Briefing contents:
1 AoC Beacon Awards - Policy Session at the AoC Annual Conference
1 AoC Beacon Awards - Policy Session 2.1 at the AoC Annual Conference, Tuesday 17 November
AoC Beacon Awards – Reading the Futures Map and developing the Awards
Dame Patricia Morgan-Webb, Chair of the AoC Beacon Awards Steering Group and Pat Hood, Research Consultant and author of “Celebrating Colleges” will be presenting an outline proposal of how AoC envisages the AoC Beacon Awards will develop to match and meet the requirements of the sector over the next five years, to ensure their continuing relevance and future.
We would like to invite Principals and Vice Principals Curriculum to take part in this Policy Session so that we can include feedback from the sector in the future development of the Awards. Your input will be invaluable in ensuring that the Awards meet your needs over the coming years.
Below you will find eight challenges for the future: we would like you to read through these in advance of the Policy Session so you can participate in small group discussions with other delegates and pull out what you believe will be the key areas that should be represented by the Awards.
The eight challenges of the future are based on ideas from Principals and others described in “Celebrating Colleges”. Below each heading are prompts for Colleges to use when they consider their own procedures and what they might put forward for consideration for Awards. The suggestions are not exhaustive, but could be used to stimulate thinking and discussion.
At a time when Colleges are facing challenges from all sides, the opportunity to celebrate their outstanding and exemplary work has never been more important. Since their inception in 1994, the AoC Beacon Awards have evolved to keep in step with the sector’s changing concerns. The idea now is to use the futures map to reshape the Awards so that they continue to reflect the very best practice and innovation in Colleges. It is the intention to use the Awards to exemplify the importance of Colleges to individual learners and to their wider communities. We are suggesting a renewed focus within the Awards on the impact of particular approaches, so that in thinking about each of the prompts, Colleges ask themselves, “what was the impact of this particular approach for learners, employers and our community?”
Eight challenges of the future (What needs doing/questioning)
1. Keeping the focus on teaching and learning
• Evolving/innovative/exemplary approaches to teaching and personalised learning
• Developing heuristic approaches using enhanced learning technologies, the managed learning environment, and including the use of technology to aid achievement and inclusion
• Supporting progression within and to vocational education to meet the skills needs of the local economy
• Developing reading stamina, analytical and synthesis skills, ‘in depth’ learning and other study skills which prepare learners for higher education
• Making creative use of the built environment to maximise teaching and learning opportunities
• Creating exemplary whole-organisation approaches to learning; excellence in a single curriculum area
2. Continuing to be creative
• Strengthening relationship between innovative projects and the College’s Quality Assurance processes
• Using ‘discretionary frameworks’, professional autonomy, enabling staff and a culture of trust to motivate staff
• Developing and sustaining a culture of reflection
• Bold enterprise as a way of doing new business
• Motivating curriculum teams to generate and sustain creativity
• Developing strategies to share and spread good practice across the organisation
3. Sustaining a culture of self-improvement
• Developing leaders and leadership capacity at all levels within the organisation
• Developing innovative approaches to measuring the impact of improvements on staff and learners
• Innovative approaches to supporting teachers, including mentoring systems, peer review, team-teaching, use of advanced practitioners
• Innovative, cost-effective ways of sharing good practice within and without the organisation
• Improving the quality of governance in the sector
• Evaluating the impact of staff development on teaching and learning
• Teachers as researchers; action research by teachers that brings about improvements in teaching and learning
• Measuring the impact of improvements on learners, staff, the community and overall cost-effectiveness
4. Colleges in their communities
• Contributing to the economic and social well being of their communities
• Innovative development of local employer forums/new ways of engaging with employers and employees
• Ideas/approaches to strengthening and maximising the benefits of relationships with Local Government Authorities and other key partners in the community
• New strategic local partnerships in order to work with new groups of learners e.g. voluntary services, children’s and adult services, schools, training providers
• Developing new consortia with other providers to address new local priorities
• Colleges as the centre of their communities; Colleges as transforming agents; Colleges as significant local/regional contributors both as employers and organisations
5. Contributing to social justice
• Innovative approaches to enabling people and communities to take control of their own lives, for example volunteer training, support for residents’ groups
• Working with groups at risk of being marginalised, e.g. the newly unemployed including professionals, migrant workers, young unemployed, young parents, young and ex-offenders, homeless people, people leaving ‘looked after provision’, young carers
• New approaches to ensuring and celebrating equality and diversity; promoting social inclusion
• Innovative approaches to tackling stereotypes and prejudice
• Have regard to ensuring that equality and diversity are accounted for
• Innovative work with older people, for leisure and well- being
• New approaches to working with people with mental health difficulties
• Supporting young carers wanting to learn
6. Positioning to maximise opportunities
• Effective positioning in a new socio-economic environment; maximising the opportunities presented by the new environment
• Entrepreneurship; creating opportunities for the College
• Innovative approaches to achieving cost-effectiveness across the organisation
• Improving financial acumen
• Entrepreneurship as an approach to management and doing business
• Creative pooling of core functions such as finance, estates
• Establishing new relationships with Local Government Authorities; development of new regional partnerships
• Creating new overseas links/relationships/projects/opportunities
7. Achieving sustainability
• Developing the built environment in order to spotlight/highlight teaching and learning
• Developing exemplary ecological programmes and projects for sustainability
• Innovative use of natural resources in teaching and learning
• Supporting new green industries
• New building which puts green values at the centre
• New partnerships with local/national green/eco groups
• Contributing to understanding the planet and its future
8. Meeting the challenges of globalisation
• Preparing the work force for a global future
• Developing language skills for new international markets
• Benchmarking internationally
• Taking British further education to other countries
• Understanding the global economy
To register for the AoC Annual Conference and this policy session please click here
To download a copy of Celebrating Colleges
Celebrating Colleges
Queries and comments
If there are any general queries or comments about the AoC Beacon Awards, please email Alice Thiagaraj, Manager of the AoC Charitable Trust, or phone on 020 7034 9917.