Brendan Clarke
Brendan Clarke is Chief Executive of Open College Network Northern Ireland. In a changing time for the learning sector, he tells agendaNi about his plans for the charity.
Please describe your current role.
I’m Chief Executive of the Open College Network. We’re an education and learning charity, focussed on providing learning opportunities using qualifications and accreditation for the voluntary, adult, statutory and employer sectors here in Northern Ireland and also in the Republic of Ireland. My role here is leading and supporting the development and growth of the work that we carry out in OCN NI.
There is a network of open college networks across the UK and I’m part of the UK leadership team which leads the strategy and focus for the open college networks across England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
What is the biggest challenge facing OCN at present?
Our challenge is not dissimilar to a lot of other organisations. We have an external environment which is moving very rapidly,
not least to do with the impact of the recession but also to do with the way in which the regulated environment within which education operates is changing dramatically. Moving from what was essentially a national qualifications framework (NQF), to a qualifications and credit framework (QCF) which heralds a dramatic shift from being focussed on qualifications driving learning, to learning for the individual, be it for family, work or personal or community development.
The change in the regulated environment is a massive shift for us and we’re changing a lot to accommodate it. Equally it’s a challenge for us to respond to the opportunities that it provides. In the past it was like walking into a supermarket and you picked a qualification off the shelf whereas now this is a collaboration to create the right learning opportunity for you, our employer or your community.
The QCF is up and running now and it’s planned to be fully working by September 2010. This means that we change our dynamics a bit so that we’re becoming an awarding organisation in our own right. We will be able to directly award national qualifications and learning programmes, which were developed, created and focussed on Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland needs a local awarding organisation providing internationally recognised UK qualifications.
Has learning become more of a priority in the economic downturn?
Yes, it has. People in the environment in which we live at the moment look internally and externally and look at “what can I do?” and then they look at it in terms of “what do I need to be able to do to meet that challenge?”
In our experience, people respond very positively in lots of ways. We work with the voluntary and community sector – their response to the current downturn has been fantastic. We’ve worked with statutory organisations and employers and all of them are looking at ways they can sustain learning and support learning and increase learning opportunities so that as we emerge from the downturn, people are in a better position to be able to respond to the demands of the economy.
Looking back over your experience in learning, what has been the biggest change over the last 20 years?
The realisation that learning is not simply the repository of a formal environment. Learning can take place anywhere, any shape, any place. That has driven the demand for learning to reflect the real world and not just the cultural institutions that in the past have shaped what is and what is not acceptable learning. Therefore over the last 20 years, culturally, we’ve seen the shift from people who have been receivers of education to people who have become creators – they’ve made demands upon that system and they have influenced the way in which that system has moved and a more democratic mechanism has emerged where people can make legitimate demands upon those who serve education to better reflect the needs of their own lives.
Looking towards the next decade, what is the big challenge in the world of learning?
It is about how we do and how we resource learning. According to the Inquiry into the Future of Lifelong Learning, public and private resources invested in lifelong learning amount to over £50 billion. For example, approximately £8,000 is spent each year on every 18-24 year old; this drops dramatically to £300 for every 25 to 50 year old, drops again to £86 for every 50-75 year old and drops again to £60 for those aged over 75. We need to think how we share our resources across the life stages.
So what we have is a massive expenditure in education at an early age, the first 20 to 25 years. As people live longer and we expect people to take on more roles, to change jobs, take on new technologies and stay in work for longer, then we need to consider a way in which that totality of learning opportunities is better spread out over that range of ages. We need to make sure that the learning revolution, that we’re in the middle of, is one that is sustained throughout one’s life as opposed to just small parts of it. That requires us to start looking at the transitions as people move from one sphere to another.
How do you describe your management style?
I’d say participative, inclusive and open. But if you talk to my daughters Niamh and Aoife and my son Charlie, they wouldn’t necessarily say the same thing.
I rely a lot on the notion of coaching. Managers are responsible for processes, I’m responsible for leading a group of people and that means trying to create the best team that I possibly can and that means looking at individual skills, individual capabilities and seeing where they can fit in and impact the team. So I see coaching as a fundamental part of that because without that you lose the idea of a team.
As a small company, individuals always matter but in a bigger company individuals, whilst they impact on the organisation’s output, don’t necessarily always impact on the organisation. In a small organisation, it matters what individuals can do.
Do you have any mentors in your career?
The first person who opened me up to the democracy of education was probably Ivan Illich, who wrote ‘DeSchooling Society’, and Rhiannon Evans was one of my managers in my early management career who taught me an awful lot about working with people, listening to people, and also reaching decisions and following through.
What do you do to relax outside work?
I’m involved in coaching mini-rugby and youth rugby in Magherafelt. We have about 120 children on Friday evenings between the ages of three and 11 and on Monday and Wednesday we take the youth team so that takes up a lot of time.
I do a lot of writing and reading. I’m interested in medieval history, particularly the early medieval history. I also love photography and keep trying to recreate the iconic 20s, 30s, 40s pictures of Hollywood. I also like to spend a lot of time with my family.
