Youth work has the potential to help tackle some of the most intractable problems in Scottish education, such as closing the attainment gap and helping re-engage the rising number of pupils persistently absent from school.
However, an independent review of community learning and development (CLD) finds the sector is “under-appreciated, and therefore under-resourced” and at risk of “potential collapse”.
Call for ‘urgent reassessment’ of education spending
The review, which makes 20 recommendations, is calling for “an urgent and overdue reassessment of the current balance of spending across all dimensions of learning in Scotland”.
It says investment in “informal” education has been “an afterthought even though we’ve known since the early 1970s that not all individuals thrive within the formal education system”.
While recognising that “CLD is not a silver bullet” for dealing with complex problems, the review finds that its potential for “reaching those young people for whom the traditional school learning experience is not a good fit remains under-appreciated, and therefore under-resourced”.
Those with additional support needs or from more marginalised communities “require access and support to alternative CLD provision that can more readily meet their needs”, it says.
The review argues, therefore, that “there needs to be greater equity of resource distribution within a joined-up formal and informal lifelong learning system that gives parity of esteem to those being educated as well as educators”.
Attainment gap rhetoric must be backed by fairer funding
The review’s author Kate Still - who is Scotland chair of the National Lottery Community Fund and started her career as a secondary teacher - writes: “In an ideal world, there would be early and significant additional financial resource made available to the sector, but we know that is unrealistic in the current budget context.
“However, the policy rhetoric about the need to address the attainment gap in educational outcomes, due to the impact of poverty, needs to be backed up by a fairer distribution of existing budget resources.”
The review - published yesterday with the title Learning: For All. For Life - A report from the Independent Review of Community Learning and Development (CLD) - highlights that the amount of public money for schools, colleges and universities dwarves the amount spent by councils on CLD, which it puts at around £100 million a year.
Spending on schools alone is £7 billion a year it says, adding: ”The Scottish government’s education reform budget on its own is broadly equivalent to total CLD spend across Scotland.”
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