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Q&A with Heather MacDonald
Heather MacDonald, has represented the public sector on the Sheffield First Partnership (SFP) Board since September 2008. She is Principal and Chief Executive of The Sheffield College.
As a comparatively new-comer to the SFP Board, what’s your overview of Partnership working in Sheffield and what would you like to see happen over the next 12 months?
Partnership working in Sheffield, in my view, is strong. The Sheffield First partners, across the spectrum of public and private sector organisations and voluntary, community and faith groups, demonstrate tremendous commitment and willingness to work together to solve problems. We share a common desire to make a difference and add value to the lives and livelihoods of the people of Sheffield. There is a huge resource of creative capability in the Partnership and its work is refreshingly solution-focused!
As the next twelve months will disappear in the blink of an eye, I would like to see the Partnership set out its vision for Sheffield; an aspirational vision, set against the backcloth of known fiscal constraints, that enables us to move Sheffield on and up to that city where the economy is strong, where businesses want to locate and where there are talented high performing Sheffielders skilled for future economic growth.
Skills are a priority for you and the Partnership. In your view, what do partners need to do to help up-skill Sheffield’s workforce?
Having high skill levels in the city’s population is certainly a priority if we are to achieve our ambition of economic growth. I think, as a Partnership, we need to assess our risk appetite to enable us to make the investment in skills development in new or embryonic areas of the Sheffield economy such as nuclear and sustainable technologies. Employers also need to invest in the training and up-skilling of their employees. Too often it is the training budget that is the first area to go in a recession.
Collectively we need to look at how effective our skills supply chain is. My view is that we will find gaps and shortages at technician level which we need to address.
We know that aspirations and attainment are low in parts of Sheffield. Partners are concerned, but we really need to identify what different partners can do to add value to the work of the statutory organisations.
We know that the College has had the digital ‘bug’ for quite some time. What’s your vision for the digital future of Sheffield?
Indeed the digital ‘bug’ is going from strength to strength across Hillsborough College, Sheffield City College and Norton College which make up The Sheffield College. We have recently become a Regional Centre of Excellence (for the North of England) for the use of mobile technologies in teaching and learning. This year we also secured a nationally funded project on mobile technologies in collaboration with six Sheffield High Schools. We are all really excited about the potential revolution this will lead to in teaching and learning.
So, what of my vision for the digital future of Sheffield? We really have an opportunity as the first digital region in the UK to lead the way on ‘people-centred services’. Whether it’s education, health services, local government services or indeed any customer service we have the opportunity to do it differently, with high levels of service and more efficiently. We will need to develop ‘creative commissioning’ to enable partners to work together rather than in competition as we are currently forced to do through competitive funding methodologies. In my business, at the very least, it could mean that every ‘A’ level physics student would have digital access, in an interactive laboratory, to the best physics tutor with greater choice in time and location of study. Small inefficient teaching groups would also be history!
We must not underestimate the challenge, given that over 50% of Sheffield’s households do not currently have access to the internet. So it’s another call for investment and training to achieve the exciting vision!
Young people often get bad press. As someone who comes into contact with 16-19 year-olds on a day-to-day basis, what’s your view about young people and the issues that they face?
99.9% of young people aged 16-19 years really do not deserve that ‘bad press’ label. Annually we are privileged to work with some 5,000 young people from all parts of Sheffield. Some students are confident and aiming high whilst some lack confidence, have low self-esteem coupled with experience of being tested and measured every year of their school-life with a taste of failure still fresh in their memories; this, alongside peer pressure to join social groups with negative tendencies and learning to cope, is a in a fast changing world of instant and incessant communication 24/7. Amongst all of this, all want to be valued, feel valuable and want to learn how to make a positive contribution to society. My experience of having high expectations of young people has never yet failed to reap the reward of seeing their personal development and academic attainment flourish.
Our approach at The Sheffield College is to have high expectations of each and every young student, but also go beyond the basic business of delivering a qualification. We are developing a ‘wrap around curriculum’ or ‘signature curriculum’ that seeks to provide young people with:
- a nationally recognised academic or vocational qualification
PLUS:
- employability skills
- communication and numeracy skills
- information and communication technologies skills
- sustainable technologies skills
We have just received a national Beacon Award for our work on Enterprise skills and this accolade could not have been achieved without the contribution, help and support of partner organisations in Sheffield. So a huge thank you to our partners - many of whom are represented on the Sheffield First Partnership. Together and in collaboration we can open the door of opportunity to many more.