This has been a fascinating journey

It started with Birmingham, uniquely at that time, committing itself to a long term, strategic push on cranking up the whole platform of literacy, language and numeracy skills for the whole city.  Subsequently other places in the United Kingdom formed literacy partnerships, but rarely on the scale of Birmingham’s approach.

It went on to test out new approaches in the direct and deliberate teaching of reading skills, writing skills, skills of speaking and listening, and mathematical skills – and balanced these with fostering a sense of enjoyment around books, around learning etc.  Many of these new approaches were picked up by the new Labour government and used to inform national developments for schools and for work with adults in the 1997-2000 period.

It linked to other towns and cities nationally (and to places internationally) that were wanting to make a similar journey in their own different ways.  It was held up as a national model of value for money, of strategic leadership and drive, and of whole-city regenerations.

The journey was made by all the city’s key agencies, related to learning and skills, working in collaboration yet retaining their own specific purposes, plans and programmes.  It avoided the worst of ‘project-itis’, of ‘initiative overload’, of ‘short-termism’ – by focusing all the time on improving the mainstream programmes of partner agencies.

There was a recognisable ‘partnership’ but this never took on a life of its own, separate from the key agencies.  It avoided structures, organisational charts, central teams of Partnership staff – and focused on functions, relationships, loose networking of development time within an agreed overall framework.  Increasingly, the facets of the recognisable ‘partnership’ were built into other wider decision-making arrangements so that, if there is a Partnership now, it exists as the interaction between agencies, as commitments to particular ways of working for change.  It’s as much a way of seeing things as a mechanism for doing things.

The journey has involved testing out totally new forms of team working; totally different management arrangements – and this aspect has been part of the excitement.  It has been an example of the way many public services may need to operate if they are to be the multi-agency, rapid response, flexible organisations that drive into place whole sets of better life outcomes for large numbers of people.

The journey has seen milestones passed (skills levels doubled in the city; and gaps starting to close (between Birmingham figures and national figures, and between the performance figures for different communities across the city).  There has been a recognition that ‘more of the same’ of the early successful interventions wouldn’t continue to produce the same results – that new approaches will continue to be needed for some time yet.  There has also been a recognition that focusing on skills and engagement can only take things so far unless underlying issues of wellbeing, poverty and aspiration are not addressed as well.

The route taken has had to be systematically laid out year by year, but has also needed to curve and weave in order to incorporate national and regional developments – and if it is to incorporate new ideas, new evidence and new understandings.  This was learnt early on when one of our partners produced a beautifully detailed and costed seven year project whose basis, after only a year, was made redundant by shifts in context.  The whole thing was rethought as a framework that enabled consistency of direction whilst adapting to a rapidly changing environment as it was rolled forward.

The journey started in quite uniform, generalist ways and has been particularised as it went on.  Once the big shifts in thinking were embedded across the system there was scope for action research across networks of agencies; for working on the needs of specific groups of people.

Much of the journey planned to 2010 has taken place.  There is much to record as successes.  At the same time we have identified more than 30 development facets that still need to be worked on to 2011.  So there are significant things still to do and a new agenda always unfurling to 2015 … and on to 2020 … or even to the aspirations for 2026 in Birmingham’s sustainable communities strategy.

Birmingham will continue to make its forward journey (‘Forward’ is the city’s motto), and this will even more so be undertaken via partnership ways of working – and the Core Skills Development Partnership will be in the background, being helpful, advising and cajoling, acting as much as a friendly consultant as a critical friend – being less and less visible as others taken on various functions, but being on hand urging agencies to do more to raise levels of skills, interest and aspirations.

We can only repeat as we began –a fascinating journey that’s still underway!