Evaluation of Career Learning Pilots: Flexible Learning Fund. Research Report

In 2017, the government launched Career Learning Pilots in order to test the design and provision of various training approaches for working adults with low to intermediate skills. As part of this initiative, the Department for Education provided approximately £11.3 million in funding to pilot projects that offered flexible and accessible ways of delivering learning to adults with low or intermediate skills who were either in work or seeking to return to the workplace. Thirty-one projects were awarded funding based on their ability to meet the required eligibility criteria. One of the projects subsequently withdrew from the pilot, leaving 30 projects. Following a development period in 2017/18 all projects were required to trial delivery with learners during the 2018/19 academic year. The evaluation had four key aims: (1) To measure learner uptake and attainment compared with standard modes of delivery; (2) To identify what proportion of adults enrolled on the course were the target group; (3) To evaluate the implementation of the Flexible Learning Fund (FLF) to provide formative feedback on processes; and (4) To identify the scalability of different aspects of the FLF pilots. The evaluation took a mixed-method approach, using a mixed-mode survey of FLF learners and analysis of administrative data from the Individualized Learner Record (ILR). It also included qualitative research involving in-depth case studies with eleven pilot providers, in-depth telephone interviews with a representative from 15 other lead providers not included in the case studies, and telephone interviews with 40 learners around six months after their course had finished. [This report was written with Kantar.]