CLP carries out NEET research as part of national LSIS project
Serving our communities
Here at CLP, we’re always focused on serving our communities and making a difference to people’s lives. We love our learners and they love us right back.
Not in education, employment or training (NEET)
When we heard about the opportunity to bid for funding to carry out research for LSIS (Learning and Skills Improvement Service) with adults not in education, employment or training (NEET), we jumped at the opportunity. Why? Because we work mainly in areas of deprivation, we wanted to contribute to the bigger picture and use our expertise to help other providers meet the needs of adults in their localities. Here was a chance to get paid to do what we wanted to do anyway, but had never managed to find the time for. It’s a funny thing how funding can focus the mind!
Making our service even better
So, if you’re an adult interested in returning to learning, a community learning organisation, or even a funder interested in our work, please read on. We’re going to use our findings to make our service even better than it already is. Not just because we take pride in our work at CLP, but because it will benefit all of our current and future learners. It’s not just our story, it’s a collective one, and we’d like to thank everybody who contributed to it and made the project happen.
NEET Interviews
Time was short – we had only two and a half weeks to complete it. This involved interviewing 30 NEET adults over 25 in the South Oxhey area. All interviews had to be audio recorded, transcribed and encrypted before being sent off to the research team. Additionally, participants had to provide testimonials about their experiences. Could we convince the powers-that-be that our organisation could pull it off in such a short period of time? Well, over 600 organisations applied and only 200, including CLP, were successful.
Partnerships and social networks
We called in favours, and found that our partners were more than happy to help us. It wouldn’t have been possible without the help of South Oxhey extended schools (the fab Kerry O’ Connor, parent support adviser); our consultant at Campaign for Learning (William Doust) and our energetic and loyal CLP Angels (community learning champions), who used both their virtual and physical social networks to target participants.
Learning Experiences
The aim of the research was to find out more about the experiences, aspirations, motivations and behaviours of NEET, and recent NEET, adults. The questionnaire asked about past learning and employment experiences, and what they hoped to achieve in the future. We found some common patterns running through the responses, which backed up what we had long believed to be barriers to learning.
aspiration mood boards
School memories
What sort of experiences did the adults have at school? Some had happy memories, but these were amongst the minority. By far, one common experience was bullying by both teachers and other children and young people. Being taught in a way that would appeal only to visual learners – the ‘chalk and talk’ style – was another biggie. As were learning difficulties. For example, both diagnosed and undiagnosed dyslexics reported that the education system had been unable to cope with their needs.
Barriers to learning and work
Why would anybody want to take up learning again, when such negative experiences are very much alive in the hearts and minds of these adults? How many times would you allow yourself to be bitten by a dog? Despite this, most people interviewed had aspirations, although these didn’t necessarily fit any government agenda, but there are other barriers to learning and getting jobs such as lack of childcare; unavailability of term-time work and poor local transport.
Testimonials
Adults who took part also expressed themselves creatively by providing us with testimonials. No, this wasn’t as boring as it sounds.... they included aspiration mood boards; Flip video recordings; photos; illustrated journeys and, CLP being CLP, cake!! Intrigued? Check it out on flickr, the photo uploading website at www.flickr.com.
Overcoming hurdles of the past
We hope that our findings help LSIS with this important research, as well as our partners. For CLP, we will continue to build relationships of trust with learners in our communities, providing fun, friendly and creative learning experiences that include all learning styles. But we are now actively planning to support adults beyond course-end, helping them to increase confidence, self-esteem and skills. We aim to create pathways to education, employment and training, working closely with adults to help them to overcome the hurdles of the past.
We'd love to hear from you
Did you find this blog post inspiring? If so, we’d love to hear from you. We’d also like to hear from funders keen to help us build social capital in deprived areas. In the future, we plan to summarise our findings in more detail, and would be happy to share these with you. If you’d like to receive a copy, please ring or email us.
Contact Elizabeth or Christine on 020 8421 5544 or clpfamilyfun@gmail.com
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