Northern College Good Practice Guide in Teaching and Learning

4.1 Since its founding in 1978 the Northern College has recruited students from a broad spectrum of domestic circumstances, work experiences and learning abilities. All of its students have, nevertheless, shared one thing in common: they have missed out on educational opportunities. The majority of the College's student intake have been:

those describable as mature adults, mostly ranging in age from 25 to 65 years
those suffering from educational, as well as social and economic, disadvantage, with a high proportion falling into socio-economic categories C, D and E
those residing in South and West Yorkshire, North Derbyshire and North Lincolnshire.

4.2 The College has been successful in attracting women from the local communities of the region in which it operates; in fact, over 60% of its current student intake consist of women. However, although the decline of traditional industries in the region (coal-mining, steel-making, textiles, etc) has created widespread, long-term unemployment among men, the College has experienced, and continues to experience, a relative under-representation of men. It is not entirely clear why this is the case but, as research undertaken by the College and by others shows, it seems that men whose employment opportunities in the region were once favourable tend to be reluctant to return to education unless the curriculum is directly job-related and the pedagogy is appropriate for them. However, the College's male intake is higher than the average for the Further Education sector.

4.3 A range of external factors have influenced the College to become increasingly involved in community capacity building, and the kind of learning and training which that entails. The College has responded to:

the FEFC's commitment to widening participation, inclusiveness and equal opportunities in further education
the present Government's lifelong learning aims, with their emphasis on skills acquisition and the use of communications technology to support learning and training,
regional and local initiatives to promote, through SRB and European Union Objective 2 funding programmes, social and economic regeneration in former coal-mining and steel-making areas

working with community groups and voluntary organisations to enable their members to acquire the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to design and manage local social and economic regeneration projects
delivering community-based education, mostly in the form of basic IT courses through the use of a mobile lap-top service in local centres
establishing Animateur Training schemes to promote social and economic development among community groups and to train community health workers

4.4 These responses to national, regional and local agendas and circumstances, combined with the College's own strategic goals, have influenced the College's work and hence the profile of its student intake. Thus, since 1990 the College has:

made increased provision to assist both disabled students and students with learning difficulties, and to promote equal opportunities in learning
set itself targets for the recruitment of students from ethnic minority backgrounds
devoted substantial staff resources to the teaching of basic and key skills
undertaken a major investment in IT learning infrastructure, teaching and technical support staff
made a significant departure in the delivery of a wide range of courses, including IT training, on an 'outreach' basis in community venues
made direct efforts to link learning with social and economic regeneration in a number of fields

The College's capacity building work has led to the provision of OCN Level 1 courses and thus begun to widen access for the more excluded and hard-to-reach individuals and groups. The level of confidence and self-organisation of OCN Level 1 students is less developed than that of OCN Level 2 or 3 students, who have usually constituted the College's main target group.

is determined by the College's response to the changing nature of its market, and local, regional and national agendas (not to mention funding regimes) for lifelong learning and regeneration
has implications for what is taught, how it is taught, and how students are expected to learn.

Change in the student profile automatically leads to change - to a greater or lesser degree - in teaching and learning practice.