Consultation, consultation, consultation...

In my last post about things I had learnt I didn't mention consultation. I thought this probably warranted a post on it's own.

If I look back on the consultation we have undertaken, I would mark us as "could do better - but quite good under the circumstances".

The Initial Phases

This started almost three years ago before I joined the school. Staff, Governors and students were all involved in creating and commenting on the vision document. This is really important but I found the whole "Vision" phase (which I also undertook in my previous school) a bit woolly. It includes sweeping statements, such as "We want an ICT rich school" or "We want an inclusive school", rather than "We want an additional 2 classrooms to accommodate the diploma" or "We want to have disabled access to every classroom in the school". In our case this woolliness is returning to haunt us as heated debates on the meaning of inclusion rage around us.

We then had items in the school newsletter, held a special parents meeting, had all KS3 students indertake a BSF project, presented regularly to staff and kept BSF on Governing Body, Middle Management and Leadership Team agendas. A refererence scheme, which demonstrated that our requirements could be met given site and budget constraints was drawn up ... and then we hit the competition phase.

The Competition Phase

This is where it all goes quiet on the consultation front. Anyone involved with or informed about the project has to sign a confidentiality agreement, which completely limits the number of people you can involve. To me, this is one of the major flaws of the BSF process, because this phase is crucial in deciding what will eventually happen within the school, but you can't involve many people in case they accidentally let information slip to a rival bidder. Believe me, this is easy. Even now I still occasionally think our final bidders offered something that was actually offered by the other bidders. The problem is, when you then move into the final bid phase, there are quite a lot of major areas that have already been fixed. Luckily we haven't had too much trouble with larger elements of the proposals, but there is certainly potential for this to happen.

The Final Bid Phase

This is where the proposals are launched to the wider community. We've been very busy during this phase.

Governors: The Governing Body have been informed fully at every stage of the programme, in fat it's engulfed many a meeting over the past few months. The Chair and the Chair of Finance have been in constant touch with the project, but have become more deeply involved at this stage. Governors drew up a list of requirements that had to be met before they agree finally to enter BSF (which they still haven't yet).

Parents & The Community: We had an initial parental/community consultation, and a follow-up meeting where changes made as a result of the first consultation were demonstrated. We also had a smaller, more in-depth, meeting with those parents who had expressed concerns. There is an item on the school website, and this blog was launched as a means of communicating progress to parents and the wider community. We have a regular update in the school newsletter. You have to bear in mind that parents are, quite rightly, mainly concerned with the effect the project will have on their child. This means that those whose children will have left before building works are over may be unhappy.

Staff: The plans went on display in the school reception area. We have had initial 1:1 consultation meetings with each department and should be having our second meeting soon. This is one of the areas I have found the trickiest as you are having to deal with the fact that staff may have wanted more from the project. You are also walking a bit of a tightrope in terms of balancing the needs & desires of different curriculum areas against each other and the project constraints. We discuss the project regularly as a leadership and middle management team.

Students: This is the area I enjoy the most. The Guardian had a BSF supplement this week, and there was an item on student consultation and the work of the Sorrell Foundation. We managed to wangle a session with the Sorrell Foundation. They're really busy and they're mainly concentrating on schools in the later BSF waves, but I think it was good to come in later. Why? Because the BSF process is so slow. As a result of starting in July we have a student design group that will probably see us through to construction and beyond. If we'd started the group over two years ago, many of them would have left and we certainly would have lost momentum. It's a shame they couldn't be more involved in the actual designs (I wonder whether the Guardian examples were working on PFI where there was maybe just one bidder), but they've been very involved in the landscaping proposals, and we're about to start work on the recycling strategy and the dining spaces. They also communicate to the wider student body about the work they do.

So, in summary, consultation is a good thing, but you need to manage expectations, balance agendas and be very aware that there are important phases where it just can't happen properly, and stakeholders will feel out of the loop. I'd love to know whether this problem has now been ironed out for schools in later waves.

Meeting Count 2/11/07 - 29/02/08 Fifty-Six - it's still really slow.