Earn as you learn - BBC Website article

I want to put my readers in touch with a BBC webpage, in which they go into "Earn as you learn", or what John Denham and Hefce would call "co-funding". Here is the link to the said BBC page.

Earn as You Learn

This pleasant article gives details of a co-funding enterprise between Coventry University and the Automobile Association and one of its call-centres in Hull. Basically, the idea is to give group managers confidence at dealing with difficult problems. They are required to do case studies and present their fundings for assessment. At the end of the course they get their certificate in lifelong learning.

There is no doubt that this exercise is an exercise in co-funding but is it actually education as we know it (or even lifelong learning). Is it not more the case that this is nothing more or less than good old fashioned training. Nothing wrong with that but let's be careful out there. It would be a shame to mislead.

There are examples of the genre in the United States, where I read that one can put a number of years industrial/commercial/business training towards a degree. I would be glad of that; if that were the case, I hereby claim another two degrees on the strength of my work experience. So what I am saying is that the split between vocational and educational is not deeply pronounced in the United States.

Nonetheless I believe that there is a deep misunderstanding/split between what is educational and what is vocational and that this is brought about by the culture of resolutely insisting that there is an integrated qualifications framework (see QAA for details, weblink to be provided later).

For it to be educational and for it to be real lifelong learning, there must be more to it than tickboxes and cases studies. Education (Teaching and Learning) demands that one knows about why one is learning (the philosophy of education), the hows and wherefores of learning, the ethics and morals of situations and the broader applications of education as applied to the wider society. It is likely that all these things will be woven into the fabric of university degrees; not so likely that they will be woven into the fabric of workplace training.

There is a distinct absence of any philosophy with the scheme that the BBC has outlined (interesting though the scheme is). However I am sorry to say that the article misses the point completely, that this exercise is neither education, nor lifelong learning.

It would be good if we could all write to the BBC and our Members of Parliament pointing out that these exercises in co-opted funding are all very well and good but there is a tendency here to deconstruct education and bring it down to a series of workplace tickboxes, which is far from good.

Donald Hedges, Dip Eng Law(Open), BA(Hons(Solent).