In “Be ruthless with failing trainers” (FE Focus, November 21), Joe Clancy reports that adult skills minister Ivan Lewis is urging funding chiefs to “close down work-based learning schemes which fail to deliver the goods”.
But later in the same piece he refers to “work-based training”.
I suggest there is a significant difference between work-based learning and work-based training. By definition, work-based learning is learner-led.
For the past 10 years my own university’s national centre for work-based learning partnerships has pioneered schemes which enable anyone to get academic credit from a degree to a doctorate, on the basis of submitting learning from their work which can be assessed against academic criteria.
This seems different to work-based training which I associate with on-the-job training.
If more training schemes were designed with learning in mind, they might be more successful.
Dr Peter Critten Principal lecturer Middlesex university business school The Burroughs, London NW4
