We still have no clarity in the world of further education about personalised learning. "Giving pupils greater control over the kind of education they receive," is how David Hargreaves, a member of the government review group, and former chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, describes it. "Pupils need freedom to choose their curriculum, the ways they are assessed and even their teachers."
But what does this actually mean? It sounds like the type of initiative we should all, as right-thinking educationists, subscribe to, but how does it work in practice?
If you had only three students in a class, maybe you could manage it, but how does the theory take into account the large numbers you actually get in a classroom? How can students meaningfully decide their own assessment methods? How would they know which they were most suited to? Picture the exam halls lying fallow as students opt to be assessed by portfolio, or by video, or by references from their mums.
And as for choosing their teachers ...
It is already the case that any good teacher ensures, as far as is possible within the constraints of the exam boards, that individual students receive tuition and support to suit their individual requirements.
In FE colleges, most students have individual learning plans, which are negotiated personally with their tutor. Already colleges are grappling heroically with this ill-defined concept and trying to make some sense of it in a way that will benefit their students.
More cynically, could it be yet another example of an "initiative' devised by someone who has never taught in a college? We have become almost accustomed to the idea that governments take advice on further education from those not in a position to give it. When did you last hear of a government adviser who had even the most superficial understanding of FE?
But surely there must be well-informed people whose opinions are sought to test the viability of these ideas? When the concept is farmed out to an agency to be worked up into a form that can be implemented in a college, there must be people on these committees and advisory groups who understand something of the nature of a college and its learners?
The answer is that, no, often there is not. As one who has sat on dozens of such steering groups, I can attest to the fact that on many occasions there has been no one, except for me, who has any direct experience of FE colleges, their students or the challenges involved.
There will be civil servants; representatives from exam boards, inspection and funding bodies, and government-sponsored quality improvement bodies; consultants from all kinds of arm's-length bodies; but from the ranks of those working with young people, there will frequently be no one. Many people who claim to be "passionate about the learner" turn out never to have seen one, let alone been involved with the messy business of teaching them, timetabling their exams or sorting out their work placements.
Now that you know that, do lots of things suddenly become clear? What about the many other unworkable ideas that have been foisted on further education? Perhaps you can recall "preferred learning styles", which caused a lot of energy to be expended by teachers, only to fall into disrepute a couple of years down the line. Or maybe the rebirth of English and maths as "functional skills", after being renamed, variously, communication skills/numeracy/application of number/key skills. Or maybe vocational tutors delivering embedded skills for life; or, come to think of it, the decision to call English and maths "skills for life". I could go on.
How I hope my fears for the new diploma turn out to be unfounded.
· Rosemary Clark is former quality manager at the Association of Colleges