More than 150 school governors and senior education leaders from the Greater Merseyside area will learn first hand how the region is equipping its children to learn and work in the future. Following on from last year’s very successful event this is the Learn Together Partnership’s second “e-conference and will have the theme of `Governing Schools of the Future’ and run simultaneously at seven different venues using the latest video-conferencing and interactive online facilities.

 

The topic for the conference has been chosen to reflect the many exciting developments which are taking place in Children’s Services throughout the region. This whole process is very much about collaboration and partnership across our local authorities and how we could exploit new technology and our local centres to create both an accessible and exciting training event. By pooling our resources we are looking to produce training materials, which can be used across Greater Merseyside and beyond.

 

Video crews have visited a number of schools in the area to record how they are developing their future schooling initiatives and clips will be shown during the conference as prompts for workshop discussions. Among the many issues that will be highlighted are:- building schools for the future, local workforce development, global education, career progression and the curriculum, using new technology to enrich the curriculum and providing positive learning environments.

 

The Learn Together Partnership was formed in 2004 and is a collaborative partnership of seven local authorities – Wirral, Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens, Halton and Warrington.

 

The current chair of the Partnership is Damian Allen who is the Executive Director of Children’s Services in Knowsley. He said: “These are exciting and challenging times for everyone involved in education and there is a real value in being able to share experiences and good practice at a regional level. We expect to gain a lot of knowledge from the conference which can be applied in our own individual settings for the benefit of all our children and young people.

 

The event will be led by Paul Black, an experienced governor and former award-winning TV producer, known to many governors in the region for his contributions to previous school governors’ conferences.

 

“As governors we talk a lot about the possibilities of new technology in schools but this time as governors we’re leading the way in finding new ways of working and learning together by utilising technology ourselves, Paul said. It was author Alvin Tofler who said about thirty years ago the thing that has changed is change itself – that certainly rings true as a governor.

Margaret Dunfey