Foreword
Focusing public services more clearly on outcomes - on the difference that they make to peoples' lives - is one of the key challenges for government in the 21st century. The Scottish Government is addressing this challenge by establishing the National Performance Framework as a key means of improving both the performance of public services and the ability of the Government and its partners to provide evidence of what is delivered.
Improving performance through a sharper focus on outcomes, and providing better evidence of these, has been a key concern for both policy and practice in community learning and development ( CLD) for at least the last five years. It has been driven by the knowledge that our evidence base in relation to the impact of CLD is not as strong as it should be.
Working and Learning Together to Build Stronger Communities, Scottish Government guidance for CLD issued in 2004 therefore said that "we want to be more able to assess more thoroughly the contribution of CLD to achieving outcomes". Since 2004 this commitment has formed a major strand of the work carried out by Learning Connections, at first as part of Communities Scotland and now as part of the Scottish Government's Lifelong Learning Directorate.
This study reports on a project which developed a new research instrument for identifying the outcomes of CLD. It concludes that use of this instrument can make an important contribution to establishing a substantial body of evidence in this field. Our intention is now to work with partners to build on this research project, and on related work, in order both to improve this evidence base and to further develop the practice which generates the evidence - and more importantly enables people to make positive changes in their lives.
There are increasing signs that the CLD field is rising to the challenge posed by Working and Learning Together and now established by the National Performance Framework as the key driver for public services as a whole. CLD has a key contribution to make to creating a more successful Scotland - delivering outcomes effectively, and demonstrating that they have been delivered, is essential for fulfilling this potential.
Mark Batho
Director of Lifelong Learning
Scottish Government