Getting with the Zeitgeist – devolution and the leadership of education
Four FE colleges in different parts of England explored strategies for leading the local education system in preparation for greater devolution to city regions following the model started in Greater Manchester. Through the lens of various leadership methodologies (but particularly Design Thinking) our college leaders worked with key stakeholders to flag the opportunities, the challenges and some ways forward
Government’s plans for the “Northern Powerhouse” around Manchester include devolving centrally managed powers and budgets – including education – to the city region. This is expected to be followed quite quickly by other regions. Our project, funded by the Education and Training Foundation, focussed on capturing key features of sector leadership geared to responding to the emerging local leadership agenda and, at the same time, testing how and/or whether leadership methodologies had anything to contribute. The approach to the project was evidence-based co-construction: the research team worked in partnership with college leaders, co-constructing the distillation of local work and the exploration of the leadership methods.
Researching the future is conceptually and practically challenging particularly when carried out in four months against the backdrop of uncertainty of an imminent general election. Everybody involved is to be congratulated on engaging in this conceptually difficult work so responsively. We used some methodologies for leadership to provide some structure and tested three – summarised here.
This was a wide ranging study, despite the short time frame, which did not actively set out to reach general conclusions – but we found some anyway!
- The ‘leadership models’ were genuinely useful in focussing effort but the most relevant was Design Thinking
- Stakeholders recognised the importance of information, advice and guidance but wanted a much broader concept of it which included important aspects of employability
- Participants recognised that the new devolved world only worked through partnerships and that these needed a ‘reservoir of relationships established through sustained engagement, shared purposes and experience of working together on real projects
- Links at governance level were rare but could cross organisational boundaries and break down silo thinking.
Our report and the report from the parallel project run by Holex/157 Group are both available on the Foundation website and will form the basis of a discussion at an invitation event hosted by the Foundation on 22nd July 2015
