Title

Building Bridges With Other Schools: Educational Partnerships In Separate Settings In England

Author

Dr Jo Rose

Address

Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, 35 Berkeley Square, Bristol BS8 1JA

Title

Building Bridges With Other Schools: Educational Partnerships In Separate Settings In England

Summary

This paper considers the ways in which special schools work in partnership with other organisation in order to meet the support needs of their pupils and enhance their educational provision. Data is taken from interviews in 2009 and 2010 with staff, pupils and governors at four different special schools in England. Schools appeared proactive and creative in seeking opportunities for partnership and collaborative activity with other organisations and with individuals. Partnerships with support services from different agencies were often well-established. All faced challenges, however, in engaging mainstream schools in collaborative work beyond sharing facilities. The paper highlights the different challenges faced by special and mainstream schools regarding partnership work to support pupils with special educational needs.

Key Words

Partnerships; Collaborative work; Special Schools; Integrated services; Curriculum development

1

Building Bridges With Other Schools: Educational Partnerships In Separate Settings In England

Introduction

The educational placement of young people with significant disabilities is a contested issue, with many supporting inclusion in mainstream education (Norwich, 2008). Nonetheless, in the UKa proportion of the school-age population is educated in separate settings. Educational partnerships and the development of links between organisations are seen as important opportunities by headteachers in special schools (Baker, 2009), and can be considered as a way to mitigate against the social separation of students in special education centres from the mainstream (Norwich, 2008). Furthermore, separate settings are often smaller than mainstream settings and as such are more limited in the breadth of their provision, so partnerships with other schools are a viable way to increase opportunities for their students.

In England, policy reforms in 14-19 education under the 1997-2010 New Labour Government placed an implicit requirement on schools, colleges and other organizations to join together in order to deliver more choice and flexibility in young people’s education (DCSF, 2008), and the current Coalition government expects schools and colleges to work together according to need (BIS, 2010; DfE, 2010). In the SEN Green Paper (DfE, 2011) the Coalition government stated its expectations that different services will develop creative and innovative ways of working together to meet the needs of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN). Educational partnerships, in particular with relation to SEN, therefore have significant contemporary relevance to policy and practice: to those in national and local government, in strategic and delivery positions across children’s services. Special schools can view this policy context as an opportunity to develop and cement relationships with mainstream institutions: for example, links with colleges and the community are included in special schools’ aims for Key Stage 4 (Lawson et al, 2005).

Educational Partnerships

The literature on partnership approaches in education, particularly with respect to vocational learning, has been growing steadily over recent years. Partnerships have been conceptualised in terms of the ways in which they develop (Billet et al, 2007); their structure (Hodgson and Spours, 2006); their purpose (Higham and Yeomans, 2010); and process (Rose, 2011).

In their work on educational partnerships in Australia, Billett et al (2007) outlined three ways in which partnerships emerge. They described community partnerships as those which emerge from within a community, enacted partnerships as those which are imposed but have goals that a community engages with, and negotiated partnerships as those which arise from a recognition by different organisations of the need to work together to reach a particular goal. Considering formality of structure, Hodgson and Spours (2006) described ten different models of partnerships. These ranged from federation between schools (extremely formal), where there may be a joint governing body, through to occasional, localised collaborative activities (informal) which are usually run between organisations without the involvement of local authorities, central government or other over-arching bodies or funding providers.

Higham and Yeomans (2010) believed that most partnerships originated as negotiated partnerships. They categorised partnerships in English 14-19 education according to four inter-related dimensions: inclusivity (who was involved and how did they participate); depth (to what extent participants engaged with the partnership, and how much impact it had on practice); scale (geographical spread and numbers of participants); and focus (what the partnership aimed to do). They suggested that variations along these dimensions led to three broad orientations of purpose: technical collaboration, which tends to be about strategy, rather than practice; instrumental collaboration, which tends to be in response to a specific agenda but may not be long-lasting; and committed collaboration, where partners have established their own goals and values, and are likely to continue working together. Such descriptions served to characterise partnerships at a moment in time, and Higham and Yeomans described how partnerships may start as technical or instrumental collaboration and develop into committed collaboration.

