March 2003

ACM’s Voice Counts!

Increasingly the Association is exerting influence on learning and skills policies. As a result of our regular meetings with ministers, officials and policy makers, a range of issues considered important by our members have risen to the top of the policy agenda.

ACM has campaigned for several years for a funded flexible curriculum framework. This issue is now a political priority and there is a greater political will behind these developments than at any time in the past. The LSC and QCA are working together on this for the first time, and we expect Ivan Lewis’s early summer announcements on workforce development, to set clear direction to this initiative.

The recent funding settlement consolidated TPI/CPI into core funding. However the earlier extension of TPI to include all staff (and thus become the College Pay Initiative rather than just the Teachers’ Pay Initiative) was the outcome of a strong and concerted campaign by this Association to persuade Government to recognise the vital contribution made by managers to the delivery of a high quality service to learners.

The early models for the National Leadership College were mechan-istic in their philosophy and overly focused on the top rungs of the staff hierarchy. ACM argued strongly that the college should adopt a modern philosophy of leadership development which emphasises vision, and the capabilities both to motivate colleagues and to nurture the skills and talents of all staff to a high level. We also stressed that leadership is not limited to principals and senior managers but is found across the college’s service and the national leadership college should aim to reach across the whole staffing structure.

Equality Records

As well as making recommendations to the further education colleges, the Commission for Black Staff in FE said that FE trades unions should review their practices and procedures in order to ensure that they were providing an adequate service to all their members.

As a first step towards this, the Association wishes to ensure that the records held on the membership database are up-to-date and maintain various equality details in respect of gender, ethnicity and disability.

We would be grateful therefore if you would take two minutes to complete the form enclosed with this month’s newsletter and return it in the prepaid envelope provided.

Obituary : Peter Kay

 

Peter Kay, an ACM member for many years, died suddenly on 6 February 2003 while on holiday in France with his wife and two young children. He had first joined the staff of what is now Coleg Gwent as an Economics Lecturer at Newport and followed this with senior management posts at Usk and Crosskeys. In November he had been seconded to the post of Project Manager of the investigation into closer working links between Coleg Gwent and University of Wales College, Newport.

Peter was an acknowledged curriculum expert who had contributed much to the development of the further education sector for nearly twenty years. His death at the age of 49 is an enormous loss not only to the family of which he was so justifiably proud but also to his colleagues who held him in such high regard.