RECURSOS MATERIALES Y SERVICIOS

This section begins by discussing the findings from a question about why the participants felt UHOVI was important to the HOV region. All participants indicated that UHOVI was a widening participation initiative with a remit to help regenerate the HOV region through the delivery of innovative qualifications and curriculum. Whilst none of the participants directly referred to the Leitch report (2006), as a key influence, their common/collective understanding of the task at hand to regenerate the HOV relates to some of the key objectives in this wider UK policy document. Interestingly, the participants’ answers suggested that UHOVI meant more to each of them than merely a job. For example, UHOVI appealed to the first of the senior leaders, (a seconded member of staff from the UoG that had worked at the university for over twenty years), because, as he stated

I was born in the region, still lived there and saw UHOVI as an opportunity to lead a policy initiative that could initiate social, cultural and economic change within my home town through creating meaningful partnerships (Senior leader 1).

UHOVI was described as an important ‘intervention’ by the second of the senior leaders, (a seconded member of staff from UWN with an expertise in quality assurance). He alluded to his own background, ‘working within the youth justice system and with people from deprived backgrounds, offering them second chances’. He recognised the ‘benefits that developing new and imaginative pedagogic practices could have for teenage learners who are otherwise alienated from educational processes and institutions’. The third of the senior leaders noted that ‘he had worked in the FE sector for over twenty years at the same FE College’ and displayed an obvious affinity for the organisation and for the FE sector. He was also well informed of the importance of UHOVI to the region, noting that

UHOVI was to act as the conduit for a single planned curriculum which plotted learning pathways from levels 1 and 2 into levels 4 and 5 and which could support the local authority in its transformation to become a new tertiary system (Senior leader 3).

The first academic participant, who was responsible for developing foundation degree programmes within the FE Colleges, referred to the commitment of UHOVI to provide ‘opportunities for people from the HOV to develop higher level skills to contribute to the regeneration of the region’. The second academic, responsible for developing bite size provision within the community, spoke of the ‘importance of raising the awareness of higher education and its power to positively change people’s lives’. Although there was an element of repetition in what participants said, other issues also emerged. For example, the third academic referred to ‘the importance of personalised learning as a teaching and learning strategy to ensure that learners took responsibility for their own learning’. Whilst this participant did not define what he meant by ‘personalised learning’ his point was supported by the first administrator. This member of staff was responsible for the business planning and UHOVI fee plan and had worked in the UoG department for Widening Access for most of his career. He suggested that ‘the UHOVI offer empowered people to help them better their own lives through the learning opportunities offered’. This theme of teaching and learning strategies will be addressed later on in this section. The fourth academic, (a former academic member of staff at UWN with a vast experience of working with adult learners), also mentioned how ‘UHOVI was especially good at designing curriculum and learning opportunities for community learners, delivering quality teaching and learning in the communities in which they lived’. He added that ‘UHOVI provided people that lived in the HOV region with the opportunity to study at a higher level in a subject that could help them to think about their own work and life opportunities with a renewed vigour’. Whilst a commitment to learning, providing quality educational opportunities and helping people were key motivations for all the participants, they also all implied a deeper and wider sense of purpose. The importance of UHOVI to the region as an intervention appealed strongly to each of them because of their own backgrounds, lived experiences and commitment to their respective roles within the partnership.

6.3 Knowledge of UHOVI core aim and objectives

Participants were asked what they knew about the core aim and objectives of UHOVI and how this was communicated to them when they first started working for the partnership. Several

participants repeated comments that they had made earlier when describing why UHOVI was important to the region. All three senior leaders were confident in their own knowledge, reflecting a collective understanding of the core aim and objectives. They indicated a clear synergy between the WG transformation agenda, economic and social regeneration and a single, holistic planned curriculum which could lead to more effective progression for learners from HOV communities to FE and on to HE at USW.

Huxham and Vangen’s (2009) framework for ‘understanding aims in collaborations’

(Table 6.1) is useful in helping to facilitate ‘a better understanding of the motivations of those involved and the ways in which multiple and sometimes even conflicting aims can prevent agreement and block progress’ (Huxham and Vangen 2009, p 31). Their framework emphasizes that some aims will be assumed rather than explicit and some will be hidden… that the dilemma for agreeing common aims is when clarity of purpose provides a much needed direction, but an open discussion can unearth irreconcilable differences’ (2009, p 32). The responses provided by all the senior leaders indicate that initially there was a mutual and explicit understanding of the UHOVI core aim and objectives.

