Behind the buzzwords- Creating partnerships_653

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Behind the buzzwords: Creating partnerships
Partnership is an easy concept. United we stand: together we are stronger. Partnerships between educational providers make sense, too. No school can provide for all the needs of all of its learners, at every age and stage. So schools enter into partnerships with other organisations to extend the range of services and learning opportunities offered to their young people. Recent white papers and acts of parliament – Learning to Compete (DfEE, 1997), the Learning and Skills Act of 2000 and the Education Act of 2002, the 14-19 Education and Skills white paper (DfES, 2005) – show us that partnership is the current policy directive.But how easy is partnership to carry out? A team at Newcastle University has recently examined leadership of partnerships for 14-19 educational provision. The government expectation is that voluntary groupings of learning providers – schools, colleges, universities, voluntary sector local authorities, learning and skills councils, Connexions, training providers, employers, voluntary organisations and faith groups – will collaborate to provide appropriate learning routes for young people from the age of 14. Collaborative development of academic and vocational pathways will lead to the staged introduction of specialised diplomas from September 2008 as a key element of 14-19 educational policy. Leadership of such partnerships is bound to be difficult. Schools, colleges, work-based learning providers, voluntary agencies and employers each have their own culture, professional focus and ways of operating and within each provider group there are notable differences in organisational purpose and leadership style. Schools and colleges are treated as individual organisations in national ‘league tables’ and funding streams. There are as yet no prizes for collaboration. In the words of the Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training, government measures that are intended to address collaboration ‘remain weak in comparison with the measures… that encourage competition’ (Hayward et al, 2006: 40).If partnership is to be successful, there must be strong incentives for the partners to collaborate. For 14-19 education, partnerships make individual learning pathways possible,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], through which a student’s needs and aspirations can be met. Potentially they also offer a local, cost-effective and coherent curriculum. However, there are both cultural and practical barriers to partnership. A study by NFER (Rudd et al, 2004), investigating partnership between education providers, reports a fear of the unknown; partnership work requires staff to work in new ways, and to be open to scrutiny by others. Competition between providers, fostered by government policy, has stood in the way of collaboration, and personalities and cultures may not be conducive to partnership working. Enabling factors and restraintsData from the Newcastle University national survey and regional case studies of 14-19 partnerships indicate that there is a strong will to provide collaboratively for young people, to engage them in education and training, and to build the local and national economy. At partnership level, the following factors enable collaborative leadership: alignment of organisational goals strength of common purpose partnership energy mutual trust of partners acceptance of others’ leadership pooling of knowledge and expertise benefit to individual partner organisations mutual understanding of partner organisations.But there are also significant restraints to collaborative leadership across schools, colleges and other providers. Individuals in the partnership, either at senior or middle leader level may simply not ‘buy in’ to the idea of partnership. Schools,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], colleges, training providers, employers and voluntary organisations have different agendas and cultures, which are not always understood or respected by the other partners. Schools and colleges are funded differently, and have different pay scales and conditions of service: one partner may effectively be subsidising another. There may be historic issues of power and competition between partners which get in the way of collaboration. Senior leaders within the partnership may be used to working with each other, and may find ways of addressing these issues: partnership work at middle leader level is more difficult, as there is no equivalent opportunity to ‘get to know’ all of the partners and their way of working. The difficulties of transporting young people, and of aligning application procedures, timetables and student records, may simply seem too difficult.14-19 partnerships which are offering the first tranche of the diplomas in September 2008 are urgently addressing these issues. Successful 14-19 pathfinder and increased flexibility partnerships indicate that they can succeed. But success for partnerships is balanced upon a policy-sharpened knife-edge: the incentives for collaboration are counter-balanced by the individualised nature of league tables and educational funding. We have still to find out how educational leaders within partnerships can lead and be led for the common good, and how they can balance the interests of their own organisation with the interests of the region, the learner and the partnership. References The full report of the Newcastle research team Hayward, G, Hodgson, A, Johnson, J, Oancea, A, Pring, R, Spours, K, Wilde, S and Wright, S (2006) The Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training: Annual Report 2005/06. London: Nuffield Foundation. Rudd,[link widoczny dla zalogowanych], P, Lines, A, Schagen, S, Smith, R, and Reakes, A (2004). Partnership Approaches to Sharing Best Practice. Coventry: NFER
The exclusionThe head teacher wrote to the parents of R and F telling them that neither R nor F could come back to school, but that they would be given help in completing their course at home. He should, of course, have told the parents immediately, ideally by telephone followed by a letter, of their right to make representations to the governing body.

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