Equality impact assessment - family learning

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1. What is the name of the policy or service that is being assessed?

Wiltshire Family Learning

2. What are the aims of the policy or service? Whose needs is it designed to meet? What are the current priorities?

Family learning is a varied field of practice developed through a history of work in adult literacy, language and numeracy, home-school initiatives, parenting and adult and community learning. It is unique because it provides an environment where the intergenerational combination of encouragement and involvement in each other's learning activities by all family members raises aspirations and creates a long-term change in the culture and patterns of learning. Such a family supports parents, grandparents and wider family members to be active participants in their children's learning as well as learners in their own right: both elements are crucial in building resilience in families, in creating community well-being, economic prosperity and social cohesion.

The Family Learning programmes are primarily targeted towards parents and carers of early years up to Key Stage 3 children and seamlessly support and complement the work of national and the LA Parenting strategy, the Early Years and Childcare teams, School Improvement, Extended Services, community links and children’s centre initiatives across the council. The programmes are targeted towards schools and settings within areas of deprivation as identified by local intelligence and SOA indices. Adult learners tend to have ‘spiky’ profiles: negative experiences of education, barriers to learning owing to lack of English speaking skills, low levels of prior achievement and lack of confidence with supporting their children to learn. Family Literacy, Language and Numeracy provision (FLLN) is targeted provision for parents and carers of children in community settings, children’s centres, primary schools and secondary schools. Engagement/Wider Family Learning programmes and events may be open to a wider audience and encourage families to work together on fun activities whilst taking a less formal, first steps approach to learning. However, adults are encouraged to access further family learning targeted provision. The majority of courses delivered are non-accredited but learners are encouraged to progress onto nationally recognised qualifications in literacy, numeracy, food hygiene and workskills.

The Family Learning service achieved Grade 2 (Good) at its OFSTED inspection in March 2011. The current priorities for the service are to:

• Develop the quality of guidance and support to learners at entry and completion to raise learners’ awareness of progression.
• Improve the quality of feedback to all learners and ensure it specifically reflects what individual learners need to do to improve their learning.
• Increase participation from male parents and carers
• Develop a ‘Learning Champions’ model in targeted locations

3. In what ways might this policy or service affect some groups of people differently? Might some groups find it harder to access the service? Do some groups have particular needs that are not well met by the current policy or service?

By its nature, Family Learning is wholly inclusive and welcomes people of all ages and from all backgrounds. With reference to the Equality Act 2010, this inclusivity references and includes Race, Disability, Gender, Sexual Orientation, Religion & Belief, Gender Identity, Age, Pregnancy & Maternity, and Marriage and Civil Partnership – our service promotes and upholds due regard for equality in all these areas. To date we have had no problem with access to the service for groups of people from the identified categories, however, problems with accessing the service have been identified with the following areas.

• Geographical isolation and transport problems
• Timing of provision that may exclude working parents
• Childcare

Profile of learners accessing the service during academic year 2010/11:

Enrolment and Learner numbers
	2010/2011
Total Learners	1055
Total Enrolments	1378

Learners by gender
	2010/2011	%
Male learners	97	9%
Female learners	958	91%

Learners by Age
	2010/2011
25 and under	103
25 to 34	350
35 to 44	405
45 to 54	109
55 to 64	24
65+	19
not known	45

Learners declaring a disability
	2010/2011
No disability declared	1020
Disability declared	34

Learners by ethnicity
Ethnicity breakdown	2010/2011
Asian or Asian British - Bangladeshi	7
Asian or Asian British - Indian	1
Asian or Asian British - Other	7
Black or Black British - Other	1
Black or Black British - African	1
Black or Black British - Caribbean	1
Chinese	3
Mixed – White and Asian
Mixed – White and Black Caribbean	2
Mixed - Other
Not known
Other	20
White - Irish
White – any other White background	34
White - British	978
Total of non white British learners	77	7%

4. What evidence do you have for your judgement? Is there evidence of public concern (e.g. complaints)? Have staff raised concerns? Is there local or national research to suggest that there could be a problem?

The Family Learning Service has a robust quality assurance framework in place that includes annual self assessment against the national OFSTED Common Inspection Framework. Judgements on self assessment are made based on evidence and data that is collected on an on-going basis from managers, tutors, partners, co-ordinators, learners and families. Learner feedback is gathered and analysed after every course and event and actions taken to address any points these raise. A quality improvement plan is produced annually and monitored throughout the year.

Intelligence data is gathered and used effectively to identify areas for delivery. A combination of data and information drawn from SFA published skills levels, data on deprivation, adult basic skills and participation rates and pupil and school performance data is used by the team for planning and monitoring purposes.

5. Who have you consulted with as part of your assessment? What were the results? Have you published the results of that consultation? If so, where

Consultation takes place with a wide variety of people in order to complete the Self Assessment Report (SAR) and associated quality improvement plan. Judgements on key strengths and areas for improvement are based upon evidence collated from learner and tutor feedback, focus groups, meetings, surveys, partner organisation representatives, school heads, settings managers and family learning course co-ordinators as well as the learners themselves. The annual self assessment report is available on the Council intranet.

6. If you have found that the policy or service might have an adverse impact on a particular group of people, can you justify this?

We have not found that the service will have an adverse impact on a particular group of people from the main category areas.

7. If the impact cannot be justified, what do you intend to do about this? Are there changes that you could introduce which would make the policy or service work better for this group of people? Is further research or consultation required?

We currently feel that there is no real impact on groups from the major category areas.

8. How will you monitor the take-up or impact of the policy or service in future?

The quality framework in place within the family learning provision ensures that policies, procedures and practice are reviewed annually and monitored on an on-going basis against comprehensive quality improvement plans. This ensures that we are continually looking to improve the quality of our service of which equality is an integral part.

9. What actions do you plan to take as a result of this equality impact assessment? Please state any resource implications.

On-going monitoring via management information data to ensure that effective targeting can take place against learner profile.

10. There is a legal requirement to publish the outcomes of Equality Impact Assessments. Please outline how / where this will happen.

The Assessment will be published through the corporate procedure.

11. Name of person completing form

Quality Manager

Date assessment completed

March 2012

12. Senior manager approval

Head of Adult and Community Learning

Date

March 2012

Last updated: 13 March 2012