Huxham and Vangen’s (2009) framework for ‘understanding aims in collaborations’ indicates whether or not aims are explicit, assumed or hidden.

Table 6.1 : Framework for understanding aims in collaborations

(One participant’s perspective) Explicit Assumed Hidden

Collaboration Aims The purpose of

collaboration By definition these are perceptions of joint aims and so cannot be hidden Organisations Aims What each organisation hopes to gain for

itself via the collaboration

Individual Aims What each individual hopes to gain for himself via the collaboration

The senior leaders’ responses can be contrasted with those of the five academic and four administrative staff interviewed. Whilst all nine participants noted that UHOVI was a widening

participation project/initiative; that it was part of a wider regeneration scheme designed to up- skill the region, some of the participants were keener to stress the strategy of partnership between the two universities as being more important than the core aim to help regenerate the region. To use Huxham and Vangen’s (2009) framework, the ‘hidden aim’ becomes all important. The first administrator, was keen to point out that

The core aim of UHOVI was to evidence to WG that two universities with similar identities could create a functioning higher education partnership which could provide a service within and to their local community (Administrator 1).

The first academic participant makes a similar point, suggesting ‘when fishing, you invariably use a sprat to catch a mackerel’ suggesting that UHOVI was the bait to catch /create something bigger. This view is also supported by the second administrator, an officer at UHOVI responsible for developing and organising progression activity for all learners. He recounted a conversation he had had with a senior member of staff from one of the FE colleges, who informed him that ‘what you've got to remember is that higher education is not our core business'. These views do not imply the same level of understanding of the UHOVI core aim and objectives that all three senior leaders held. Huxham and Vangen (2009) indicate that ‘agreeing aims is an appropriate starting point because it is raised consistently as an issue’ (2009, p 30). This statement applies to the first and second administrators and the first academic staff participants that were interviewed. Huxham and Vangen’s (2009) research offers an explanation to support this analysis.

A key criteria for WG in funding a large scale initiative like UHOVI was the necessity for a ‘joined up approach’ between two or more organisations, in essence a collaboration. What Huxham and Vangen (2009) stress though is that ‘making collaboration work effectively is highly resource consuming and often painful’ (2009, p 42). What this suggests is that, at a strategic level, the UHOVI core aim and objectives were explicitly understood because the three senior leaders were instrumental in helping to agree them. For each of the academic and administration staff, theirs was more of a specific operational role, where their function was not to question the aim, but to fulfil task orientated duties.

Huxham and Vangen’s (2009) framework distinguishes between the various types of aims and emphasizes that some aims will be ‘assumed’. For example, the third administrator responsible

for managing the UHOVI marketing strategy indicated that ‘UHOVI developed a large portfolio of level 4+ qualifications with all of the FE Colleges for a variety of learner groups right across the HOV region to ensure that UHOVI did all it could to hit its target’.

Some aims were identified as ‘explicit’. For example, the first senior leader suggested that UHOVI developed niche, work-based learning level 4+ qualifications with an identified FE college for specific cohorts of learners within a HOV region. This was meant specifically to improve employability within that local community (Senior leader 1).

As already noted earlier, other aims will be hidden owing to a lack of agreement over them. An example was provided by the third academic participant, who in contrast to the scenario in the previous paragraph, suggested that her ‘role at UHOVI was to develop niche level 4+ qualifications that would enable learners to progress onto USW undergraduate courses’. Both strategies may be acceptable in their own right, but represent a dichotomy within the operational group, with the former driven by the more immediate needs of employers and the latter a strategy of hitting targets by recruiting more learners to the parent university.

UHOVI was tasked with increasing level 4 + skills and qualifications in a region which is the most deprived in Wales, with one of the lowest HE participation rates across the UK. The fourth academic participant, (a former academic member of staff at UWN with a vast experience of working with lifelong adult learners), stressed this point stating that

it would take a generation if not longer to tip the fortunes of those most deprived in the HOV. UHOVI, whilst it was well intended, would merely be only able to scratch the surface, thus wholesale change and regeneration that made a real difference to the region would be nearly impossible (Academic 4).

