Table Of ContentDOCUMENT RESUME
CE 065 921
ED 367 852
Davies, Pat; Parry, Gareth
AUTHOR
Recognising Access. The Formation and Implementation
TITLE
National Framework for the Recognition of
of t!
Acces. Courses.
National Inst. of Adult Continuing Education,
INSTITUTION
Leicester (England).
Department of Employment, London (England). Training
SPONS AGENCY
Enterprise and Education Directorate.; Further
Education Unit, London (England).
REPORT NO
ISBN-1-872941-38-9
PUB DATE
93
NOTE
186p.
National Institute of Adult Continuing Education, 21
AVAILABLE FROM
De Montfort Street, Leicester LE1 7GE, England,
United Kingdom (9.95 British pounds).
PUB TYPE Books (010)
Research/Technical (143)
Reports
EDRS PRICE
MF01/PC08 Plus Postage.
*Access to Education; Accreditation (Institutions);
DESCRIPTORS
Adult Education; Adult Students; Educational
Development; Educational Discrimination; Educational
Planning; Educational Policy; Foreign Countries;
Higher Education; National Programs; Program
Development; *Program Implementation; *Reentry
Students
*Access Courses (United Kingdom); United Kingdom
IDENTIFIERS
ABSTRACT
This book focuses on the past, present, and future of
the national framework for the recognition of access courses in the
is an introduction that discusses framework
United Kingdom. Chapter 1
studies and framework features. Chapter 2 is a review of the bodies
appointed to plan and oversee the scheme at the center, including an
examination of the perspectives and perceptions of the major players.
The evolution of the enterprise is reviewed in terms of four
developmental stages or phases: preliminary, planning, operational,
and review. Chapter 3 is an account of the implementation of the
venture that is based mainly on five case studies of agencies
authorized to recognize access courses on behalf of the central
authorities. Topics include the following: mandate, structure, and
resourcing of authorized validating agencies (AVAs); roles and
relationships; quality assurance mechanisms; and curriculum issues.
Chapter 4 is a concluding commentary of the character, influence, and
direction of the framework. The introduction of the framework is
evaluated in terms of the original purposes and principles
established to guide the formation and implementation of the scheme.
Appendixes include information on origins, methods, and outcomes;
chronology of events, 1987-92; and brief outlines of the five case
study AVAs. Contains 33 references. (YLB)
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01,1
v.+
Recognising Access
An Account of the Formation and
Implementation of the National Framework
for
the Recognition of Access Courses
Pat Davies
Gareth Parry
National Institute of Adult Continuing Education
1
Institute of Adult
First published in 1993 by the National
Academic
Continuing Education for the Council for National
of the
Awards and on behalf of the Steering Committee
Evaluation Study.
funded by the
This publication is the report of a project
Employnwnt
Department for Education, the Department of
Directorate), the Further
(Training, Enterprise and Education
of Adult
Education Unit and the Unit for the Development
Continuing Education.
permission of the
© Crown Copyright. Published by
Controller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office.
Data
British Library Cataloguing in Publication
British Library
A catalogue record is available from the
ISBN 1 872941 38 9
and do not
The views expressed are those of the authors
departments and
necessarily reflect those of the government
public bodies which funded the study or of NIACE.
registration
NIACE is a company limited by guarantee,
number 2603322
Charity number 1002775
Acknowledgements
of the Access
The authors would like to thank the members
Committee, the
Courses Recognition Group, the Consultative
Committee
Authorised Validating Agencies and the Steering
collaboration at all
for the study for their co-operation and
Roseanne
stages of the work. Particular thanks are due to
Heron, Philip
Penn, David Browning, Nick Hall, George
Thompson and Cynthia
Jones, Sue Pedder, Bev Sand, Anne
White.
