Introduction

From corporate level political and philanthropic support to ground-level mentoring, tutoring and curriculum design, the education–business relationship reflects a complex amalgam of employment interests, competitiveness arguments and stakeholder ideologies. However, this increasingly powerful collaboration, which appears to have permeated international, national, district and site level education policy, yields questionable results and uncritical examination of school community impact and learning outcomes for all partnership participants. This chapter examines the added value of employers in the context of education– business partnerships by drawing upon the literature, including a comparative study based on survey, interview and observation data gathered in secondary schools within the US and the UK during the 1997-98 academic year.

In search of added value

Ongoing debates on partnerships’ added value incorporate arguments of educational purpose and employability of graduates. While some employers view partnerships as a means towards preparing future workers in an increasingly competitive global marketplace (McMullen and Snyder, 1987), educators often look to these collaborations for critical resource and network support. Even though some partnership agendas promote student success as their objectives, the challenge remains to define, operate and substantiate this measure of success in terms which are meaningful to all partnership interests. Negotiating among these different interests poses additional challenges, and reveals inherent conflicts of interests, ideologies and arguments for educational provision. Most likely, the initial reasons for partnership formation are the very ones that should influence and incorporate the ultimate student outcomes that will measure partnership success or failure:

The multiple layers of interests that partnerships reveal, in one sense, draw attention to what is missing in publicly supported institutions.