Latest newsletter from Innovation Unit

Innovation Unit has published its latest newsletter, pulling together recent news and work on distributed approaches to public services, from student-led approaches to co-operatives and mutuals.  Read the newsletter here.  And to sign up to receive our newsletter, click here.

The Politics of Ownership

by John Craig

Interesting comment piece by Steve Richards in the Independent, picking up on The Engagement Ethic.  Richards puts the ownership debate in a broader political perspective, arguing that ‘New Labour did not give much thought to ownership because it did not dare to do so, fearing internal rows in which the role of the state might be discussed’.  He argues now that political change – within and beyond the Labour Party – and the credit crunch mean that questions of ownership are firmly back on the agenda.  He concludes by saying:

“But ownership, this time in the form of much wider user and employee involvement, is back as a defining theme. I predict it will play as big a part in shaping the next decade as privatisation did in the 1980s.”

‘Managing’ Innovation

by David Price

I was in a meeting this week and found myself invoking Google’s approach to innovation – or at least my take on it, and wondering if this approach could work in the public sector, in this instance schools involved in the Learning Futures programme, but I think it’s pertinent in a far wider context.

The challenge for programmes like Learning Futures – which is supporting and observing a wide range of innovations, which are themselves made up of ’sub’ innovations – is ‘how do you know what’s going to work, and therefore target support and scrutiny toward it? Of course, the difficult answer is that you rarely can be sure what’s going to work, and even less rarely can you be sure of which of the ’sub’ innovations is making the difference.

Co-operative schools: the future of schooling?

By Claire McEneaney

Following this week’s launch of The Engagement Ethic, Tessa Jowell called on Ed Balls to explore the potential of mutualism in his department.  However, schools have quietly made a start on this agenda through the creation of Co-operative Schools.   With politicians on all sides now pushing to accelerate the mutualism agenda, these schools may tell us more than we thought about the education providers of the future.  But with more change possible, the question is not only how quickly their will numbers grow but how policy-makers may look to deepen and extend the co-operative principles at their heart.

Co-operative Schools are a relatively new phenomenon in the UK, enabled by legislation which encourages the creation of Trust schools and Academies. Co-operative schools adhere to the principals of a co-operative – self help, self responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and community solidarity. DCSF hopes that co-operative schools will raise standards by developing partnerships, strengthening the curriculum, and community engagement in the strategic direction of schools.

Tessa Jowell cites The Engagement Ethic

by John Craig

More coverage today for The Engagement Ethic, Innovation Unit’s think-piece looking at the potential of co-operatives and mutuals for public services.  In a speech to Progress last night, Minister for the Cabinet Office, Tessa Jowell drew explicitly on the piece in announcing a Commission on Ownership to explore further the potential of mutualism in public services and to be chaired by Will Hutton.  Jowell argued that we are ”entering a “mutual moment”, where a new sense of community ownership is created through making greater use of mutual organisations in the provision of public services”.   The Minister develops this thinking further in this comment piece for the Guardian, which sees her drawing on the ideas of the report.

A Commission on Ownership is an interesting move, particularly at this point in the electoral cycle.  I really hope that it can help to make a practical impact.  I certainly wish that we had been able to think more deeply about the notion of ownership in the report, emphasising both that people already own their public services and that too often it doesn’t feel like that.  It also helps to make stronger links – as some of the more political press coverage has – between issues of ownership within public services and more broadly across our economy.  The more we can understand public services in that broader context,the better for public service reform.

Launch of The Engagement Ethic

by John Craig

We launched a think piece today about the potential of co-operatives and mutuals for public services.  Happily, it has already been picked up by the Guardian and discussed on Radio 4’s Today programme.  You can read the paper here and the press release here.

The piece argues that supermarket-style approaches have taken public services so far, but the next phase of improvement relies on their ability to engage and inspire citizens and staff.  It suggests that – rather than taking inspiration from Easyjet - public services might look to John Lewis for an example of how to engage staff and citizens.

The think piece suggests that people will only encourage people to take more responsibility for their own health, learning and carbon footprint if people are given greater rights to shape the work of local public services.  It argues that public services need to strengthen their ethic of engagement by giving citizens and staff greater voice in decision-making.  If not, while public services are improving, the risk is that remain something done to the public rather than with the public.

The Future (of Schooling) is Already Here

by David Price

….but as William Gibson famously said ‘it’s just not evenly distributed. This is one of those weeks when I realise how lucky I am to do what I do (actually I realise this most weeks). I have spent the week traveling across England, visiting schools, talking to students, teachers and researchers about how we can change the 20th century version of schooling.

A quote from Union Leader and prominent American socialist Eugene V. Debs

by Alec Patton

I would not lead you to the promised land if I could, because if I could lead you there, others could lead you back again.

I don’t know much about Eugene V. Debs, but this is what I would find written in the fortune cookie of my dreams. It comes from the memorial to Ted Sizer in the always-compelling Bridging Differences blog.

Computer game + maths = no teacher

by Gareth Wynne

In the past the default learning mode was instruction.  In the future it will be much more about discovery and learning by doing combined with collaboration and interaction.

Several of The Innovation Unit’s recent projects have focussed on the potential impact of this trend on the role of teachers.  It is likely that teachers will need to become  ’choreographers of experiences’ and ‘brokers of  community resources’. 

Whilst maths software is common in schools, the London Evening Standard reports that Manga High, which is being trialled in Featherstone High School, is the first to truly mimic a computer game.  It reports that the trials have gone so well that it is being rolled out to other schools.  The school reported that whilst the children were solving quadratic equations to launch rockets “the teachers haven’t had to do anything”. 

The full article can be read here.

It’s That Time of The Decade…

by David Price

There’s a very interesting retrospective in today’s Education Guardian. entitled ‘The Noughties in Education’. It presents two very different perspectives. Polly Curtis provides an admirably succinct summary of 10 years of government education policy, whilst Fiona Millar looks at whether we’ve a fairer system than we had in 2000. The header for the pieces begs a somewhat irrelevant question: ‘do we end the decade with a better, fairer education system than when it began?’ I may be wrong, but there’s not much point in the system being fairer, if it’s no better. Curtis suggests that Alistair Campbell’s pronouncement that ‘the day of the bog-standard comp is over’ is now being picked up in Conservative plans for wider choice and greater variety of school governance. She also points out that though we’ve already seen some diversification, ‘rather than radical new teaching styles, a trend towards a more traditional education has emerged: rigorous approaches to behaviour, the rise of the uniform, increasing setting in schools and thorough testing’.