New City College took part in the initial consultation by the Gateway awarding body which aimed to explore what the Essential Digital Skills Qualifications (EDSQs) based on the new national standards should look like. When the legal entitlement was announced, the strategic management team (SMT) at the college decided that EDSQs were valuable qualifications that aligned with the college’s vision and should be implemented across all curriculum areas. This is the story of a strategic whole-college approach to implementing EDSQs at Entry 3 and Level 1.
We interviewed:
“If you want to get something rolling quickly, setting specific income targets for curriculum directors is the catalyst for making those conversations happen.” – Andy Greaves
The college SMT set income targets for EDSQs for each curriculum director based on their number of adult learners and an estimate of the likely percentage eligible to take EDSQs. They then asked each of the group’s curriculum directors to state which courses would be suitable for embedding EDS provision to draw down that income and how they would package up the offer.
For vocational courses where EDS curriculum represents additionality, the college has explored three models in which learners either work intensively on EDS curriculum in the first term of their course, or over two or three terms (see slide).
Alongside this additionality approach, the college also offers standalone EDS courses on a one-day-per-week or two-days-per-week basis.
Embedded Delivery and Standalone offer
Packages
The college decided that ideally the vocational staff should deliver the digital skills courses within their areas to allow for a more holistic approach. This would enable the digital skills learning to be more appropriately contextualised.
Andy started by building a self-assessment for staff by cutting and pasting all the Essential Digital Skills national standards for Entry 3 and Level 1 into Microsoft Forms with a confidence rating scale against each statement. Staff were asked to complete this on a CPD day at the start of the 2020–21 year. Around 100 staff completed the self-assessment, and it typically showed a spikey profile, with staff confident in most of the standards already and a range of small gaps that could be addressed with targeted CPD. Other useful resources included a digital repository of places where staff could find resources to support teaching, including the ETF’s teaching resources.
As part of this initial CPD, Andy briefed staff and gave them access to a package of resources including the Essential Digital Skills CPD resources from the Education and Training Foundation located on the Enhance Digital Teaching Platform. This included an interactive diagram of training modules mapped to the five key skills areas of the national standards, which staff found particularly useful.
Other useful resources included a digital repository of places where staff could find resources to support teaching, including the ETF’s teaching resources.
“A picture across the whole organisation…” Andy Greaves, Deputy Group Curriculum Director at New City College, describes the strategy for staff CPD for EDSQ delivery.
“Practical teaching resources…” Andy Greaves, Deputy Group Curriculum Director at New City College, talks about the practical value of the ETF’s CPD programme for Essential Digital Skills.
ETF EDS training resources mapped to the Essential Digital Skills standards:
https://enhance.etfoundation.co.uk/eds/interactive
Andy ran a similar group CPD event to support assessment. Using the Gateway EDSQs, the college is delivering an end point assessment, so 40 members of staff met to go through exam answers remotely, looking in depth at the marking scheme. This was a good way of bringing everyone together from across the group to boost confidence in assessment.
NCC built a self-assessment tool
ETF CPD resources for EDS
Bite-size training modules
Assessment standardisation
Marketing to find the digitally excluded has been challenging, especially during the pandemic. The college worked with community partners to recruit learners for EDSQ courses. For example, they worked with local schools, getting them to refer the parents and carers in their communities. The college adapted the course and called it ‘Online courses for (grand)parents and carers’ and ran a shorter two-days-a-week course for five weeks.
Andy said that, “It was all tailored around Office 365 and Teams and getting learners online, which worked really well during the pandemic.
“We also worked with community centres and partnerships. Our local councils have digital inclusion teams, so we tried to make sure we were linked in to be part of their offers.
“I don’t think ‘Essential Digital Skills’ is a good title for a course for the general population. I don’t think adults resonate with that terminology. We did Google search engine optimisation with ‘basic IT courses London’, ‘basic IT’, ‘free IT’, because that’s what people are used to searching for.”
Learners have varied substantially in age. The oldest learner to pass their Entry 3 EDSQ with flying colours was aged 86 but there are other learners in their 20s looking at EDS for employability.
Cohort sizes on EDSQ courses have been around 10 per class. In some campuses where there are fewer adult learners, the college has still run cohorts of eight or nine students to get EDS provision off the ground, but at campuses with more adult learners they have been able to run cohorts of 13–15. The reluctance of learners with no or low level digital skills to undertaken EDSQ courses online has reduced cohort sizes.
All learners complete a Skills Forward initial assessment. The spikey profiles generated by the assessments have proved helpful in terms of peer-to-peer support, as learners have been helping to develop each other’s skills.
So far, the college has not been running introductory courses for EDS but they are considering building in Entry 1 and Entry 2 courses for ESOL learners next year.
“Very relevant and very current…” Bobbi Ehsan, Senior Curriculum Manager: Health and Social Care and Early Years, has found the new Essential Digital Skills Qualifications relevant for her learners.
“The impact has been huge…” Learners on Bobbi Ehsan’s Health and Social Care classes at New City College have been able to “bank” additional Essential Digital Skills Qualifications.
“…all of a sudden, Eureka!” New City College Computing/IT Lecturer Javed Khan describes the Eureka moment for his adult learners studying for an Essential Digital Skills Qualification.
“… the more I can relate to parent lifestyle, the better!” Computing/IT Lecturer, Raza Gani, describes his approach to relating the EDSQ course to what his learners already know.
“Having someone at a very high level available…” Computing/IT Lecturer Javed Khan describes how senior management support made all the difference to preparing to deliver EDSQs.
An eye opener for learners
Building learner confidence
The new skills areas make sense for learners
Relating content to learner lifestyles
Importance of senior management support
There has been 100% success rate on the Entry 3 course and slightly lower on Level 1. Learners who have completed a mock exam usually succeed. This is because they have had a chance to see how the exam platform works in terms of the functionality and how to upload documents.
The number of guided learning hours for EDSQs has proved challenging in relation to the volume of content to cover, so it has been necessary to prioritise. Where EDS curriculum is being embedded in vocational courses as additionality, the college has found it important to deliver as much EDS as possible at the start of a course.
Tutors chose Office.com for all delivery because they found it enabled more learners to participate. They have amended a lot of their teaching resources for online delivery.
“Learners have struggled more with Level 1 than Entry 3 because Entry 3 is less focused on numeracy. Even if learners look like they’re close to Level 1 standard from the diagnostic, the college is recommending that they do Entry 3 first.” – Andy Greaves
“You have to decide what to prioritise…” Deputy Group Curriculum Director Andy Greaves at New City College describes the challenge of covering the EDSQ curriculum.
“The first advice is, take the plunge…” Andy Greaves at New City College offers suggestions for other providers wondering whether to deliver EDSQs.
Decide what to prioritise
Take the plunge
Background
New City College is a large college group in East London with campuses in Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Redbridge, Havering and Epping Forest. It was formed by a merger of four previous colleges. One of the largest college groups in the UK, New City College supports 26,000 learners including 14,000 adult learners and 9,500 16–18 year olds.