The dynamics of educational partnership in a range of mainstream schools and collegeswere considered in depth by Rose (2011). She conceptualised partnerships in terms of how ‘joined up’ the institutions are: to what extent they have developed shared working processes and decision making, and whether those joint processes go beyond a single focus or piece of work. Rose suggested that partnerships can be classified at a point on a continuum with four points. The first of these is ‘trading services’, where there is little joint planning or coordination, and services (be that delivery, space, or other resources) are exchanged or bought and sold. The next, ‘responsive joint planning’, describes organisations planning and executing a piece of work together in response to a particular need or external requirement. The third point, ‘systemic partnership’ is where organisations have established relationships and ways of working together which extend beyond a discrete response to a particular agenda. In such situations, joint working processes are usually well-established and organisations plan strategically and identify issues that would benefit from joint work. The final point on the continuum, ‘joint venture’, illustrates instances where organisations have gone beyond standard partnership and become in some respects a single legal entity, perhaps with a shared governing body and budget for example.

These different conceptualisations of partnerships have been developed in response to processes in mainstream education. This paper focuses on the ways in which partnership work is enacted in separate settings, in particular how such schools work with other organisations to enhance provision for their students. Such settings are often smaller and less integrated into local authority education systems, and as such face unique challenges in developing partnerships with other organisations.

Context

This paper reports research undertaken as part of a much larger longitudinal project, the Centre Research Study (CReSt), which was funded by the QCDA to look at responses to policy reforms in the field of 14-19 education in 52 schools, colleges and other centres in England. The participating institutions were selected as a cross-sectional representation of the different types of educational provision available for 14-19 year olds in England, and included seven special schools or alternative provision. A baseline study was conducted by another research team in 2008-09 (Gorrard et al, 2009), which produced case reports for all 52 participating institutions. The research in this paper is based on interviews and focus groups from case-study visits to four of the special centres. This paper asks:

In what ways do four different special centres use partnerships to develop educational opportunities and support the needs of their students?

Method

The project team carried out 3-day visits to four special centres in 2009 and 2010. These included (all names used are fictitious):

Southview School, an independent, charity-maintained school for approximately 100 physically disabled young people aged 4 to 19 years, most of whom have additional learning difficulties

Springwell School, a maintained school for approximately 70 young people aged 2 ½ to 19 years, who have severe or profound and multiple learning difficulties (SPMLD), some of whom also have specific sensory, physical and behavioural conditions

High Cross School, a non-maintained school for approximately 80 young people aged 11-18 with communication difficulties;

NortonsideInstitution, a secure children’s home forup to 38 young people aged 12-16 years who have committed a criminal offence.

Data for this paper were taken from 19 interviews and focus groups with staff (including senior management, partnership coordinators, teachers and governors), and 9 interviews and focus groups with students conducted during the four case-study visits. Different researchers carried out the visits to the different institutions (the author of this paper visited High Cross School), but the same research instruments were used in all visits, and the team shared initial thoughts after each visit, and case reports. Research instruments were designed to explore participants’ perspectives on 14-19 education (for more detail see Feiler (2010), which covers in detail the visit to Southview School);andspecific questions on partnership arrangements were addressed to head teachers, governors and partnership coordinators. Interview questions on partnerships addressed the following issues:

  • Existing partnership arrangements (including details such as participants, purpose, history, and processes)
  • Perceived barriers and facilitators to partnership working with other local organisations
  • Implications for funding of partnership work
  • Effect of partnership work on opportunities for young people

When asking about partnerships, researchers did not specify a particular type of relationship that they were interested in. Interviewees were encouraged to discuss those relationships that they believed to be ‘partnerships’. This meant that a wide range of relationships were discussed, from straightforward exchange of services or resources, to (for example) formal groups of organisations who were applying for joint funding and devising joint projects.

Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. All transcripts were coded initially into pre-defined categories, one of which was partnerships. This procedure ensured that the dataset was manageable according to the topic of analysis. The partnerships category provided the data underpinning this paper. The data on partnership were analysed by the author of this paper for emergent themes. An initial reading without coding allowed the author to familiarise (and in the case of High Cross School, to re-acquaint) herself with the data. A second reading generated a first set of codes, and these were then refined in a repeat round of coding. The content of these codes was then used to develop the themes discussed in this paper.

