“Matchmakers make learning accessible for the hard-to-reach
Learning brokers – people who act as matchmakers between individuals and organisations providing education or training – play a vital role in encouraging the “education-shy” to get involved in learning. Despite recent concerns that learning brokers are an unnecessary intermediary; research by the LSDA shows that they can offer invaluable services.
Understanding Learning Brokerage, published by the LSDA, provides evidence that learning brokers can not only increase demand, participation and success among “non-traditional” adult learners, but also influence colleges and training organisations to make what they offer more accessible and engaging.
Individuals or organisations can provide learning brokerage. Brokers include union learning representatives, community-learning champions or ambassadors(many of them volunteers), personal advisers and guidance professionals. Learndirect – the national service putting individuals in touch with learning opportunities – is an example of a large-scale, national brokerage organisation.
In the workplace, learning brokers can:
motivate people who have never taken part in education or training at work and workplace learning and encourage greater commitment from employers;
improve the confidence and self-esteem of employees; and
offer a first step into learning for employees, particularly those who would find it difficult to negotiate learning opportunities at work.
Brokers can persuade employers to take workforce skills seriously by“clearing a way through the thicket of the education system to the college or training provider that best suits their clients’ needs,” says the guide. It also shows how initiatives such as the Employer Training Pilot (ETP),now being rolled out nationally as “Train to Gain”, have succeeded in engaging with small, private-sector employers, including many companies with no previous contact with business-support agencies. ETP brokers have also reached out to many employees who have never before taken part in learning at work,significantly the low paid and low skilled.
In the community, learning brokers can:
get parents involved in schools helping to support their children’s education;
encourage people with little contact with education since leaving school to get involved; and
provide a “holistic” range of services that support people in different ways.
But although brokerage in the community is widespread, it has no dedicated funding stream and is largely unrecognised by policy makers.
A key message is the need for impartiality. The guide calls for a strengthening of advice and guidance services within the workplace and the community. It also stresses that organisational factors, workplace relations and conflicts of interest can limit the impact of brokerage. Brokerage in the workplace, for instance, is most successful where employee relations are good and employees have a sense of ownership over what they are learning.
Darshan Sachdev, LSDA research manager, said: “Learning brokers can help to sell the benefits of education and training and change the way that it is provided. It is particularly effective at engaging the ‘hard to reach’– people with little contact with education or training since leaving school, both in the community and the workplace. But to be really effective,brokers must be totally impartial.”
Understanding Learning Brokerage, by Martin Yarnit, Darshan Sachdev and Rosie Zwart, is obtainable from: Information Services, LSDA, Regent Arcade House, 19-25 Argyll Street, London W1F 7LS. Tel: +44 (0)20 7297 9123; E-mail:enquiries@LSDA.org.uk.
