The second theme is related to how schools coped with changes to their financing. The main change experienced by schools after the Education Reform Act was the direct link made between the resources allocated to a school and its pupil numbers. Pupils arrived at a school possessing a notional financial value, which was weighted for pupils with additional needs. Secondary schools across Wales have therefore intensified the closeness of their relationships with their partner primary schools. Pupils in the final year of primary schooling may experience significant levels of contact with a local secondary school. This contact might include visits from secondary school teachers to days spent at the secondary school experiencing curriculum taster lessons.
Other forms of partnering in Wales began at the local level and involved the sharing of curriculum knowledge, current practice and costs. Advice on implementing partnering was seen in the literature of Welsh teaching unions mainly in relation to
primary schools, as the primary sector of education was having to cope most immediately with a reduction in funding in line with fewer pupils. Partnering was fostered across secondary schools too, in every curriculum area. LEA advisors held frequent courses to disseminate national and local initiatives within a subject. This strategy coincided with apparently increased funding for school buildings which is illustrated by the passage below taken from the House of Commons Hansard Debates for 20 Dec 1988:
WALES
Welsh Language
Mr. Wigley : To ask the Secretary of State for Wales what steps he proposes to take to deal with lack of capacity in Welsh medium schools; and if he will make a statement.
Mr. Wyn Roberts : There remains in Wales considerable surplus capacity in schools resulting from falling numbers of pupils. Where there is insufficient capacity in existing Welsh-medium schools to meet parental demands for Welsh-medium education, I would encourage local education authorities to take steps to reorganise their provision so as to meet the demand. It is for LEAs to initiate proposals for such schemes. Gross provision for local authority capital expenditure on education was increased by 42 per cent. between 1985-86 and 1988-89. Next year provision will be increased by a further 11 per cent to £52.9 million. One of the main objectives of these increases has been to encourage rationalisation.
This passage gives some indication of the opportunity made available to those empowered at the local level to vire or divert increased levels of capital spending in ways that corresponded with their priorities. Those priorities usually meant not allowing a single school to over expand, or over-develop its provision.
On a UK wide basis, there was a movement by schools towards the formation of consortia and clusters, in order to consolidate their positions in the process of reform, as the role and influence of LEAs changed (Bridges & Husbands,1996, and Hargreaves, 1996). Husbands (1996) identified three different models of collaboration which could be distinguished according to criteria such as: Purchasing, Professionalism and Partnership. This researcher stressed the notion of a “perfect market” where all schools in an area were able to make available the same provision. As part of this movement towards increased
levels of collaboration, Welsh schools formed their own association, CYDAG, to coordinate the development of Welsh medium education. CYDAG allowed teachers and managers on an all-Wales level to meet and coordinate their work in different areas of the curriculum. For example, mathematics teachers would meet on a yearly basis and share practice around current issues.
In contrast to the previous policy of allowing local authorities to determine the nature of capital spending on schools as seen above, the popular schools initiative (PSI), a scheme whereby “oversubscribed” schools could bid, directly or via their LEA, to borrow substantial funds in order to expand, broke with tradition and added further pressure on school consortia.
This increased pressure on school consortia again encouraged extensions to the curriculum as well as meaningful attempts at collaboration. In some cases, additional coordinators were appointed by LEAs to facilitate the dissemination of partnership schemes to cover specific areas of the curriculum that were in obvious need of development. Obviously, the capital spending that PSI allowed, gave some schools the opportunity to develop the status of Welsh medium education, but, at the same time, fulfill another higher tier priority: increase their capacity for other pupils. Naturally, initiating partnerships would allow the policies that defined the ethos of some schools to be disseminated rapidly to the remaining schools across an authority, minimizing the differences perpetuated between schools if implemented effectively.
It seems, however, that consortia policies of this kind may have created new groups of parents who could claim they were being disadvantaged, as the freedom to make choices under delimited conditions included the possibility of making an inappropriate choice based on what they considered to be the most advantageous option. In some cases, factors other than making the best use of cultural capital contributed to parental choice.
In Wales, policies encouraged by the higher tiers of management eventually matched this local theme of partnership and this coincided with the changing political landscape, which I will outline briefly here. After an initial swing to the right in the early 1980s, Wales saw a steep decline in right wing representation at Westminster until it eventually disappeared, only to be resurrected by the proportional representation system
of the devolved Assembly at the end of the period. As central support for neo-liberal aspirations declined, it was superseded by a culture of collaboration and partnership as articulated in The Learning Country (WAG, 2002), a policy document informed by visits to Canada and Australia. Canada, especially, seems to share similarities with educational development in Wales: see Churchill (1998) for an outline of schools collaborating in response to cuts, as well as the Ottawa-Carlton school board web site for an endorsement of partnerships.
In practical terms, the climate of partnerships was encouraged further by the General Teaching Council for Wales (GTCW) a new organization established by the Welsh Assembly Government to register all teachers in maintained schools in Wales. The variety of continuous professional development (CPD) schemes offered by the GTCW included one which resourced groups of “teachers from one subject area, school cluster or LEA to work together on a regular basis” (Journal of the GTCW, 2003: 10). Of course, through such encouragement, many teachers would be engaged in a process that, despite the inevitable variations in implementation, would offset the reforms making that process appear comparatively mature.
These partnerships served existing schools well by insulating them from the rigors of reform and associated changes in the levels of funding. The partnerships aimed to preserve the existing intakes, and share resources to deal with the implications of the extensions to the curriculum that have accumulated over many years. It is worth noting, however, that not every arrangement involved expansion; some partnerships engaged in comprehensive consolidation of the curriculum, affecting year 12 and 13 provision, but leaving secondary school intakes unchanged.
There is, of course, another form of partnership, of the type that Fielding (1996) suggested was not in the interests of an established community and that Bridges & Husbands (1996: 6) referred to in equally negative terms as possibly compromising the quality of education. This kind of partnership contributes towards distinctive schools by making them leading players in teaching parts of the curriculum. Most recently, this form of partnership has become a feature of schooling in England. It is the type of partnership,
however, that Fielding advocated that has been a constant feature of developments in Wales.