Access Project,
Cover photograph courtesy Greenwich
Greenwich University
Guildford
Printed in England by Riddles Ltd,
A
41
Contents
INTRODUCTION
1
1
DEVELOPMENT AT NATIONAL LEVEL:
2
8
THE CENTRAL BODY
Preliminary phase
8
2.1
Planning period
13
2.2
Operational stage
20
2.3
22
Scrutiny of applications
2.3.1
27
Perceptions of participants
2.3.2
People and procedures
27
2.3.3
Courses and programmes
34
2.3.4
Target groups and equal opportunities
39
2.3.5
Quality assurance and standards
41
2.3.6
Collaboration and competition
43
2.3.7
Review phase
46
2.4
Future operations
46
2.4.1
Changing contexts
48
2.4.2
Consulta tive mechanisms
51
2.4.3
Periodic reviews
54
2.4.4
Problem approvals
58
2.4.5
IMPLEMENTATION AT REGIONAL AND LOCAL LEVEL:
3
62
THE AUTI IORISED VALIDATING AGENCIES
Remit, structure and resourcing of AVAs
63
3.1
Roles and relationships
70
3.2
70
Role of local educa tion authorities
3.2.1
70
Role of development officers and chairs
3.2.2
73
Participation and partnership
3.2.3
National and regional networks
76
3.2.4
III
Quality assurance mechanisms
3.3
78
Review and evaluation of AVA procedures
3.3.1
78
Validation and periodic review of courses
3.3.2
80
Moderation and annual review
3.3.3
90
Curriculum issues
3.4
96
Targeting and equal opportunities
97
3.4.1
Course duration and mode
3.4.2
98
Coherence and integration
3.4.3
100
Assessment
3.4.4
102
CONCLUDING COMMENTARY
107
4
Intentions and outcomes
107
4.1
Primary objectives
4.1.1
107
Guid ing p-inciples
4.1.2
123
Other consequences
4.1.3
132
Recurring concerns
4.1.4
135
Directions and futures
4.2
139
Appendix I Origins, methods and outcomes
144
Appendix II Chronology of events, 1987-92
149
Appendix III The case study AVAs
154
Appendix IV Membership of the steering committee for the
evaluation study
176
References
177
iv
6
one
Introduction
The formation and implementation of the national framework for the
recognition of access courses has spanned a remarkable period in the
history of post-compulsory education in the United Kingdom. At the
beginning of the 1980s, access courses leading to higher education
were a relatively new, distinctly local and largely unknown phenome-
non; and identified with positive action and innovative practice at a
time when opportunities for adults to enter higher education were
constrained. By the beginning of the 1990s, these courses were a
rapidly expanded, routinely regarded and nationally recognised part
of the architecture of further and higher education; and associated
with features and assumptions increasingly challenged by the con-
temporary drive to a mass, modular and credit-based system of post-
school education and training.
Proposed in 1987 and launched in 1989, the framework of national
arrangements for the recognition of access courses was one of a
number of measures intended by Government to extend participation
and widen access to higher education. While the original context for
such a proposal was a concern about a demographic decline in student
numbers and an insufficient supply of highly qualified manpower,
that surrounding the subsequent development of the scheme has been
one of buoyant demand, record recruitment and increased diversity
of means and n lodes by which you lg and older people were able to
secure entry to higher education. The operation of the framework in
this dynamic environment has posed new questions about the signi-
ficance and scope of the exercise, as well as new diffi-ulties (and
complexities) in the assessment of its early impact.
Although not a major episode in broad policy terms, the principles
underpinning the scheme collaboration, devolution and lightness of
and the relationships forged between further education and
touch
higher education and between the university and non-university parts
of higher education have served to alter the language and landscape
of access educa tion. Furthermore, Zhe attempt to develop at national
Recognising Access
level a set of principles and relationships drawn from access practice
at local level, and then to offer them back to the field as part of a
regulatory framework, has had a number of consequences, not all of
them anticipated by those who devised and administered the scheme.
In order to justify the designation of access courses as a normal or
standard route into higher education, rather than as a means of
exceptional entry, a system of quality assurance was to be introduced
which would ensure parity of status and standards with other, more
established pathways. C. t the same time, the availability of such cours-
es was to be increased, their diversity maintained, and their philos-
ophy respected. Future expansion, wider permeation and deeper
penetration were to be contingent therefore upon legitimation and
necessary regulation.
Many of the issues which confronted the framework, which
shaped its identity and evolution, were the same as those which
challenged the system as a whole, and in some cases they anticipated
debates and developments which were to feature on the larger policy
stage. Some questions, sucii as the role of equal opportunities and
planning strategies, were to continue to command attention when
their importance elsewhere was generally reduced. Other dimensions,
including the adherence to minimum study hours and general entry
requirements, were to prove more problematic, arfi'd increasingly idio-
syncratic, as changes in curriculum design and assessment, as well as
adjustments in admission policie:; and procedures, lessened the relev-
ance of these notions.
Given the competing pressures which operated from within and
towards the framework, and the range of interests and institutions
embraced by the initiative, it was to be expected that framework
guidelines would be differently received and variously interpreted.
