Birmingham

Objectives

To develop a Learning City approach across the City Council and, in parallel, across a range of partners for the benefit of the local community.

Work towards this was to involve building an effective partnership between all the stakeholders in lifelong learning in the city, developing a Strategic Plan for lifelong learning and co-ordinating activities around the provision and marketing of opportunities.

The project was led by the City Council who were to use Practice, Progress and Value to shape a corporate framework and support the formative stages of the new Learning partnership. The project focused on two strands of the Guide.

The first part of the project was focused on the City Council itself and the need to co-ordinate and monitor lifelong learning in a systematic way. The second part developed from the need to develop a new learning partnership in Birmingham in response to Government policy and to build on foundations laid by an earlier learning forum in the City. The Guide was used as a framework for the first exercise and it was hoped that it would be useful in shaping the second.

Outcomes

The toolkit was used to construct a corporate strategic framework for lifelong learning and to make the case for a Learning City approach within the City Council. It provided the basis for a grid used initially by departments to submit their corporate lifelong learning priorities.

The concept of the Learning City was introduced to the steering group of the Birmingham Learning partnership by the consultant to the project and the ambition to become a Learning City is embedded in the mission statement of the partnership.

In developing the City Council part of the project, problems arose in the interpretation of the grid documents by departments. By changing to a supported process focused on activities a more straightforward method was arrived at for confirming priorities.

There were also problems in making the strategy for lifelong learning an agenda for action. Activities in this area of development were interrupted by the need to produce a Lifelong Learning Development Plan for the City to comply with the requirements of the Standards Fund for Adult Education and reorganisation of both City Committee Structures and Departmental structures have also hindered forward movement on this project.

Considerable effort was invested in the development of the Learning partnership but, as with many other such groupings, the changes in structures proposed for post 16 Learning, advent of Local Learning and Skills Councils and changes in role for local partnerships all led to inactivity. It was not possible to make much progress beyond the production of the Local Learning Plan required by the DfEE.

The lessons that emerged for the Birmingham projects leader were that it was unwise to take on a project which was over ambitious. A small, more contained project would have been easier to assess and possibly easier to achieve.

It was also felt that it was easy to assume that the concept of the Learning City was easily understood. This did not prove to be the case. Ample time should be allowed to work through the concept. A further recommendation from this project was that the talk and discussion involved in the development of the concept need to be accompanied by concrete action and achievement.

So far as using the Guide was concerned, it was found useful in bringing the idea of a structure to lifelong learning in the authority and to engaging new and different departments in the development of lifelong learning. A clear definition of the Learning City has helped in promoting lifelong learning beyond the City Council as well. However, external agendas and particularly the demands of the DfEE have meant that the context and agendas have been changed over the life of the project. The development of new and different partnerships may mean that the building of the kinds of partnerships envisaged at the start of the project may take rather longer than hoped.