equipping learning centres in the work- place; or providing facility time for union learning reps to support learners. Employers are often more disposed to make in-kind rather than cash contributions.

• The state can contribute by providing entitlements to free tuition for certain groups of learners and subsidising course provision for learners in general.

• Providers can offer free taster courses to potential learners, subsidise courses, help equip learning centres and provide tutors for the centres.

• The learner can study in his or her own time. There are many examples of employers offering employees one hour to study in work time provided that this is matched by one hour of study in their own time. Learners also often contribute to the cost of the fees where there is limited public eligibility to funding.

• Unions can also make a contribution. Some can contribute cash but the most likely contribution is that of time. For example, ULRs use some of their own time to support learners and run CLF projects.

To test the concept, a collective learning fund project was established by the TUC in the North West to help define a strategy for joint-funding models to support learning in the workplace and to identify models of good practice. Funding was provided by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills for a round of second-stage CLF pilots. Again, projects were focused in the North West, but the concept was also trialled in the East Midlands. In total, 25 projects participated in the second stage of the CLF during 2009-10. Unions were asked to make bids to join the project and those that were successful received £4,000 start-up funding for running the workplace pilots. An in-depth evaluation of the project was commissioned and conducted by Mark Stuart and James Rees from the Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change at the University of Leeds.

Different types of learning funds emerged

during the pilots, involving different com- binations of partners and different ways of building and using resources. While 20 had ‘in-kind’ contributions from employers, eight received cash contributions from em- ployers (varying from small sums to pay travel expenses to, in one case, £20,000). One pilot had difficulty involving the employer because the company had a centrally-driven training programme with national Train to Gain/National Employer Service contracts. Consequently, the union developed a voucher system in partnership with local colleges to help to make learning affordable to shop workers in 25 stores. The union contributed £10,000 into the CLF which supported a learning voucher worth up to £50 to cover half the cost of the learning. Overall, six pilots negotiated cash con-

10 ADULTS LEARNING JANUARY 2011

tributions from colleges (based on course completions) and a further two negotiated ‘free’ courses from colleges. Most of the pilots used some of their CLF funding to make learning affordable by subsidising courses, supporting an individual or providing low- interest or interest-free loans. In one case, the provider paid 20 per cent of the course fee back into the CLF on the delivery of the ITQ qualification.

Outputs and outcomes Most of the projects had begun to establish, or had built upon already existing, ways of pooling resources to help make learning more accessible and affordable. Some of the pilots, particularly in the East Midlands, were only just up and running when the evaluation was taking place and therefore the outputs listed below are likely to be an underestimate as they do not record subsequent activity. In total, the 23 sites reported the following achievements as either directly or indirectly resulting from the CLF pilots:

• 2,719 learning episodes (including 721 Skills for Life, 527 ICT, 884 NVQs and 587 wider/personal development). This included eight projects with over 100 learning episodes.

• Five workplace learning centres established.

• Nine learning committees established or refreshed.

These outputs were leading to wider benefits and outcomes in some of the cases where the pilots had been running longer.

Learner outcomes There were many reports of the positive benefits that the CLF pilots had for learners. They extended beyond the obvious examples of employees being brought ‘back into learning’ and included some instances of further learning progression. More typical were reports that the learning provided had impacted positively on staff morale and personal confidence. Employees were taking up NVQs at Level 2, and ICT and Skills for Life courses as a result of employers deciding to engage with Train to Gain, a consequence of the enhanced union/employer engagement that came about through the CLF process. But some pilots were also helping learners to access informal learning for wider personal development and not leading to accreditation. It enabled employees to access provision such as British Sign Language, Dyslexia and deaf awareness, introductory Spanish, bricklaying and plastering, and digital photography. In at least one pilot the learning helped staff to retrain. For example, a number of staff at the Land Registry going through changes and facing potential redundancies wanted to retrain as teaching assistants using the NVQ Level 2 teaching qualification.

Trade union outcomes The most obvious benefit for the unions in the projects was that it increased their visibility and presence in the workplace, and, in some cases, the credibility of the union role in learning and the value of ULRs. In some cases, union learning representative structures developed from the projects. There were cases where this meant that the union was prepared to take up case work specifically around Skills for Life issues. The pilots also actively contributed to more positive and partnership-based working around learning, while, at the same time, giving the union a degree of space, financially, from hierarch- ical management decisions about learning investment.

Employer outcomes In a number of cases, managers claimed that the learning undertaken through the CLF had contributed to improvements in the quality of work, reduced absence and improved customer service. In one case, the pilot had explicitly assisted the company in meeting the targets it had set for levels of NVQ accreditation – something that had previously been a problem. The most common benefit for companies was in terms of ‘softer’ outcomes such as ‘improved morale’ and ‘improved employee engagement’. The CLF was also contributing to more positive employment relations and constructive engagement bet- ween management and unions. As the evaluation report states, ‘the success

of the CLF project should not be judged in terms of numerical outputs alone’. The project should be viewed from an industrial- relations as well as an educational perspective. The evaluation found that in a number of the pilot workplaces CLFs played an impor- tant role in initiating partnership-working between unions and management for the first time. This was evolving through the embedding of learning activity and through joint management/union learning committees and agreements. It is this process work and the institutions that develop to plan, organise and deliver learning that best demonstrate the contribution that the CLF can make to workplace learning. The robustness of these institutions is likely to determine the sustainability of such activity as well as how CLFs engage with future initiatives, such the government’s proposal for lifelong learning accounts.

Collective learning funds are only one

way of increasing co-investment in workforce development. At a time of severe contraction in public subsidy for such learning, however, it is important that the concept is taken up by as many workplaces as possible if levels of workforce development are not just to be sustained but increased.

Bert Clough is Research and Strategy Manager to Unionlearn and was national manager of the Collective Learning Fund Project