The tensions, ambiguities and uncertainties which accompanied the
formation of the scheme at the centre were to be reproduced but
reworked in attempts to implement the scheme at regional and local
level. The result has been a mixture of models and styles of validation
for access courses, a reflection of political and economic exigencies as
mucn as longer-term educati:inal goals or missions. The future of
these arrangements and the agencies approved to conduct them, some
resting on fragile foundations and several offering validation along-
side other services, has become a source of speculation as well as a live
element in review and evaluation.
2
Introduction
FRAMEWORK STUDIES
The past, present and future of the national framework has been the
subject of an independent evaluation study conducted at City Univer-
sity and funded by the Training Agency, Further Education Unit
(FEU), Department of Education and Science (DES) and the Unit for
the Development of Adult Continuing Education (UDACE). The re-
search was carried out by the authors between January 1990 and
August 1991. The early part of this work focust.d on the formation and
operation of the scheme at national level. The later period, based on
fieldwork undertaken in different parts of England between Septem-
ber 1990 and August 1991, was concerned with monitoring the im-
plementation of the initiative at local and regional level. Both phases
involved analysis of documentary sources, interviews with key par-
ticipants and observation of relevant meetings and events.
An interim report Framing Access (Parry and Davies, 1991a) outlin-
ing the preliminary findings Eam the first part of the study was
published by UDACE in the spring of 1991. The present publication
is the final report of the evaluation study and is based on work
undertaken over the whole of the research period, with an up-date of
events and developments to the end of 1992. The report is organised
in three main sections: a review of the bodies appointed to plan and
oversee the scheme at the centre, including an examination of the
perspectives and perceptions of the major players; an account of the
implementation of the venture on the ground based mainly on five
case studies of agencies authorised to recognise access courses on
behalf of the central authorities (Birmingham Access Federation, Man-
chester Open College Federation, Newcastle Polytechnic and Part-
ners, South West Access Validating Agency and, in London, Access to
Learning for Adults); and a concluding commentary on the character,
influence and direction of the framework. Some of this material is
summarised and discussed in a sister publication Kitcmarking Access
(Parry and Davies, 1992) published by the Furtl.er Education Unit on
behalf of the Department of Employment. I
Formative evaluation and regular feedback to participants in the
scheme as well as practitioners in the field have been important
features of the study. These have taken a variety of forms, ranging
from open invitations to comment and preliminary reports to inter-
ested parties, through to more informal and incidental exchanges
occasioned by a collaborative and participative style of fieldwork. The
academic, evaluative and developmental dimensions of the research
are outlined in Appendix I. together with a description of the methods
and approaches employed at different points in the study.
3
CI
Recognising Access
FRAMEWORK FEATURES
The national framework for the recognition of access courses was
established to increase the credibility and authority of such courses as
a basis for entry to higher education. As a framework assurance it was
designed to:
'support and extend opportunities for students' admission to higher
education, whilst safeguarding the risk of erosion of standards. The
purpose is to encourage staff in higher education to be more prepared
to admit students from Access Courses, and students themselves to be
more confident of obtaining a place. The arrangements should enable
individual Access Courses to achieve a wide basis of acceptability and
currency for entry to all higher education institutions' (CV 1.-P and
CNAA,1989a: para 5).
These arrangements relate to England, Wales and Northern Ire-
land. In Scotland separate arrangements were made through the
Scottish Wider Access Programme (SWAP).2
The courses and programmes of study currently deemed to fall
within the framework of national arrangements are those which seek
to:
O facilitate entry to higher education
provide mainly for mature students
Cl
O cater for individuals without conventional entry qualifications
who do not feel ready to enter directly
0 meet the needs of specific groups under-represented in higher
education
O provide an alternative to courses offered by other educational,
vocational or professional examining authorities.
Such courses provide 'a specific type of access route' and their
'special role' is 'widening participation' in higher education (CVCP
and CNAA, 1992a: 7). Access courses embraced by the framework of
recognition were intended to cover only part of the spectrum of
alternative routes to higher education and their specificity is signified
by the use of capital letters ('Access Courses') in framework publica-
tions: a convention followed in the rest of this report.
The great majority of Access Courses are provided by colleges of
further ed ication, together with a small number found in higher
education establishments and adult education institu tions. They can
be followed full-time or part-time and they facilitate entry into a range
of degree and other higher education prograhimes, including those in
scientific, technological and professional areas. The
Access to Higher
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