Response of the Suffolk Division of the

Response of the Suffolk Division of the

National Union of Teachers

to the SCC Consultation Paper:

Suffolk County Council Community Education Service:

Future Developments

General:

1) The NUT is conscious of the fact that Community Education has been seriously underfunded over recent years, not least because of virement into Schools Budgets. This has lead to a service suffering from the effects of long-term down-sizing and earlier re-organisations (such as the removal of Deputy CEOs), while charged with important duties and responsibilities to respond to the Government's, and County Council's, social and education programmes.

2) As an organisation primarily representing teachers in schools, the NUT has also noted the decline in funding and priority given to the Youth Service over many years, and the virtual disappearance of Youth Tutors, bridging the gap between school and Community Education for young people. This, together with the "privatisation" of the Careers Service and Local Management of Schools, the "joined-up thinking" that was once co-ordinated under a single Education Committee is now having to be re-invented without any co-ordinating body. This is leading to a fragmentation of effort, and we cannot see the wood for the trees.

3) We also have noted the findings of the recent OFSTED report which do not support the reasons for these particular changes quoted in the document.

4) We therefore have to wonder whether another re-structuring, with the likelihood of slimming practitioner staff still further, is "a cut too far": we are concerned that the launch of "Connexions" will require the participation of a Community Education Service "firing on all cylinders" and confident in the long-term nature of the work upon which they are to embark. There will also be competition between the various partners in Connexions to appoint to their particular activities from an already tight employment market and it is already signalled elsewhere that some Community Education staff will be "seconded" to Connexions. Yet the current Community Education proposals ignore the Connexions effect.

5) We believe that it would be wrong to recruit to new initiatives by making redundancies in Community Education or by "robbing Peter to pay Paul".

6) We note that the Connexions initiative will have to be developed alongside any development of Community Education and that some "joined- up local government" strategies will be required. We cannot see any justification for dealing with Community Education in isolation. The whole, multi-agency approach should be the subject of a larger, more detailed and properly staffed / costed set of proposals for meaningful and lengthy consultation.

Detailed items:

7) The consultation document is lacking in detailed proposals, to the extent that it is not clear what the effect of implementing them would be. We are left to read between the lines and tap the grape vine in order to suppose some of the detail. This is not a proper basis for consultation.

8) The consultation document was not sent to school staff or to the Teacher Organisations, who have a general interest in Community Education as well as admitting relevant Community Education staff to membership. In the case of the NUT, these must be qualified teachers who are working in Community Education.

9) Re-organisation of the areas: we do not see that there is any need to change boundaries. The present situation is working well, and has not been identified by any review or inspection as requiring alteration. The "other agencies" quoted in the consultation document are in fact all used to working in a county framework, with the Area Offices, and it would seem to us that this allows for the greatest flexibility and economy of scale. The current staffing levels and geographical arrangements have enabled even the slimmed-down service to respond to local and county initiatives while retaining local accountability.

10) We are also concerned that moving to a District Council area basis would simply return Community Education to the 1980s, at which time the County Council argued in favour of a county framework, highlighting the administrative and communication advantages, plus ease of liaison with other county-based agencies. These advantages are exactly the same today and it seems perverse to go back to an out-dated arrangement, when everyone has moved on and modern ICT solutions are available.

11) In the early nineties, when Community Education was reorganised on a County basis, satellite offices were retained to ensure coverage of service across the County. We are now particularly concerned at hints that this Local Community resource in some, as yet unspecified, market towns would now close. We believe that you would have a largely negative response to your proposals if you had been more open with your consultees and spelt out the consequences of your proposed reorganisation. Consultees might agree in principle with a change of administrative structure, but not when they see their local access to community education services removed.

12) We note that the inspection OFSTED inspection supported our perception that the current service is effective, responsive and flexible. The report does not suggest that the service is either overstaffed or in need of reorganisation on the ground.

13) For all the above reasons, we believe that the council should not seek to "reconfigure fieldwork practitioner team boundaries to align with key partners in the framework of the county council", if that is taken to mean commensurate with District Councils. There is a fundamental contradiction in the proposal on this matter. The factual basis of the proposal is erroneous.

14) The proposals are similarly based on an argument that the Community Education "owned" premises in the county are inadequate and affecting delivery. This is also contradicted by the OFSTED report which found, overall, "accommodation and resources for learning are appropriate for the courses which use them". There are restrictions and conditions are not ideal in all quarters, but the proposals do not say how closing some provision improves the state of existing premises.

