Senior Education Officer, University and College Union (UCU).

Dan’s career now spanning over 30 years has been sent in adult learning. In the 1970s and 1980s he worked as a community education worker, middle and senior manager in the ILEA adult education service. Dan helped pioneer the outreach strategies and the management of outreach in order to widen participation in further and adult education. He also created, maintained and managed numerous inter-agency and community partnerships.

In 1992 and 1993 Dan worked on an Employment Dept funded project that was looking at how the knowledge and skills acquired in the course of undertaking particular jobs could be used in gaining higher education qualifications..

Dan was appointed National Education Official in NATFHE (now UCU) in 1994. Dan’s responsibilities include policy formulation and advice across the fields of further, adult and prison education. His particular areas of expertise are in curriculum and qualifications reform, the government of further education and the funding of further education. He has formulated the NATFHE responses to the various government consultations on FE governance over the last decade.

Dan served on the Board of the Learning and Skills Development Agency Board from 2001 to 2004.. He is on the NIACE Policy Committee, From September 2004 to March 2006 he was on a one-day-a-week secondment with the Raising Standards in FE Unit at the DfES and was attached to Theme 3 Workforce Development. He now convenes union liaison groups with LLUK, the SFA and YPLA. Dan has been very closely connected with the various strands of LLUK’s work on initial teacher training and CPD and is a member of the DIUS Workforce Development Strategy Group. He has been a member of the Institute for Learning’s Council since the inception of the IfL. Dan was awarded a MBE in summer 2009 for services to further and adult education.