Building and sustaining effective partnerships
 

The UN Global Compact Leaders' Summit in 2013 underlined the continuing importance of multi-stakeholder partnerships in tackling societal and environmental challenges as a whole, while that "human capacities" (i.e. education) remain a key priority area post-2015. The associated report noted that education is an urgent and highly impactful area to focus on, and that specifically partnerships between business and societal actors should aim to prepare young people for their future jobs, while 25% of business leaders the UN surveyed agreed that education should be the top priority.

Where are we now?

At international level, the European Commission -as well as industry and national governments- continue to play a key role in stimulating existing long term partnerships to address STEM education issues, as well as founding new ones. The InGenious platform, co-funded by the European Commission and by industry - continues to grow with a substantial number of new partners since the first Intel Educator Academy, now comprising 41 partners.

The Grand Coalition for Digital Jobs, launched by Vice President Neelie Kroes, brings together numerous stakeholders from education and training, industry and associations to address the whole talent pipeline from young people to older workers in acquiring more digital skills for professions.

At national level, similar partnerships are key. Multi-stakeholder models seem to continue to be the best option for sustainable partnerships in the EMEA region. Given the sustained period of economic difficulty, they facilitate longer term cooperation and action despite individual players needing to vary their own commitment over time.

Recommendations

  1. More countries need to explore the feasibility and set up of national multi-stakeholder STEM platforms.

  2. National and local authorities can learn from successful models in other countries to inspire a localized approach in their own context, by engaging with experienced organisations abroad, or learning more through publications produced by them.

  3. European and other international funding programs need to continue to support the sharing of knowledge and good practice in this field.

  4. Research methodologies for benchmarking success of STEM education partnerships need to be enhanced, and shared across partnerships. Using common approaches will allow for better comparison of results and impact.