Results

The types of partnership work that were described in the institutions included:

  • Students attending mainstream schools or colleges for certain provision that was not available at their home institution
  • Students attending other organisations for work experience
  • Use of facilities at mainstream schools or colleges (such as science labs), and conversely, mainstream schools or colleges using facilities at the special schools (such as a hydrotherapy pool, or specialised sports equipment)
  • Students from mainstream schools volunteering or doing work experience in the special schools
  • External professionals attending review meetings
  • Individuals coming in to deliver ‘one-off’ specialised sessions(for example, around crafts, first aid and so on)
  • Advice and training from or for other organisations

Staff across these institutions described a proactive approach to developing partnerships.They were very aware that the size of their institutions meant that the breadth of experience and opportunity that they were able to offer students was inevitably limited, and reported actively seeking opportunities to work with individuals and organisations from outside the institution:

‘I think you know for this particular age group it is to widen and extend their opportunities so that if – whatever their interests are really we’re able to develop those and take it as far as it can go. We are fairly limited because we’re a small school and I suppose as you say the strategic development is being able to work in partnership to offer a wider range of opportunity.’(Head Teacher, Springwell School)

Particular patterns of partnership work were reported in the different institutions, according to context.

Southview School had specialist sports status. Staff reported that this ‘opened doors’ with local schools when developing partnerships. However, the school found it hard to extend partnerships beyond those involving the sport specialism – in part due to their independent status. The principal reported that developing partnerships had ‘been a long hard slog… because we are not seen to be part of the family’. Furthermore, the physical nature of the students’ difficulties meant that it was time- and resource-intensive for students to travel between schools to access other provision. Extra travel time had to be allowed for young people with wheelchairs, and extra support staff needed to aid young people in operating equipment such as speech and language machines.

Staff at Springwell School reported that the 14-19 reforms meant that ‘there is a higher priority for other organisations to think about our needs’, so had provided an avenue for them to develop partnerships with local colleges and other special schools. The head teacher here reported that the 14-19 agenda tended to focus on Diplomas, but the school was hoping to develop provision of a range of accredited courses at foundation level that was more suited to the needs of their learners. The different priorities of Springwell School to mainstream schools, however, mean that ‘it is quite difficult to establish genuine links with our mainstream peers’ (Teacher, Springwell School). The school is in a local authority 14-19 partnership with mainstream schools, although this was reflected mainly in shared use of facilities rather than joint curriculum development or provision. Springwell School also faced resource implications, particularly in terms of support staff and time, when students accessed mainstream facilities. Funding to support the development of partnerships, and use of facilities and materials, was mentioned in many of the interviews at this school.

High Cross School’s status as a non-maintained school means that it is funded on a per-student basis by students’ local authorities (LAs), should a student’s LA decide that High Cross School is the most appropriate place for that student. This means that the school is not ‘attached’to one single LA and as such finds that it is often ‘left out of the loop’ when it comes to training and information. The head is keen to ‘build bridges with other schools’ andsome young people attend mainstream schools and colleges for classes that are not delivered in High Cross School (where it is felt that the young people are able to access the curriculum provision at a mainstream school). The head felt that students benefited from the personal and social learning in mainstream college, as well as the opportunity to access a wider curriculum. The need to expand the curriculum offer has become more pressing in recent years, as the number of post-16 students at the school has increased. Funding a wider curriculum offer (particularly through college attendance) is becoming more problematic, however, as money must be sourced from the students’ home LA. High Cross School also has links with local supermarkets and charity shops around providing work experience placements. There were concerns about the viability of this type of arrangement: due to rising unemployment it is becoming hard to find work placements for young people with special needs.

Nortonside Institution encountered a specific set of issues around partnership work, due to its status as a secure children’s home. The students are generally not allowed to travel off site to other institutions, and there is little continuity of the student body: many placements are short term over a period of a few months, and few placements last more than a year. This means that it is rarely appropriate to develop partnerships around the delivery of the National Curriculum. The head teacher at Nortonside Institution had concerns that many teachers had been in post ‘for an awfully long time, which has had the effect of deskilling people and disconnecting them from the mainstream world of education, which is not particularly helpful’. To that end, teachers are encouraged to make links with subject networks in the area, although participation in such networks is often limited by time available. Staff from Nortonside Institution occasionally deliver sessions at other secure units, and vice versa, as well as sharing external contacts. Much partnership work tends to involve one-off events, with individuals coming in to support activities or themed weeks outside of the National Curriculum. The partnership coordinator described her approach to developing relationships which may be useful for such activities: ‘I network anywhere and everywhere… I don’t dismiss anybody. In really crude terms, everybody can be used.’