15) We appreciate that there is never enough staff or facilities to do everything that Community Education providers would like to do. However, reducing the size and number of locations available for community work and the number of practitioners on the ground cannot be a basis for improving or even maintaining the level of service currently provided. Society needs community premises and people on the ground to run the services. Community premises must be truly local.

16) Review of Management Systems: Communications and data processing in the 21st Century do not depend on geographical locations. There is no reason why top management should be housed at County Hall, for example. We therefore accept the need for a review of management information systems, with a view to cutting bureaucratic burdens, including paper work. As a "consumer" ourselves (booking accommodation for NUT meetings), we note that some CE processes have not changed for at least 20 years, involving excess paper and cumbersome repetition of form filling (such as copying dates and addresses on two separate pieces of paper for the same booking).

17) The proposal suggests that such improved administration requires radical restructuring of personnel and premises is patently ridiculous in the modern context.

18) Staffing matters: We view with some cynicism the proposal to "maximise investment" in staff. When de-constructed, this proposal appears to boil down to up-grading some staff (adding to management posts) at the expense of cutting down on those who "simply" deliver the service on the ground to the clients. Many of these latter posts are by their very nature part-time, and involve evening work. We see no strategy in the proposals for maintaining morale, retention and recruitment of the Youth and Community part-time workers in the suggested reorganisation. Of course, the whole service will become inefficient if the new managers are then promptly seconded to serve Connexions, deserting their other functions.

19) If, as appears likely, the reduction can only be achieved by making redundancies, there is a cost both in terms of finance and morale. If, on the other hand, the intention is to recruit to Connexions at the same time as reorganising Community Education, then this should be properly signalled, to flag up the possible redeployments or early retirement possibilities, in addition to any voluntary redundancies.

20) In either case, the Community Education Service personnel management situation is in dire straits: there is even confusion over which sets of conditions of service apply to which of our members and other workers in Community Education. This is particularly vexatious when attempting to establish which employment stability policy (if any!) would operate in the proposed re-structuring. Enquiries to the LEA have not elicited a definitive answer. We suggest that it is an urgent matter to set up proper agreed negotiation and consultation arrangements for Community Education employees with the employer, before proceeding with any enforced changes to contracts or potential redundancies. This should be an outcome of the consultation exercise.

21) Future staffing. Again, the document is vague and even contradictory as regards staffing levels and funding. There is a suggestion elsewhere that some of the Community Education budget (and staffing) will be attached to Connexions work, but the statement that no reduction in f.t.e. posts is "expected" is prefaced with the proviso "assuming the level of funding remains as at present". As the funding for discrete Community Education work will not remain the same if some is dedicated to Connexions, it is clear that the number of non-Connexions CE staff will reduce and it is for this reason that no precise numbers are given for the reduction that will have to be made to local specific CE teams. We believe that the consultation document is again so vague on this point as to be impossible to evaluate.

22) Conclusions:

The consultation document fails to make the case for re-organising on the basis of 7 areas and destroying the current area teams;
The document fails to make a case for further management restructuring;
The document fails to point out where local communities would lose community education services and where teaching / service cuts will be made;
We see that, behind the rhetoric lies a plan to reduce the delivery of the current Community Education Service to some local communities;
It is clear that the introduction of the Connexions service lies behind much of the thinking behind the proposals: the Council should therefore consider a wider consultation on this larger topic: how best to combine recruitment to Connexions with retention and development of the current related services (Education, Careers, Community Education, Social Services, etc.).
As with other recent SCC Consultation Documents:

(i) the authors have stated some vague principles under politically correct headings while declining to provide the detail upon which interested parties can actually judge the effect of implementation.

(ii) the "options" given at the end are not really options at all: they are decisions. The consultees are then invited to agree with some arcane and apparently innocuous general statements which bear little relationship to the reality of the proposals, if implemented.

(iii) the "options" are in fact virtually all the same. There is no space for other, real options. Only the one pre-conceived option (with a couple of variations for show) is provided.

The NUT believes that this method of "consultation" is a sham. Instead of asking leading questions and ignoring other ideas for change, the Council would be better to engage in meaningful consultation with interested parties, including all the Unions recognised nationally for Community Education matters, before making a decision and imposing that decision, regardless of the outcome of consultation, through Panels and Committees by use of the party whip. This, we suggest, is not democratic, open or even good government.

MJ Goold, Division Secretary, Suffolk Division, NUT

27/09/00