Quotes from the past year: Birmingham as ‘exemplar’ and ‘benchmark’ January 2007
The work in Birmingham has been very positively referred to, both nationally and internationally, during 2006. In an international review of learning cities, Birmingham was referred to as a case study and in the follow-up ‘Learning Cities: Lessons Learned’ document the work in the United Kingdom case-studied Birmingham which, ‘for instance, has developed exemplary basic literacy initiatives to attain significant improvement in both educational achievement and social inclusion in an increasingly multi-cultural environment’, with the Birmingham Core Skills Development Partnership being described as ‘particularly active’ within these developments.

In a Department for Education and Skills response on international benchmarking of strategic approaches to adult basic skills Birmingham was seen as unique in its determined approach to making a whole-city set of differences. An essential feature was ‘engaging with both the micro and macro levels at the same time’ and central to the success of the Birmingham approach (facilitated by the Core Skills Development Partnership) was a commitment ‘to work through mainstream partners in order to influence the various planning and development processes across the city rather than merely relying on short-term initiatives and funding’.

The report drew out the main critical success factors behind Birmingham’s approach and concluded that ‘as regards the development of adult literacy, language and numeracy interventions in the context of a Learning City, Birmingham can be regarded as an exemplar’, and that ‘it is unlikely that any city strategy has set out to address the needs of children and adults in as holistic a manner as that pursued in Birmingham. A case can be made for Birmingham to become the benchmark against which other cities and city regions measure their own commitments and achievements’.