funding for 16 to 19 education will be allocated to schools and colleges via local authority education budgets (it is unclear whether schools and colleges also means private training providers).

For the LSC, the bulk of the budgets are for 16 to 19 provision so a significant transfer of power is to be expected with the movement of the funding role.  In some ways, my personal view is that this is probably right, as the LSC never really got to grips with or got support for its role in school 6th form funding, and a lot of the work that continues on academic routes at 16 to 19 detracts from the support needed to tackle those who chose not to continue in any form of education or training.  It would be nice if this meant that there is then a real concentration on the skills issues of adults and adult learning, however I think in reality there could just be a power struggle between local education authorities and the LSC on who determines policy and strategy for colleges.  FE Colleges will have to resist the temptation to deal with these two like a child with separated parents, playing one off the other to get more and better treats.

My real concern in all of this is that the internal politics and navel gazing that will ensue at the former Department and at the LSC and the other Skills organisations will mean that it will be too much like hard work to do anything about the Leitch report and its recommendations.  The report will be lost, while the sector jockeys for position, and once they return to it, it will be easy to say that it is out of date and needs refreshing, and we will wait another 2 or 3 years to see anything on improving the skills and competitiveness of the UK.

The benefits of business planning

It is a quiet week this week, as one project comes to an end and waiting for a phone call to get the next one kicked off.  Because of that, I have taken advantage of this lull in activity to do what I promised my bank manager I would do about 7 months ago and develop a business plan.

When I was in a group setting up the now disbanded Mercia Research & Strategy, we got a business plan together very early on in the process - in part to ensure that all partners understood what we were getting ourselves into, and in part to have something to show the bank.  But despite the fact that two of us at least had a planning background, we never systematically reviewed that plan.  It may be one reason why we drifted apart - we didn't take the time out to review and put down in writing our thoughts and ambitions and knowledge under a few key headings.

With Plantagenet Consulting, it has been a similar pattern.  In the initial phases, there was some stuff on the backs of envelopes or scrawled on my white board, and when I saw the bank, I blagged it a bit, along the lines of "you know me and my track record and my prudence with money".  This week I am setting time aside to review a number of key themes:

• What are my aims short term and long term?
• What are my targets?
• What are the markets I am targeting?
• What are my former, current and desired client bases?
• Who are my competitors?
• Who are my collaborators and partners?
• What do I do well?
• What are the services I can offer and how does that link with above?
• What are my marketing messages, and do they link with any of the above?

And that is just a start, as within those topics there are a whole other set of issues and linkages.  I have developed a template of headings, and I am in the process of filling those headings in very honestly.  I am spotting a whole range of actions and activities that have got to be done to make Plantagenet Consulting interesting to the markets that I want to be in, which will keep me well occupied in the long summer evenings, assuming the weather doesn't improve.

I am also identifying the training and self development that I need to do to get me where I want to be, the tools and skills that I need to provide a fully rounded service in the areas I want to work, and am starting to work on that self development.

This business planning lark might seem a bit luxurious and nebulous, but if I get it right and then follow through with those identified actions, I stand a good chance of meeting my first year targets for Plantagenet Consulting, and that means that it is time well spent.

If any other micro-businesses out there would like to try out my template and process, feel free to contact me via a comment on the blog or via the e-mail contact on the about link on the right of the screen.

The ability to speak the language of your host country?

Priceless!!  To quote a much hackneyed advert.

This is a topic that is doing the rounds in both the United Kingdom and France at the moment.  The reports on social inclusion of migrants, the call for ESOL lessons for migrants - both in the UK - and the demands by Sarkozy that immigrants to France learn French to an acceptable standard before they arrive are the talk of the moment in the media.  There are a number of issues here which are worth airing - so I will!

