The Tes FE Awards 2019 takes place on Friday 22 March. The deadline for buying “early bird” tickets is Friday 15 February. For more information, visit tesfeawards.co.uk.

Jill Westerman, winner of the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Tes FE Awards 2018, is hopeful about adult learning. Though she has witnessed turbulent times throughout her 40-year career in adult and community education, she is optimistic that lifelong learning is on the up.

“I’ve seen glimmers of hope recently, with more people looking at education as something that helps social cohesion and social mobility,” she says. “There’s a sort of a renaissance of that kind of work, partly because of the divisions that Brexit’s revealed.”

As a teacher, manager and then principal of Northern College in Barnsley, Westerman has first-hand experience of how adult learning can change lives for the better. The college works with people who face significant barriers, who may have mental ill health or addiction to substances or alcohol, and who find it extremely difficult to get work. Others attend Northern College having formerly been in jobs where their specific skill set was rendered obsolete because of technological and market changes. The personal impact on them can be devastating.

“Often they’re really lacking in confidence having been made redundant and feeling like they can’t find their place in the world,” she explains.

Lifelong learning

Jill Westerman became involved in lifelong learning at the age of 18. Prior to starting university, she joined community service volunteers and was placed in the West Midlands Travellers’ School, where few of the adults could read or write beyond their own name.

It opened her eyes to the disadvantages some young people face because they are unable to access education, or participate in society in the same way as those who have had better educational opportunities. It was an experience which led her to a lifelong commitment to championing the power of adult education and the positive social change it can grant.

Following university, Westerman took a job as a community worker on council estates in Hackney. “At that time I lived on a Hackney council estate myself,” she says, “but what I quickly realised was that the level of personal power and control I had was so much greater because I’d had the benefit of a university education. I had so many more choices than a lot of the people I was working with.”

Giving choice

It was that understanding that inspired Westerman to return to college to train as an FE teacher. She taught literacy and numeracy in small community education provisions around London for some years before relocating north. 

“We had two small children and moved up to Sheffield - I didn’t have a job. I was sending my CV off to lots of different colleges in the area and Northern College called me in,” she recalls.   

That was was 25 years ago, and Westerman has made Northern College her home ever since. “From the minute I walked in the door, I completely fell in love with the place. The way in which the college spoke to the values I have about working with the people who’ve experienced the most disadvantage and supporting them to have more choices in their lives.”

After promotion through a range of teaching and management posts, Westerman became principal in 2007. “The sudden realisation hit me the first time someone asked me to make a big decision,” she says. “A difficult decision. You look around and think: ‘Isn’t anybody else going to make this? ‘And then you remember: ‘OK. The buck stops here.’ That takes a bit of getting used to.”

Humble and open

With Westerman at the helm, the college progressed from being in a difficult financial position to being graded outstanding by Ofsted. She describes her most important lesson in leadership using a quote by Thomas Jefferson: “He said: ‘In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.’ What that says to me is that you have to have core principles you don’t sway away from, but at the same time recognise that there are lots of different ways of doing things. People around you might approach things in a different way, and that doesn’t mean that they’re wrong and you’re right. It means you have to be humble and be open to things.”

After a long career that has seen her improve the lives of thousands of people, never missing an opportunity to champion the work of students and colleagues in the sector, Westerman will retire next month. With a lifetime’s experience in adult education, she hopes the sector’s future will involve more rigorous long-term planning.

She says: “What would be wonderful would be a national adult education strategy that thought 10, 20, 30, 40 years ahead and looked at things like demographics, disadvantage, labour market needs, social needs, the needs of an ageing population.”

She continues: “A really coherent strategy that planned how lifelong learning could be used to make things better for the population as a whole. Well, that would be just wonderful.”

The Tes FE Awards 2019, sponsored by the Education and Training Foundation, takes place on Friday 22 March. This year the awards will also host the AoC Beacon Awards. The deadline for buying “early bird” tickets is Friday 8 February. For more information, visit tesfeawards.co.uk.