Developed in 1999 by the Scottish Community Development Centre (SCDC) 'Learning, Evaluation and Planning' (LEAP) is both an approach to outcome focused planning and evaluation and a framework that supports the process of participatory planning and evaluation. It was revised in 2007 to take account of new policy developments in CLD, particularly "Working and Learning Together" and 'How Good is our CLD 2'. It is widely used within community learning and community development settings throughout Scotland
In 2010 Perth and Kinross Council's Education and Children's Services wanted to improve its planning and evaluation processes within its CLD teams. The service had been using LEAP for some time but wanted to support practitioners to develop a more systematic and consistent approach to its use in supporting quality and continuous improvement in their work.
The Service initiated the 5.10 project whose planned outputs included a toolkit for practitioners and a peer led training programme. As part of the toolkit 'The LEAP Game' was a resource created as a way of supporting staff to increase their understanding of the relationship between outputs, outcomes and outcome indicators.
Here, Tricia Illsley, Communities, Adult and Family Learning Manager, and Janet Weir, CLD worker in Adult Learning talk about the importance of planning and evaluation in their work and describe how The LEAP Game works.
Tricia is convinced that the success of the 5.10 project as a CPD initiative was based on allowing practitioners to engage on a 'voluntary' basis, allowing them to share their work as their confidence grew.
In explaining the success of the LEAP Game as an effective CPD opportunity for her and colleagues, Janet said, "I believe I have a responsibility to ensure I continue to develop both professionally and personally. If I didn't believe that how could I convince the learners I work with that it is important for them. The strength of the LEAP Game is its participatory process, its basis on real work and the use of peers in leading the process in support of colleagues."
The Game can be adapted for use in different settings and has additional materials to explore outcomes and outputs, measuring outcome indicators and self evaluating projects.
The game and a guide to how to play it can be found here:
The LEAP game
How to play the LEAP game
Tricia Illsley can be contacted at TIllsley@pkc.gov.uk
Janet Weir can be contacted at jweir@pkc.gov.uk