ABSTRACT
Historically, British education has for the most part been characterized by the autonomy of institutions. All schools whether public or private used to be more or less responsible for their own curriculum, further-education colleges tried to meet locally determined demand and universities pursued a path of collegial individualism. Nowadays the picture is very different. Even in higher education there is a great move to collaboration rather than competition. Schools vie for customers but collaborate for staff development. FE colleges-though independent corporations-find they have to collaborate with other bodies (such as TECs and LECs) to deliver their mission, and universities uneasily join in consortia to carve up their dominance in the world of high-level skills. Undoubtedly, the greatest contributor to these new and novel forms of cooperation has been the British Government since 1979 with its legislation about education and targeted funding-mainly from the Employment Department, especially in its erstwhile personifications as the Manpower Services Commission (MSC) and Training Agency(TA), with its TVEI (Technical and Vocational Education Initiative), Work Related Further Education (WRFE) and Enterprise in Higher Education (EHE). The relationships which FE and HE continue to develop with the Training and Enterprise Councils (TECs) will require a great deal of collaborative working and there will undoubtedly be more such demands as educational institutions work with government bodies and agencies.
