Collaborative Approaches to 14-19 Provision - Communities and ...

14-19 PATHFINDERS: THE SECOND YEARE-learning was seen as another means of increasing capacity. All of these approaches havethe potential to increase capacity but will also impact upon the character and quality of thelearning which takes place. As we suggest in paragraph 184 it will be important that indeciding how capacity might be increased local policy-makers take account of the factorswhich make vocational learning attractive to students.544. The third element of sustainability concerns innovation. The 14-19 Pathfinders haveproduced exciting and imaginative practice. A key question at this stage is how suchinnovation can be both maintained where it has been piloted and disseminated both within thepathfinders and more widely. Collaborative networks which operate at appropriate levels andthus ensure that innovations are disseminated to staff who are responsible for implementationare crucial. The forms of dissemination are also likely to be important and it may be moreimportant to disseminate key principles rather than to expect those on the receiving end ofdissemination to accept wholesale practices which have been developed elsewhere incontexts which might be quite different. Sustainability and dissemination of innovationtherefore requires considerable skill and personal qualities from disseminators if it is to beeffective.Curriculum Provision and Experience545. We described in Section Four the ways in which the 14-19 Pathfinders have broughtabout a substantial broadening of the curriculum (especially at 14-16), largely through theexpansion of vocational and work-related learning. Variations in the pace of learning, thedevelopment of work-based learning and enterprise learning have also been developed underthe auspices of pathfinders. These processes of curriculum change raise some fundamentalquestions for policy-makers and practitioners about the nature of the 14-19 curriculum whichwill need to be addressed explicitly as the process of 14-19 reform proceeds. For example,for ease of reading we have treated the terms academic and vocational as though they areunproblematic and have clear, agreed meanings. This, of course is far from the case and asthe reform process continues it will be important to constantly reappraise these terms formeaning and usefulness both in relation to each other and in their own terms. In relation tovocational learning pathfinder has promoted both broad, general vocationalism and narroweroccupationalism. Questions arise as to whether the balance is right between these, whether161