Learning from the Edge: Engaging and motivating young adults

NIACE Conference
13 September 2007
Thistle Marble Arch Hotel, Bryanston Street, Marble Arch, London W1H 7EH

09:30 - 16:30

£195

The conference will cover:

• Examples of excellent practice, across both the formal and the youth and community learning sectors, in engaging marginalised young adults.
• Government strategy and plans to support and engage marginalised and hard-to-reach young adults in learning.
• The experiences and aspirations of individual young adult learners.
• Innovative and effective approaches to work with hard-to-reach groups.

Participants will also have the opportunity to use a range of e-approaches to contribute to the conference, including a video booth, hand-held electronic voting systems and graffiti white boards.
The conference will be of interest to:

• Practitioners and managers of projects for hard-to-reach young adults
• Local authority staff from youth services and education departments
• Staff from Connexions, Youth Offending Teams and teenage pregnancy co-ordinators
• Training providers
• Policy-makers
• Researchers

Further details and reservations.
Enquiries to Gurjit Kaur on 0116 204 2833
email: gurjit.kaur@niace.org.uk

Thanks to the Basic Skills Agency for publishing this information

Quality of later life: Learning in care settings revisited

Tuesday 10 July 2007
Abbey Community Centre, 34 Great Smith Street

London SW1P 3BU

9.30 - 15.45

Sustaining acceptable standards of quality of life for older people has been a key element of older people's policy expressed by government in Opportunity Age. The Opportunity Age Quality of Life Indicators include access to education. This is also now part of the inspection process for older people's care provision.

NIACE has long maintained that education in later life should be an integral part of those standards. Recent changes in focus of education spending and the latest LSC participation data indicate that:

• older people are less likely to benefit from formal education unless imaginative, targeted and collaborative ways are found to deliver and fund meaningful programmes;
• for older people in care and dependency settings where care, welfare and health issues may predominate, creating and sustaining education programmes is thus even more problematic; and
• the inclusion of learning within inspection procedures creates the opportunity to influence those providers and encourage care providers to develop education programmes with those older people for whom they have a responsibility.

The event is designed to be of interest to a wide range of people which does not include "careers advisers" -- there may, although I doubt it, be an assumption that careers advisers are only for younger people and that learning is not for "the old". The event will certainly be of interest to those careers organisations with links to third age learning.

Email enquiries to Gurjit Kaur gurjit.kaur@niace.org.uk or telephone 0116 204 2833

NIACE ESOL question time conference

I've just received this email from NIACE and thought I'd pass on immediately information about this important, to the guidance community, conference which is on

Monday 18 June 2007
Queens Hotel City Square Leeds LS1 1PL

Registration 9:45 -- the conference closes at 15:35

Recent announcements from the LSC and Government will exclude asylum seekers from any learning opportunities whilst they wait for a decision from the Home Office. The 25,000 annual applicants for asylum are amongst the most vulnerable and needy learners. They need survival English and the interaction with others that ESOL provides. These measures give rise to critical questions, such as:

• How to engage employers and secure their contribution to the costs of training their employees?
• How to provide a broader range of ESOL to satisfy wide ranging learner needs?
• How to improve the quality of provision?
• How to ensure that sufficient ESOL teachers are employed and that initial and teacher training and ongoing professional development meets their needs. ?
• The NIACE ESOL Committee of Inquiry recommended that there should be free ESOL tuition up to and including Level 1. By ignoring this recommendation there is a risk that social inclusion and community cohesion, two government priorities, will be at risk. Newcomers will be increasingly isolated if they cannot speak English to ask for their bus fare or buy a pint of milk. The rise of hostility towards immigrants may be fuelled. This is also likely to have an impact on those seeking to access ESOL Language with Citizenship courses. The issue of equity with literacy and numeracy has not been addressed.

This conference aims to:

• Consider the implications of the NIACE ESOL Inquiry recommendations in 'More than a language...' for policy and practice
• Consider the impact of the LSC's Annual Statement of Priorities, 2007 - 2008
• Share responses and approaches developed in response to the NIACE recommendations and LSC funding changes

This event provides an opportunity for all those connected with the field of ESOL to voice their views, propose their solutions and share their approaches to responding to learners' needs.

It will be a lively and stimulating event, based on questions and answers, argument and debate. Guests will be asked to respond to questions from an interviewer and also questions from the floor.

There will be plenty of opportunity to share views and experiences through round table discussions and as a whole conference. This will be a provocative and demanding day but one which will also provide a number of practical strategies to plan and deliver provision in September 2007.

Details at the link under the title of this posting
Enquiries to Gurjit Kaur
tel: 0116 204 2833
email: gurjit.kaur@niace.org.uk