The term ‘street corner university’ has been in the mainstream for almost ten years now. Some felt it was a very ‘New Labour’ tag for public libraries, though the term did touch upon past heritage and a possible future.

For more than 150 years, our public library service has stood for social inclusion: a haven of peace at the heart of our communities, providing key access points to a world of information and education for anyone who wished to step inside.

Our ‘street corner universities’ have always performed a number of roles – social, educational and economic.

So when I first got involved with Exchange Group, the first private sector company to set up a training centre within a public library, I was not surprised to see the number of people attending the IT, numeracy and literacy programmes offered at the centres.

An environment had been fostered over the years in which the public library had become a community landmark. This made our lives a little easier when appealing to people who had few fond memories of conventional education.

The best description would be to say that these educational establishments are non-threatening and inclusive. And their results speak for ‘Street corner university’ or public library?themselves, with a staggering 95 per cent completion rate on courses run out of 28 UK library centres.

Exchange Group’s experience is that, by marrying these unique environments with the appropriate course offerings and permanent onsite tutors, people are prepared to enter into a much more open dialogue about their real needs and subsequent skill requirements.

This, in turn, has really brought home to us the social challenges that face each individual when he or she commits to a course and has enabled us, wherever possible, to try to remove barriers to training, including arranging bus passes and childcare where necessary.

The centres are all supported by smart back-end technology that helps manage everything for the learner and monitors progress.

We all get our money from somewhere and these centres of education receive funding from local and central government. Exchange Group is funded privately, which lets us provide the technology infrastructure, people and the know-how learned while delivering IT and skills training to the private sector.

This has also allowed us to get further under the skin of training and education where it is most required, by developing initiatives such as our working partnership with the Big Issue Foundation.

Here the challenge was to attract Big Issue vendors. They function as small businesses on our streets; many don’t have fixed addresses or live in temporary accommodation, and often move from one area to another – making a relationship between a trainer and the vendor extremely difficult.

In an initial rollout in central London, both Exchange Group and the Big Issue Foundation invested time in a solution that would maximise the use of both our library training network and the technology provided. The aim was to successfully allow maximum flexibility, support and encouragement for the learner to study where and whenever, within a fixed time structure.

At a time when the skills gap is growing between the haves and the have-nots, it’s satisfying to see a public/private partnership delivering results in areas where training and education is most needed.

So next time you pass a public library, or ‘street corner university’, pop in and see what compelling modern learning environments many have become.

James Farquharson is chief executive of Exchange Group. He can be contacted on +44 (0)20 8742 4000 or at james.farquharson@exchangegroup.co.uk

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