Of the nine academic and administration participants, six of them indicated that ‘the UHOVI task was so enormous, it would have been impossible to achieve’. The evidence indicates whilst these six participants had a common understanding of the UHOVI aim and objectives, they also felt that they were too ambitious to achieve in the timeframe proposed at its introduction in 2009. This could suggest this perception of an over-ambitious aim, could have a demotivating impact on the same staff later in the partnership.

The same six participants indicated that the aim for UHOVI was to assist the two universities in achieving the wider WG policy of transformation and to navigate a pathway for the two universities to merge. The third academic noted that ‘the merger of two Welsh universities that

historically had been in competition with each other would be seen by policy makers in government as a great success, possibly bigger than the outcomes that UHOVI could deliver in terms of learner achievements’. This indicated that these six participants felt that UHOVI was intended as the catalyst towards achieving a different objective of merger between the UoG and the UWN.

Another reason why half of the participants interviewed had a different understanding of the UHOVI aim and objectives may be because the aim and objectives were not clearly defined from the introduction of the partnership. The first academic participant indicated that ‘some colleagues lost sight of what it was they were supposed to do, or rather cynically deliberately didn’t do what they were supposed to do!’ Whilst she pointed to the academics responsible for creating UHOVI as visionaries, complimenting them on their efforts for creating the partnership, some of the other academic and administrative participants indicated that UHOVI was always a struggle because it was never really fully understood in terms of what it was or what it was supposed to do. The first administrator suggested that ‘getting the funding for UHOVI was a real coup for the two universities; but having a loosely defined aim was both great and bad at the same time’.

This point is further illustrated by the naming of UHOVI and why there may have been confusion concerning this. As the fourth administrator, (another former employee at the UoG responsible for managing individual student data at UHOVI), notes, ‘how could people know what it was they were supposed to be doing, when they didn’t even know what the name of the organisation was?’

None of the participants could comment with any great authority about where the UHOVI name came from, but what they were all able to recall was the successive changes in name, whilst retaining the same acronym UHOVI. What started life as the ‘University Heads of the Valleys Institute’, quickly became the ‘University Heads of the Valleys Initiative’ and in Phase 2 (2013- 2016) was only referred to as UHOVI, disassociating itself from both the Institute and Initiative labels. As the fourth academic noted ‘having three name changes within a period of six years is rather excessive and indicates a level of ambiguity which UHOVI staff kind of assumed as a part of their daily working tasks’. However, as the third administrator suggested ‘most of the UHOVI partners and learners applauded the last change of name because they felt that learners

in the HOV region needed to identify with something that wasn’t a university or an FE college, UHOVI as an acronym suited this purpose’.

Perhaps the biggest sense of frustration noted by half of the administrators and academic staff was that by the time UHOVI had the power to choose its own name, (post 2013), USW no longer appeared to prioritise UHOVI as an institutional strategic aim. It had become clear to them that UHOVI’s strategic importance to the University had diminished. They felt that the University’s attention was focused on developing strategic priorities elsewhere. As the first academic indicated ‘the ambiguity concerning the UHOVI aim and objectives, eventually caught up with it, and we all ended up losing out’. What is interesting is that Huxham and Vangen (2003) argue that ‘those involved in the naming process are in a powerful position at that time’ (2003, p 406). In the UHOVI example, the confusion over the exact name of the partnership initiative reflects uncertainty over its core aim and objectives.

This element of UHOVI’s core aim to ‘deliver WG policy to up-skill and regenerate the Heads of the Valleys region’, is vital in this investigation of the strategic partnership. It has been established that one key element of WG policy was to encourage transformation and the introduction of strategic partnerships throughout Wales. UHOVI was an excellent example of higher and further education providers in a specific area of South East Wales combining to meet this policy imperative. However, it is essential that whilst this aspect of WG policy may have been adhered to by the various UHOVI partners, it is also necessary to determine whether or not participants felt they achieved the other element of their core aim to deliver ‘WG policy to up-skill and regenerate the Heads of the Valleys region in South East Wales.’