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

14-19 PATHFINDERS: THE SECOND YEARto local decision-making networks from which they had often felt excluded. These are just afew examples among many, but serve to show the synergy which existed between nationalpolicies and imperatives and institutional priorities and interests.60. Finally, in this brief review of the sorts of factors which encouraged collaboration it isimportant to stress that it was often driven as much by educational aims and values as byinstrumental institutional concerns or policy imperatives. Partners recognised thatcollaboration benefited learners and the notion of putting learner interests before institutionalinterests did appear in many pathfinders to be more than a rhetorical flourish. Collaborationwas also acknowledged as potentially fruitful and professionally rewarding by staff and cameas a relief after what was seen in some areas as a period of intense competition betweeninstitutions during which collaborative activity was severely curtailed.Contextual Factors Impacting on Collaboration61. While there are a number of factors tending to promote collaboration, its extent andthe forms which it took were affected by a wide range of contextual factors. Some of thesewere permanent or durable features of localities and therefore partners needed to work withinthe parameters set by these features of their local context. Other contextual features weremore evanescent and susceptible to manipulation.62. Among the permanent features are geography and demography. Geography is animportant factor in determining the forms of collaboration. In Norfolk, for example, journeysfrom schools to colleges typically took at least 45 minutes, meaning that school students whoattended college courses would spend a minimum of 90 minutes travelling to learning, asubstantial loss of learning time, particularly when school starting and finishing times werethemselves determined by the timing of buses bringing students to school and taking themback home. Such factors typically came into play in rural pathfinders and have obviousimpacts upon costs as well as learning time. They might encourage partners to look at otherforms of collaboration such as distance e-learning or staff or facilities being transported towhere the students are rather than vice versa (see the Hampshire Case Study for the use ofmobile vocational facilities).21