Thinking and Planning Tertiary
NIACE Conference on Further and Higher Education
Monday 13 October 2003
Tower Thistle Hotel, St Katharine’s Way, London W1W
Following the issue of the White Paper on The Future of Higher Education in
January and the appearance mid-year of the Skills Strategy White Paper,
there has been animated discussion of the future of both further and higher
education, and of the relationship between them. The English Higher
Education Funding Council and the Learning and Skills Council have
foreshadowed coordinating and integrating arrangements to fund further and
higher education across the blurred line loosely distinguishing the two
sectors.
This conference starts from our current arrangements for Further and Higher
Education. It acknowledges the widely recognised need for a universal
lifelong learning system, and the difficulty of planning across portfolios
and sectors as well as throughout life to bring such a system into being
throughout the four nations of the United Kingdom.
By examining alternatives scenarios and approaches to providing post-
secondary learning opportunities for all, this event will challenge us to
transcend ‘binary’ sectoral thinking and to identify ways of moving more
effectively in a desired direction. The OECD for example reintroduced the
term and the concept of ‘tertiary’ to address this need in its work in the
mid- to late nineties. So far we have made only hesitant and incremental
progress to respond to the implicit challenge of change.
The Conference will present diverse scenarios as alternatives to existing
assumptions about post-school education and learning, and the arrangements
for the way that it is currently organised. These include alternative
models and approaches in other countries and regions of the world; the
diverging approaches and arrangements now becoming more evident within the
United Kingdom; and the ways that current developments such as foundation
degrees may facilitate or restrict evolution towards a strongly functional
tertiary system.
Participants will be able to engage vigorously by means of discussion and
interaction with speakers. It offers a wide spectrum of perspectives, while
centring on the evolution of our current planning and funding arrangements
towards an effectively integrated tertiary system.
This Conference will be of interest and importance to all concerned with
our future social and economic health, and with the ways in which post-
secondary learning opportunities can be developed to meet the lifelong
learning needs of the ‘knowledge economy and society.’
For further information please contact Katharine Friedmann on Tel: 0116 204
4291; Email: [log in to unmask]
Or visit our website at www.niace.org.uk/Conferences
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