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Two-Way Street Leadership Exchanges
Sharing expertise to plan, design and deliver innovative and sustainable education and training responsive to industry needs and career paths.
6 September 2016
Background
The nature of work is continuously and rapidly changing as employers engage with the opportunities and challenges posed by digital technology, globalisation and economic developments, resulting in transformations to existing as well as new occupations and business processes that demand new skills and capacities.
Challenge
Pathways into professional and technical work for learners as well as the reskilling of the existing workforce increasingly require employer-education and training partnerships that can utilise their respective expertise - occupational, business process, curriculum and pedagogic – to plan, design and deliver innovative vocational education and training.
Solution
Nine employer-provider partnerships, involving large, small and medium-sized enterprises and funded and supported by the Centre for Post-14 Education and Work and funded by the Education and Training Foundation tested out how this type of activity might work in practice.
- Barking and Dagenham College with Rooff Limited (Construction)
- Boston College with T.H.Clements (Agribusiness)
- Buxton and Leek College, University of Derby with various employers (Logistics and Transport)
- Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College and City And Guilds London Institute with Mace Construction And Catalyst Housing (Construction)
- Fareport Training Organisation with Theo Paphitis Retail Group (Retail)
- Kirklees College with Syngenta and Nufarm (Process Manufacturing)
- South West Association of Training Providers (Swatpro) with the North Bristol National Health Service (NHS) Trust – (Health)
- The Skills Company / previously Skills Solutions (on behalf of Engineering Futures) with The Hyde Group (Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing)
- Wirral Metropolitan College with Unilever Ltd (STEM Occupations)
The innovative feature of these Two-Way Street Leadership Exchange partnerships was the focus on collaborative strategic leadership and the co-design and co-delivery of education and training. Leaders from both business and education and training identified ways of working together to enhance productivity, employment and training opportunities in the local, regional and ultimately national economy.
The exchange meetings were intended to encourage and model genuine and sustained collaboration between employers and providers; to ensure that leadership, management and governance in colleges and training providers has a strong focus on a clear line of sight between learning and work and, in this way, to improve the vocational education and training (VET) system in England. The programme of work was intended to complement and work in tandem with other related Foundation projects, in particular the Teach Too programme, but also to be informed by the Apprenticeship and Traineeship Staff Support Programmes.
Strong and dynamic partnerships provided the basis on which professional, technical and vocational education not only keeps pace with changes in work, but also leads the way by acting as a seedbed for innovation at work and in education.
Results and impact
Over a period of nine months and through the series of exchanges, leaders from the worlds of business, education and training identified ways of working together to enhance productivity, employment and training opportunities in the local, regional and ultimately the national economy.
From these partnerships a number of case studies, videos and supporting resources captured the ways in which they worked - occupational, business process, curriculum and pedagogic - to plan, design and deliver innovative and sustainable education and training which is both responsive to the needs of industry and develops a clearer line of sight to work for learners.
