Institutional representation: an imbalance?

If representation of the key organisations in Scottish education was one of the guiding principles behind network design, one might assume that this representation would be fairy equal amongst institutional actors. However, some individuals felt that the there was an imbalance in institutional membership of the NPG and its sub-groups:

I think, probably in retrospect, most people would look at those who served on that group and wonder whether there were areas that were missed and areas that were over populated (Respondent F).

This quotation from a member of the NPG succinctly summarises how many respondents felt on this issue. Using an example from sub-group one to explore this issue in detail, all of the sub-group remits required an element of partnership working between key

stakeholders but, it could be argued, that the remit for SG1 required a significant amount of work to be done around partnership, particularly between local authorities and universities.

As such, it could be expected that the membership would be designed with such difficulties in mind; however, this was not the case (see Figure 2).

The main tension to emerge from the membership of SG1 was the strong presence of representation from higher education; this was the only sub-group to contain two

representatives from STEC. Furthermore, the representative from Education Scotland had been seconded from a higher education context, to which they had returned at the time of my data collection. Although this player was not representing universities on a formal

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basis, it is possible that their position provided a space for institutional interests to indirectly enter the network.

An ADES representative specifically highlighted institutional membership as a limitation of the group, suggesting that the composition was unfairly tilted towards the interests of universities:

Originally the aim was to have quite a balanced group… Except, that in my view there was an imbalance in the composition of my group, because Education Scotland for example, sent along a person who had been seconded to Education Scotland from a teacher education background. So we had a chair, who was teacher education, we had [name removed] who was teacher education, we had Education Scotland, oh wait a minute, they were teacher education. And… so how you could get a balanced view with it tipped, so much to, you know it was like turkeys voting for Christmas. So, I have to say that was very noticeable to me at the outset. There was a head teacher on it too. Very noticeable to me at the outset, and I think that probably the findings of the group were probably strongly influenced by that.

(Respondent Y)

Given that the remit of SG1 focused on the reconceptualization of ITE models within higher education, the perceived imbalance in membership towards teacher education is unsurprising.

We must also remember that STEC is a fragmented and complex actor that is required to represent the interests of eight different universities within the policy process. Universities are not a homogenous group; each institution operates within its own distinct political, economic, and social context. Even if we consider the role that informal interests play in this space in relation to the three actors who work within the context of teacher education, it is important to remember that they represent three different universities, which each have their own interests and agendas, and are driven by different political and economic forces.

Considering this in light of the very ‘individualistic’ nature of many of this sub-group’s remits allows us to better understand how this challenged the sub-group. Taking forward these remits is difficult because of the sheer range of competing institutional interests and the different kinds of pressures on different universities. It is therefore not necessarily the case that all three actors will have been driving for the same kind of change (as the above quotation would suggest). This may suggest that the problem is not solely with the inequality of representation, but with the politics of representation as well.

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The same player felt that this ‘tip’ towards higher education manifested as a sense of

‘conservatism’ within the group, and led to a reduction in the network’s capacity to achieve change:

I just felt our early phase group was disappointing at the end of it because there was an opportunity to think radically, and they chose not to. And what they produced was almost the same old same old, or what higher education were planning to do anyway, and they missed a chance, I felt, to make a bit of a statement about early phase teacher education. (Respondent Y)

There are a number of reasons why a sense of conservatism or resistance to change might develop within a policy network; one obvious one could be the range of competing institutional interests. As argued earlier, taking forward many of the key ideas within TSF requires a reconciliation of institutional interests. It is possible that the institutional interests of universities are too strong for this and resist compromise. For an education system that has become known for its shared ideology, this does appear strange, but as we will see, institutional interests are robust, and the perception of a ‘shared ideology’ has acted as a ‘mythical’ mask under which ideas and claims of territorialism have been allowed to develop.

Inconsistency is perceived in multiple layers. One actor for instance felt that there was not enough university representation throughout the NPG and its sub groups:

Through the whole process I have just thought it slightly odd that … Graham’s report, was about changing teaching in schools. Through a change in teacher education. The report in essence was about teacher education that is provided by universities and yet actually the universities have had, I think, a much lesser role and representation than all of those groups than they merited …Well if their recommendation was almost to enhance the role of teacher education within universities it seems very odd that there was so little representation then from universities. (Respondent V)

In the context of my argument, it is paramount to note that this extract comes from an interview with a STEC player, who, like all members of the NPG, has institutional interests that influence their perspective. If we look at the membership list from the NPG Report (Scottish Government, 2012) and the diagram above, as well as those in Chapter 3, it is clear that there were seven network members with attachments to universities, whether that be through the representation of STEC, Universities Scotland or an individual university (one actor is listed as representing University of the West of Scotland). To compare this to

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representation of other institutional actors, GTCS had five, STEC had six, Education Scotland had six and the Scottish Government had five. It appears that this actor is

suggesting that there should be an imbalance in representation, with universities being the predominant actor.