University of the West of England, Gloscat, City of Bath - Case Study - Individual Learning Plans

Introduction and Background to the Project

Our pilot was carried out by the University of the West of England in partnership with two further education (FE) colleges, Gloscat and the City of Bath College. The partners were already linked through the provision of a part-time in-service Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) and Certificate in Education (Cert Ed) FE.

The partnership wanted to pilot an individual learning plan (ILP) on a full-time and a part-time programme for initial teacher education for the Learning & Skills (L&S) sector. Its aim was to establish procedures needed to deliver ILPs in diverse employment contexts.

Prior to the start of this project, each programme and centre had deliberately adopted a slightly different approach to initial assessment. Our initial informal review of our practices identified that the two key issues we need to address were:

the link with employers’ Human Resources (HR) function, and
the coaching function of the tutorial role.

Key idea
"From the outset we were determined that the whole issue of initial assessment and individual learning plans would avoid a number of pitfalls that we had identified.

We wanted the initial assessment to focus on more than just literacy and numeracy.
We wanted the individual learning plan to contribute to the coherence of the learning experience rather than resulting in fragmented learning.
We wanted the individual learning plan to be the responsibility of more than one party."

Aims

The aim of the proposal was to establish the kinds of flexible systems and procedures that were needed in order to successfully deliver ILPs in the L&S sector, which has such diverse employment contexts.

Objectives

Our objectives were to:

involve the HR function of employers from a range of settings in the implementation of a partnership reviewing trainees’ progress through the use of ILPs
develop a three way partnership consisting of the trainee, employer and tutor which reviews trainees’ progress through the use of ILPs
improve the design of the systems and procedures for the partnership which reviews trainees’ progress through the use of ILPs.

University of the West of England, Gloscat, City of Bath - Case Study - Individual Learning Plans

Key idea "From the outset we were determined that the whole issue of initial assessment and individual learning plans would avoid a number of pitfalls that we had identified.

We wanted the initial assessment to focus on more than just literacy and numeracy.

We wanted the individual learning plan to contribute to the coherence of the learning experience rather than resulting in fragmented learning.

We wanted the individual learning plan to be the responsibility of more than one party."

Key idea
"From the outset we were determined that the whole issue of initial assessment and individual learning plans would avoid a number of pitfalls that we had identified.