Community, Public Policy

Unless current trends are radically altered, fewer than three in ten 19 year olds will achieve basic standards of competency in communication, numeracy and IT by the year 2000, against a target of 75%. Likewise only four in ten of the workforce will have achieved at least NVQ3 or its equivalent, against a target of 60%. But is the answer for companies to run schools directly, as envisaged under education action zones?

Previous experience with city technology colleges shows few firms really want to get that heavily involved. Most lack the skills necessary to manage effectively the bubbling cauldron of competing stakeholders that is the modern "failing school" - demotivated pupils, angry parents, underperforming teachers, inadequate budgets, interfering politicians - not to mention small-time drug dealers and investigative police officers.

However the plans do contain some very welcome ideas and real opportunities for companies to help make the difference. Up to now, most involvement has been piecemeal, focused on individual schools. The idea of clusters of schools, overseen for three to five years by partnership forums comprising parents, local councils and companies, allows for input at a strategic level. Relaxation of national rules on the curriculum and employment terms permits innovation. Extra money from the tax payer can only help. If this sort of corporate involvement can be seen to work, hopefully the stick-in-the-mud reaction to the government's announcement will soon be a thing of the past.

Corporate Citizenship Briefing, issue no: 38 - February, 1998