Duncan O'Leary
Duncan works on projects looking at public services, skills and work.
at 9:35am
on Tuesday, 19th July 2005
First things first, this is already happening in a lot of pretty successful schools and Colleges, and so is not the ridiculous/unmanageable suggestion that some have tried to dismiss it as. Of course headteachers aren't just handing power to make appointments and set the strategic direction of their schools, but most of the people that we have spoken to on our travels have found the approach pretty useful. Their job, after all, is to create institutions that work for the children that attend them.
Secondly, I was pretty disappointed to see the Unions weighing in against the idea. For me, it betrays a kind of defensiveness against the idea of losing control, when in fact public services shouldn't be as zero sum as that. Amplifying the views of service users surely shouldn't be seen as a threat to professionals, but rather a chance for them to do their job better. 'Co-production' of services strikes me as quite a clunky term, but it does seem as more useful way of thinking about services, which aren't in the gift of the professional to the user, but which are build around the needs of the users ' and probably with their help.
First things first, this is already happening in a lot of pretty successful schools and Colleges, and so is not the ridiculous/unmanageable suggestion that some have tried to dismiss it as. Of course headteachers aren't just handing power to make appointments and set the strategic direction of their schools, but most of the people that we have spoken to on our travels have found the approach pretty useful. Their job, after all, is to create institutions that work for the children that attend them.
Secondly, I was pretty disappointed to see the Unions weighing in against the idea. For me, it betrays a kind of defensiveness against the idea of losing control, when in fact public services shouldn't be as zero sum as that. Amplifying the views of service users surely shouldn't be seen as a threat to professionals, but rather a chance for them to do their job better. 'Co-production' of services strikes me as quite a clunky term, but it does seem as more useful way of thinking about services, which aren't in the gift of the professional to the user, but which are build around the needs of the users ' and probably with their help.
LOGIN to add comments
Comments