Darlington

Objectives

To market learning to groups who would not normally participate. The marketing project known as the Passport project is to encourage participation, have a range of entry points and progression opportunities and invite partner involvement. The project intended to involve employers among the partnership and to work across social and cultural boundaries to appeal to individuals, families and groups of learners.

This project, together with Stockton, have worked in partnership throughout the Pathfinder initiative.

Outcomes

There has been considerable activity in relation to the Passport project. This has included a report from marketing consultants with useful input into the process of launching an Action pack for the project. The Action Pack has been completed in draft and the steering group for the project is actively involved in seeking funding both for the action pack and the Launch of the Learning Town initiative.

However, like many other projects involved in the Pathfinder Initiative this project has been deflected by the business of setting up the Learning partnership and the Development of the local authority's Lifelong Learning Development Plan. The Darlington project co-ordinator believes that a dedicated worker for the Learning Town initiative is a necessity if substantial progress is to be made.

Problems within the initiative have included a lack of follow up commitment to initial enthusiasm, the lack of a single organisation prepared to drive the initiative forward, an excess of strategic discussion without operational activity and problems resulting from lack of funding.

This project would recommend dedicated staff time and appropriate delegation to operational staff to enable action to be agreed and put into place without lengthy consultation. The project clearly benefited from the use of consultant time and the shared work with Stockton.

For both the Stockton and Darlington projects there were issues with the use of the Guide. Some related to the format and construction of the document but in preparing useful guidance for partne rships it was felt that some or all of the following would have been useful:

• a section on the benefits of partnership;
• help on the issue of losing partner commitment;
• more on resource issues;
• emphasis on the need for concrete action;
• a section on the role of co-ordinator including matters relating to their management, setting of targets and evaluation of performance; and
• checklists and questionnaires that could be pulled out and used independently would add greatly to the Guide's usefulness.