Books: Crediting Key Skills: Report of the Proceedings of the Southern England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SEEC) National Conference

Citation

(2002), "Books: Crediting Key Skills: Report of the Proceedings of the Southern England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SEEC) National Conference", Education + Training, Vol. 44 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/et.2002.00444cad.001

Books: Crediting Key Skills: Report of the Proceedings of the Southern England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SEEC) National Conference

Books

Crediting Key Skills: Report of the Proceedings of the Southern England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SEEC) National Conference

Dianah Ellis (Ed.) SEEC£11.952001ISBN 0952221934

The Southern England Consortium for Credit Accumulation and Transfer (SEEC) is a consortium of institutions undertaking teaching at higher-education level. Its aim is to promote the use of credit accumulation and transfer in order to improve accessibility and flexibility in higher education. Crediting Key Skills reports the proceedings of the SEEC national conference held at the University of East London in September 2000. Among the topics covered in the publication are:

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  key skills in higher education;

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  assessing key skills in the curriculum;

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  the monitoring of skills development;

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  assessing reflective and experiential learning;

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  assigning credit to certificated learning; ways of making skills explicit in undergraduate-award documentation; and

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  national proposals for records of achievement in higher education.

The keynote speakers were:

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  Angela Glasner, pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Portsmouth;

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  Professor David Melville, chief executive of the Further Education Funding Council;

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  Kate O'Connor, Skillset development director; and

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  Professor Roger Waterhouse, University of Derby vice-chancellor.

Professor Melville gave the Further Education Funding Council's perspective on key policy initiatives, including the skills agenda and employability, and how the council is funding the curriculum to take account of the government's priorities. He also spoke about unitization and the implications for the development of a credit framework for further education. Angela Glasner examined the origin of a relationship between employability and graduate skills. She described why the University of Portsmouth has introduced key skills – communication skills, numeracy, the use of information technology, problem solving, preparation for lifelong learning and an institution-wide foreign-language programme – as a core component in the undergraduate curriculum. She explained that employability was a key requirement from Government, employers and the students themselves. While employability was the key attribute of the graduate, it was not the key skill, for its achievement was effectively served by the acquisition of high-level graduate key skills, relevant knowledge and self-reliance.

A media-industry overview of key skills and employment was provided by Kate O'Connor, specifically in the context of further and higher education. She painted a picture of the increasing formal links between further and higher education and the industry, supported by clear expectations from all parties. She concluded:

Key skills are what employers want, what the national economy needs and what students, who also pay for their learning, will expect.

Professor Roger Waterhouse reflected on national and European developments in credit accumulation and transfer over the last 15 years and examined the process of globalization of higher education which will be a feature of the twenty-first century. He suggested that pressures external to the education system would cause movement towards a credit-accumulation system which was not confined by the higher-education sector or boundaries and was capable of recognizing learning which took place throughout life. Some institutions, and more countries, would do it quicker than others. The process would be long, forever unfinished and always untidy.

"That should not discourage us from continuing down the road of devising better systems", he said.

The publication also contains papers and reports from conference workshops.