THESE are heady days for collaboration between business and education. Last week it was announced that McDonald’s, Network Rail and budget airline Flybe are to offer GCSE, A-level and degree qualifications to staff, becoming the first commercial companies in Britain permitted to award nationally recognised qualifications based on their workplace training schemes.

Jokes about the McA-level in burger flipping are already doing the rounds but the government sees the expansion as an important part of the wider campaign to improve the education of Britons – in this case, by breaking down the divide between company training schemes and national qualifications. The 2007 CBI / Pertemps employment trends survey showed that 52% of employers were dissatisfied with 16-year-olds’ grasp of basic literacy, and 50% were unimpressed by their basic numeracy.

John Cridland, the CBI’s deputy director-general, said: “Today marks a significant milestone on the road to reforming qualifications so that they better reflect the skills employers and employees need.”

But there are those who warn the McA-level or the Flybe GCSE may be of no use outside the company issuing them.

In the campaign to create a nation fit for 21st century global competition, the McA-level is only one way in which business is influencing education.

Last month during a fanfare for the government’s new “trust schools” – state schools with more independence – Ed Balls, the children, schools and families secretary, outlined his vision for education – and business loomed large in it. “I want every secondary school to be a specialist school, a trust school or an academy,” he said. “And every one of them should have a university or business partner.”

But what’s in it for business, particularly if collaboration involves helping to run a trust school or sponsoring one of the government’s new academies, the state-maintained independent schools set up in deprived areas, that remain politically controversial.

The risks for businesses going into schools might be considered high because success with schools can never be guaranteed. Just ask the support-serv-ices company Amey, a pioneer in the government’s academy programme. Amey sponsored the Unity City Academy in Middles-brough to the tune of £2m in 2002 only to see the new school fail its Ofsted inspection, run up debts of £1.5m and slip into special measures.

The school’s fortunes have since improved, but in the dark days Amey chief executive Mel Ewell admitted that events at Unity had not been the best PR for the company. Ewell pledged that Amey wouldn’t cut and run, but also said Amey would sponsor no more schools.

Amey’s bumpy ride hasn’t stopped other companies coming forward to take up the academy cause. KPMG has decided to sponsor a new academy that will open next year in the deprived borough of Hackney, in east London. It becomes only the second City firm to sponsor an academy, following in the steps of the investment bank UBS, sponsor of the Bridge Academy in Hackney which opened its doors last September.

So what persuaded KPMG to shell out £1m to sponsor the school (yet to be named), with the Corporation of London stumping up another £1m?

Ian Barlow, senior partner in KPMG’s London office and champion of the Hackney venture within KPMG, sets out the argument for the academy against the background of a long-standing corporate social responsibility programme in which education has always been an important element.

Barlow said KPMG staff loved the idea of giving something back. The firm’s social responsibility programme helped with staff recruitment and retention, he said. Indeed, KPMG staff have been volunteering in the community on company time – half a day a month – for years and about one-third of staff are involved, with education schemes being especially popular. Staff help with literacy and numeracy lessons, mentor head teachers and offer IT and other professional skills to schools.

But surely sponsoring a school is a much bigger and riskier proposition? “One of the attractions of sponsoring a school comprehensively is being able to bring in all our experience in these different programmes, and all the skills of our professionals,” said Barlow. “And the bold thing about academies from our point of view – and I take my hat off to the government for this – is that a lot of autonomy is given to the sponsor.”

Barlow said he was delighted that business was once again being welcomed in education, not least because producing well-educated young people was crucial to the country’s economic competitiveness.

Paul Kelley, the head of Monk-seaton High School in North Tyneside – the first trust school, which opened its doors in September – agrees that business has something to offer education.

Kelley has enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship with Microsoft, now formalised in a trust agreement between the school, the software giant and the professional support-services group Tribal. Microsoft doesn’t have any influence on the running of the academy but provides software and systems as well as making available the expertise of its staff to improve the way education is delivered. “Microsoft offers resources and new ways of working,” said Kelley.

Clare Riley, group manager for education relations at Microsoft, said: “We are involved with schools because it fits with the company’s mission statement to help everyone realise their full potential. We are also involved because though we are small in the UK – we employ just over 2,000 people – our partner business community employs 480,000 people. We need people to leave school with 21st century skills.”

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