I've
arrived and I am taking some great
people on a journey that is in some respects back to the future. When I worked
here in a previous life the organisation benefited from 30% of its funding
coming from the funding council and we generated the other 70% through charging
for service delivery and through project based funding from a range of sources.
We need to get back to this model for long term sustainability.
With
the support of an energetic chair , a supportive board , and the support of
College Chairs and Principals , change is now under way on a number of
fronts.
We
have new organisational structure . I am currently filling a Marketing
and Communications Manager and Business Development Officer post and gratified
that we have a very strong field of applications. We've also shuffled roles and responsibilities to make us more outward and delivery focused.
We've
finalised tenancy agreements with Colleges Scotland , JISC and the Energy
Skills Partnership, who we host in our offices at Argyll Court. We've got some modest plans too for an office re-configuration.
We've
switching over to Microsoft 365 and moving mail , documents , the works up into
the cloud to improve our productivity
We've
just appointed a developer for a new wordpress based website . Which will make
content management and workflow much easier and will make blogging and telling
the story of what we do much easier for all of our advisers and for our
customers.
After
a brief hiatus ..but we haven't got a social software policy ! < we did >
and a bit of training, I've got all the advisers onto twitter . The next bit
is reflective blogs . Social software is the way of doing the business of
learning and not just an adjunct for the enthusiasts. We all need a personal
learning network.
Still
work in progress but our subject and specialist networks will move out from the
big database of contact emails and 'once again ' are moving back towards
becoming online networks where we can stimulate these into becoming communities
of practice .
In
terms of informing what we do, we have a robust collection of Principals
, Depute and Assistant Principals from across the sector on our
development committee and we have once again a system of named contacts in
place and an annual engagement schedule for every College in Scotland . This
combined with ongoing communication with Scottish Government, Education
Scotland , Scottish Funding Council , Skills Development Scotland and other
relevant stakeholders across the public and private sector should mean that our
offerings are in line with both what our customers need and in line with
meeting the national outcomes and most of all the needs of learners.
Looking forward the challenges for the sector are - managing at scale across new regional college structures and ensuring effective regional outcome agreements , the challenges that a new funding formula will bring , the development of new approaches to external quality evaluation from Education Scotland and towards new standards for entry and CPD for College teaching staff, to be in place by 2017.
These are the big ticket items . Above all I want to support a sector that delivers much more flexibly either on line , blended or face to face that serves the needs and aspirations of Scotland's life long learners and beyond.
We will achieve this through leading , creating and sharing which will be under pinned by the creative use of technology and by building a culture of collaboration , sharing and trust
If you have ideas that will shake the pillars of learning . We have a great team and we are ready for business .
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