About this guide
This guide has been prepared by HM Inspectorate of Education to help colleges evaluate how inclusive they are, with a view to enabling the widest possible range of potential learners to benefit from education and training and to become effective lifelong learners.
The guide recognises the extensive contribution that colleges make to the development of young people and adults as lifelong learners. Successive national policies, legislation and guidance have driven and reinforced colleges’ aims to promote access and participation in education and training, and to facilitate economic and social participation. Colleges know that a substantial proportion of potential learners do not find it easy to participate and that this requires them to take action to provide appropriate learning experiences for a diverse range of people. Colleges play a substantial role in workforce development, whether for those preparing for employment or for those already in work and needing to develop new skills and knowledge. Colleges also make a major contribution to language and literacy development, both for learners with poor literacy skills and for those for whom English is not the first language. The widening client base in recent years has demanded that colleges adopt increasingly inclusive and learner-centred practices.
What is inclusiveness in Scotland’s colleges?
The concept of inclusiveness in further education is broad and reflects the view that learning should be for all. It draws together a range of themes which have evolved as a result of policies, legislation and responsive practice. These include increasing access, promoting social inclusion, responding to the needs of the 16-24 age group addressed by the Beattie Report (Implementing Inclusiveness, Realising Potential, Scottish Executive, 1999) and meeting the requirements of legislation1 in relation to equality. Inclusiveness refers firstly to enabling access to education and training for the widest range of potential learners; and secondly, and most importantly, to matching the curriculum and the ways it is delivered to the circumstances of individual learners, taking into account both practical issues and emotional or affective responses. It incorporates the recognition that a sense of belonging, being valued and being supported is a prerequisite for sustaining learning in the early stages and a precursor of more independent and autonomous learning. It includes the notion that achievement and attainment in college are not endpoints in themselves. They are the springboards to economic and social inclusion and to the development, for many, of higher aspirations.
Inclusiveness requires colleges to provide accessible and motivating learning experiences for a diverse range of learners. This means responding to the varying circumstances and attributes of individuals, and it means developing infrastructures, at all levels of the organisation, that make it straightforward to respond to individual needs. Colleges in which the requirements of current legislation are met in spirit as well as in basic compliance enable learners to have individually relevant and productive experiences regardless of their backgrounds and circumstances, including race, culture, disability, gender, age and other attributes. A learner-centred ethos ensures that personal and affective matters are taken into account in planning learning, including ill-health, negative perceptions of the self as a learner, negative prior experiences of learning and social or peer pressures against participation. Interest in individuals helps to resolve issues relating to attendance, for example for those with commitments as carers, or those who are geographically remote from a college. Some learners are very able and confident, and may need, for example, swifter progress through programmes and assessments, and certification for already acquired skills and knowledge. Others learn better at a slower pace and with additional support. People who are employed may be restricted in the extent to which they can study, but productive partnerships between colleges and the employment sector can provide continuing access to education and training which meets both employer and employee needs.