Nuffield Review says institutional competition ‘hinders’ 14-19 partnerships
14 Dec 07
The Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training believes that efforts by the government to encourage institutions, such as schools, colleges and providers of work-based learning to work more together contradicts existing government policy where institutions have to compete with each other for pupils, funds and resources.
The Review, led by Professor Richard Pring from the Oxford Department of Education and a Directorate including Dr Ann Hodgson and Dr Ken Spours from the Institute of Education, University of London, has produced the second in a series of Issues Papers: Issues paper 2, 14-19 Partnerships: From weakly collaborative arrangement to strongly collaborative local learning systems.
Ken Spours, from the Institute of Education, said: ‘Despite recent progress, 14-19 Partnerships are still very fragile because the forces urging competition remain stronger than those supporting collaboration. The balance has to change.’ Although institutional collaboration is not a new phenomenon, the UK government and the Welsh Assembly want to involve a wider range of partners as part of its 14-19 reforms.
Government targets to achieve higher levels of attainment among young people, and increased participation, with plans to raise the age of compulsory education to 18 years by 2015, are drivers for this partnerships strategy. Another driver is the government’s commitment that from 2013 all 14-19 year olds will have an entitlement to follow any one of the 14 Diploma lines; the government has already made it clear that it does not expect a single school or college to provide the full range on its own.
The Nuffield Review Annual Report of 2006 noted an increase in the number of partnerships as compared with the mid 1990s, but described them as ‘weakly collaborative’. The Issues Paper of 2007 examines whether progress has been made since then, and concludes that the government will need to ‘more actively encourage’ the development of more strongly collaborative links.
The Review recommends that the government should recognise that ‘institutional collaboration helps, and competition hinders, learners’ prospects in 14-19 education and training’. It also finds that local authorities and regional bodies will need to have a stronger leadership role to co-ordinate the development of 14-19 education and training, so systems can be implemented across local authority boundaries.
The Review suggests the introduction of area-wide monitoring, performance indicators and targets, with funding incentives for collaborative provision and practices. It says that all educational institutions, including city academies, should be accountable locally and regionally. Finally, rationalisation should not be ruled out in a review of which post-16 institutions can deliver choice of provision, equity and efficiency.
Ann Hodgson, from the Institute of Education, said: ‘One important way of strengthening 14-19 partnership working would be a new set of accountability arrangements, such as area-wide targets and performance measures. Schools, colleges and work-based learning providers need strong incentives to work together.’