A Year in Education: A View from the (not so) new Director of Education
This time last year I was the newbie in the Education and Training Department. I had arrived at the Inn earlier in the year with no past experience of working in the legal sector but armed with many years of experience of leading professional development and educational quality assurance in other professions. Over the past 18 months I have felt very supported by the committees which have an educational focus. It has been an absolute pleasure to work so closely with their chairs, namely Master Juliet May (Education and Training) as well as Masters Adam Constable (Advocacy), Saira Kabir Sheikh (Student Engagement and Support), Henrietta Hill (Qualifying Sessions), Fiona Jackson (Scholarships and Outreach) and Martin Goudie (Pegasus Scholarship Trust). I am delighted that Master May is now on the path to becoming Treasurer, taking up appointment as Reader-Elect in 2025.
I had some big shoes to fill when I arrived, replacing Struan Campbell who had done so much to take education and training forward with a particular focus on the wellbeing of our students and members.
The E&T team has a strong sense of camaraderie and everyone is very supportive of each other. At the start of June, Karen Taylor joined us as the new Head of Teaching and Learning. This is a newly established post which provides us with pedagogical expertise focused on our student, pupils and practising barrister educational programmes. Karen was previously working as Head of Apprenticeships at the London Institute of Banking and Finance, experience which will be extremely helpful especially should the barrister apprenticeship come to fruition.
We have had some notable developments in our programme in 2023–24. In November 2023 we hosted our first flagship event for established barristers. The theme was Open Source Evidence and you can read more about it elsewhere in the Yearbook. Such was the success of the event that we plan to run one full-day flagship event every autumn. For 2024 the topic will be Appellate Advocacy, comprising outstanding plenary speakers in the morning and interactive workshops in the afternoon.
In January 2024 we launched our new Digital Learning Hub. We have done this in partnership with the Inns of Court College of Advocacy (ICCA) whereby they provide us with a hosted platform which we can populate with our courses. We have great ambitions to make good use of the Hub to create more blended learning opportunities for most of our programmes. Our EDI training programme for committee members and volunteers was the first course to go live on the new Hub in January 2024 and has received great feedback.
The Inn’s scholarships are a source of pride and make an enormous difference to the lives of so many. In 2023 we awarded over £1.8 million in scholarships. In November some of our current scholars had a fantastic opportunity to meet Master HRH The Princess Royal at the Inn’s Grand Day. We are committed to ensuring that our processes for promoting and awarding scholarships are always fair and accessible to everyone regardless of their background or protected characteristics. With that in mind we are launching a new project over this summer to review our processes with a specific focus on equality, diversity and inclusion.
We have had to respond to several regulatory changes this year. In January the Bar Standards Board removed the waiver which previously allowed new practitioners to defer their training with the Inns due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This led to an unprecedented demand which we successfully met by increasing our training cohort sizes supported by additional advocacy trainers and expert witnesses. The feedback from new practitioners on these programmes has been very positive.
From September 2024 all Pupils Advocacy courses must be authorised by the Bar Standards Board. The application process to become authorised has been a significant exercise for the Inn which has included describing and evidencing the training and assessment of pupils and their trainers. I would like to extend a personal thanks to Masters Rehana Azib and Jennie Oborne who have played a major role in the production of our submission.
Over the course of 2024 we have been working on creating a new Education and Training Strategy for the Inn. This has been supported by a working group which is representative of our key committees and forums. We have also sought the views of our members directly through online and in-person listening events. We are expecting the Strategy to be launched this autumn and it will help to shape and direct our work over the next five years. One of the key themes within the Strategy is valuing volunteers. Our programmes and events would not happen without the contribution of so many members. We want to make volunteering easier and ensure that it is a fun and rewarding experience.
Thank you to all of our volunteers and we look forward to continuing to work with you in 2025.
Gail Fleming
Director of Education
