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A report just published by the Higher Education Funding Council is highly critical of the extent to which Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) address the Continuing Professional Development needs of the cultural industries.
Whilst recognising that pockets of excellent practice do exist, many HEIs are found by creative practitioners to be inflexible in terms of content and delivery.

Opportunities are often inadequately responsive to individual requirements; pedagogic approaches, and the packaging and timing of provision are often insufficiently adapted to the needs of arts professionals; and too much of material is re-used from other courses or infrequently updated. CPD was found to be a low priority within the mission of some institutions, dismissed as a minority special interest, and in general poor links exist between the HEIs, the arts sector and arts practitioners. Practitioners are found to hold negative perceptions of the quality and relevance of many CPD opportunities, and to place a low priority on their own professional development.

The report concludes that HEIs need to radically re-think the content, structure and delivery of the CPD opportunities they provide, placing less emphasis upon specific structured courses and more emphasis upon creating a range of instruction, support and facilitation activities. There is a need for many HEIs to change their internal cultures to improve the status of CPD activities, so that these can enjoy parity of esteem with other teaching and research activities. In too many cases CPD is still seen as the concern of specialist continuing education departments and units. Practitioners are encouraged to come forward with a clear and realistic view of the support that they would like HEIs to provide, and for structures to be devised to facilitate this dialogue and lead it through to practical outcomes. To view the full report, w: http://www.hefce.ac.uk