Much is said about the need to be a learning society or a learning organisation. Strong strands of this include:
  • a willingness to set aside time to step back and look at the best that others have to offer.
  • a commitment to reflect on our own activities and developments and interrogate these in ways that strips out the learning and makes this visible.
  • a willingness to re-assemble the elements of learning to produce broadly agreed frameworks for wider future action.

It was with this in mind that the Partnership established a series of 'expert seminars' each focusing on a different aspect of basic skills development.

The 'Better Basics: Better Housing' seminar brought together 70 people from housing associations, housing trusts, housing projects, tenants boards, housing action groups, housing department staff, hostels and refuges and homeless support agencies. This created a half-day opportunity to learn about the range of things being done in Birmingham and to hear about best practice work nationally. The links between housing agenda developments and core skills developments were made. Follow up work is being done with 12 housing organisations in Birmingham with plans to follow up developments across the whole network.

In December a similar seminar brought together health workers under the banner 'Better Basics: Better Health'.

30 workers from a range of health settings heard about the national basic skills drive; explored examples from other parts of the country, where health issues and basic skills issues for adults had been used to reinforce each other; and looked at ways forward in Birmingham.

Basic Skills and work with offenders was the focus of a seminar that involved more than 30 people exploring the ways that basic skills screening, assessment and delivery are increasingly being built into offenders' reporting and support processes. The high quality work in Birmingham Probation hostels was set in the context of national changes and set against the elements of best practice from other parts of the country.

 A fourth such process saw practitioners and managers, from a variety of organisations across Birmingham, come together to unravel the ways that ICT was currently being used to boost the basic skills of adults and young people. Consistent collections of software are being used in a wide range of settings; laptops (carrying the same set of software) are being used in more and more community settings; basic skills is being built into CD ROMs and web-based activities with young people and with employees etc.

At a final seminar 60 people involved in early language development services came together to look at national examples, strip the key elements out of the wide variety of local practices, and construct the basis of a whole city drive to counter early language delay. Watch out for the resulting video, booklets, training etc.

Scanning the national horizon has highlighted some elements that can usefully be learnt by Birmingham, but has also confirmed Birmingham's strong position in going for a large volume, high quality level of service approach as opposed to one-off projects.