Evaluation of community learning and development in Scotland: Recommendations
Recommendations for local authorities and their partners
Local authorities should work with their Community Learning and Development (CLD) partners to improve their collective use of data and shared self-evaluation to better monitor and report on CLD outcomes.
Community planning partnerships should ensure that the reporting of CLD enables them to understand the progress being made against CLD plans and how CLD is contributing to wider priorities. This will support them to fulfil their strategic role in the planning, governance and leadership of CLD.
CLD partnerships need to better involve young people, adult learners, community organisations and local representatives in CLD planning. In particular, they should ensure that CLD participants have a greater influence and become partners in decision-making about CLD planning at strategic level.
Recommendations for the Scottish Government
The Scottish Government should consider how national infrastructure can be best used to support the CLD sector to meet the needs of vulnerable populations. There are a number of critical issues that currently diminish the sector’s capacity to meet the needs of learners and communities. These include the lack of a shared CLD outcomes and measurement framework or system to track and report progress at local authority and national level.
Community-based adult learning provision, including English for speakers of other languages learning, should be reviewed to understand better supply and demand and how current challenges might be addressed. This should include exploring how well community-based adult learning is contributing to national priorities and enabling adults to move into employment and supporting wellbeing.
The Scottish Government should review national policy and legislation for CLD to ensure that they take account of the current context and support strengthened governance.
The Scottish Government and local authorities should consider whether a national approach is required to better support schools and CLD partners to record and track young people’s achievements and skills. This is a long-standing challenge. A consistent, systematic approach would allow young people to have their progress, and skills better recognised and celebrated.
