This is the second of the three online debates, linked to the QIA report Pursuing Excellence and the recommendations in Digital Nations in the making.
SUPPORTING PUBLIC VALUE POLICIES (Monday 9th-Thursday 12th October)
Recommendations:
No 3. Explore mechanisms for creating regional and sub-regional agencies and e-repositories focusing on support for content development and delivery, pesonalisation and repurposing by ACL in pursuit of skills and regeneration policies.
No 6. Provide seed money for pilot projects into how VCS bodies and Community Grids for Learning could act as trusted intermediaries in promoting take up of DirectGov services in assocation with local councils.
Transforming Learning - Ian\'s blog 
October 11, 2006 at 8:09 am
Proposal 3
I think we need the mechanisms, but I’m not sure about the agencies as I feel that this becomes another level in a complex mix of providers. I would see the way forward in the potential of partnerships and clusters to build on and make more effective use of current capacity by overcoming technical and organisational barriers to collaboration. It is more difficult to build parrtnerships, but the longer view suggests that partnerships that meet needs and support the participants are sustainable and able to respond to changes in Government policy rather better than responses built around individual initiatives.
In the context of the QIA consultation this proposal would need to highlight the contribution such mechanisms would make to organisational development and learner options, but we also need to emphasise learner and community autonomy and purposes in developing, delivering and repurposing content.
October 11, 2006 at 8:17 am
I agree with the proposal and the intention of this proposal and want to go back to building the clusters or partnerships that would make this work. We also need case studies showing why, in some LAs, VCS and community initiatives are already trusted partners and intermediaries and what needs to be done to replicate and build on such developments.
This also raises the implicit question in all of these proposals of how the quality debate informs and supports the wider proposals from the book and whether it is appropriate to adopt/be co-opted by the quality debate and terminology. In this context, we might make more use of the ideas around “public value”, I’ll come back to this later today.
October 12, 2006 at 12:48 pm
I picked up some information on the new league tables for health authorities yesterday and waited to have a look at them today before picking up the theme of public value. It seems clear from the NHS staff and Prime Minister’s Question time that public services, including education, will be judged by criteria that privilege financial management above services and public value. I am not arguing that public bodies shouldn’t be accountable, but it seems somehow wrong that politicians are focussing on this and saying very little about public service and public accountability.
Rather than go on about the background to public value discussion, it might be helpful to those visiting this site to have a quick look at materials in a wiki developed by Fred Garnett and myself, which is starting to explore public value in the context of education – http://publicvalue.pbwiki.com
DEMOS have a range of interesting papers on public value in relation to both culture and science which you can find at http://www.demos.co.uk search on “public value”
The new information on the system to rate Health Care Trusts can be found at – http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/6040838.stm and the Healthcare Commission – http://www.healthcarecommission.org.uk/homepage.cfm
The issue for me in adult and community education is not that individuals gain qualifications, but that much of the value of education for individuals, families and the community is not recognised or or capable of being assessed by current audit methods. It is about recognising and valuing what education as process brings to all aspects of social life and avoiding the mistake of simple models of expenditure which still equate low cost with good value.
Ian’s proposals in this debate are particularly useful in raising the issue of public value of community and collaborative actions by public and private bodies. I would like to discuss what could be seen as producing public value in the proposals as well as the more conventional benefits assessed using current methods.
October 13, 2007 at 8:01 am
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