Firstly - the limits on who can get free ESOL training in the UK are so tight that the influx of migrant workers are effectively excluded from funding, and their employers will doubtless find their access to Train to Gain funding at the public expense for this also curtailed.  This is a major issue - providers expect that once the changes come into force in August 2007, demand will drop away, so that the capacity they have been trying to build will be wasted.

This brings in the second issue - the non-financial resources required to deliver the ESOL training.  Rooms, books, materials, teachers and assessments are stretched beyond what is reasonable and investment is required to meet the demand if funding rules aren't changed.

Then there is the issue of actually being able to get to any courses - little provision seems to be "roll on roll off" if I may use a ferry analogy while the fact that many migrant workers do long hours and anti-social hours means that actually getting to courses or being able to attend them regularly can be tricky.

But what of our own citizens that wish to emigrate elsewhere?  If the Sarkozy rule was applied to the British moving to France, how would we fare in getting the learning we need to prove an ability with French?  Well if my experience is anything to go by, not that well.  Realistically Beginners French or even GCSE French is not adequate for dealing with more than buying the morning baguette and croissants.  It is certainly not up to the standard required for sorting out your Internet access or exporting your car or explaining to the vet that your cat has been attacked by a chicken or eaten a lizard, or even signing on with a French GP.

So you need to look at AS/A2 French (A-level in old money).  Well, there aren't that many providers doing that as evening classes for those of us that work, the standard and requirements isn't much better than the much beloved O-level of 20 years ago, and still leaves you struggling when explaining your situation to the Social Security or Tax authorities in France.

So we can't train those that come in, as it costs too much, and we don't train those that want to leave, 'cos it is all a bit difficult and driven by the needs of 16 to 18 year olds to be entertained while they learn at 6th form.  We just haven't got our heads round languages and integration, have we?

Too much technology?

I have a favourite birthday card that I send to like minded chums, via the post, which has a nice sepia photo of an elegant lady from the 20s with a typewriter, and the caption reads "It was a hard day at the office - the computers went down and everyone had to learn to think again".  I am no technology Luddite - but the truth of that statement is frightening.  If my ADSL box goes down so I can't access the Internet and e-mail, or even worse I have to close down all computers as there is a thunderstorm near by, work stops.

Another situation where technology drives success was noted on a report on the BBC website about difficulties faced by community and voluntary organisations using the e-procurement system of the Learning and Skills Council.  While many organisations got through it fine, a small but significant number had problems with system crashes and lost work.  While the system saved an estimated 3 million sheets of paper, it has also caused heartache and stress to a number of organisations who didn't deserve it.

I fully applaud Rob Wye's unconditional apology on the system, but am a bit more worried by the attitude of the anonymous company that designed and implemented the system.  Their view was that any problems were entirely the fault of the users.

Now when I worked with similar systems from within the LSC, and I had community and voluntary organisations on at my team about the awfulness of the systems we were forcing them to use, one of my team would go out to see what was going wrong and do some training with the organisation that was having problems.  Or they would come back and say what the problem was - often dial up modems, dodgy telephony, or computers that were more than 2 years old.  While such issues might be the user's fault in some ways, the desire for bigger, better, faster technology and the need to upgrade every year or so is as much of a waste as the 3 million sheets of paper.  For a community or voluntary organisation, the cost of keeping up diverts resources from doing good.

When I worked at British Gas many years ago (here is the techie bit), I used to run multiple regression models with approximately 10 variables including an autoregressive term and using large data sets, and I could design them on a single sheet lotus worksheet (NOT a workbook), and I could run them on a PC with a 286 processor (remember those?).  It was a bit slow, but it could be done, and the results could be thought about, and the worksheet could be backed up on a floppy disk with 384Kb capacity.

Today I worked on a model for community and voluntary organisations to understand demand for learning, using computer power that is greater than that which powered an Apollo space rocket.  However when I looked at the quality of the data I was working with, an abacus might have been more practical! 

With all this technology around, you have to hope that from time to time the brain pitches in, looks at what you are doing, and says "that's garbage!"