Schools often remain disconnected from regeneration initiatives in their surrounding neighbourhoods. But policy makers who demand to know why schools do not get involved in a wider range of renewal activities may be asking the wrong question.
Research for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation suggests that regeneration planners at all levels need to make it easier for schools to contribute to a coherent local strategy, rather than leaving them to work at arm’s length from renewal programmes.
Researchers from the University of Newcastle spent two years studying the contribution of schools to regeneration initiatives in two disadvantaged areas of the north of England. They found that local primary and secondary schools were all undertaking community-related activities, including breakfast clubs, making school facilities available for community groups and organising courses to help parents become more involved in their children’s learning.
However, individual headteachers were powerful in determining the level of community involvement and their attitudes to regeneration schemes varied widely:
Geography also influenced the way that schools responded to renewal initiatives. In one study area, the schools drew most of their pupils from the surrounding neighbourhoods, making it easier to identify with the community. Schools in the other area lacked that close connection because they enrolled pupils from a wider catchment than the disadvantaged neighbourhood being studied.
In addition, the two local education authorities took different approaches. One area had a history of community-led regeneration programmes, delivered through education and family support. In the other, regeneration had been led by housing services and the local education authority was much less involved.
Prof. Alan Dyson, co-author of the report, said: “Schools’ attitudes towards regeneration and supporting activities were influenced by many different factors and sometimes lacked coherence. Headteachers were powerful in determining their school’s response, but none of them could escape the imperative to raise the level of achievement and comply with the Government’s national policy on standards. This made the development of a wider community role problematic, especially since available funding tended to be short-term and unpredictable.”
The researchers found some good evidence to suggest that community involvement activities in schools were making a difference to the lives of their pupils, offering support to families and extending the resources available to the community. Some schools provided stability in the lives of children who would otherwise have been at risk from truancy, exclusion and family problems. Even so, the initiatives undertaken were relatively small-scale and schools lacked the resources to work intensively with families or substantial numbers of local people.
The report recommends a more coherent approach to involving schools in regeneration, including recognition that they are better equipped to tackle some of the risk factors in disadvantaged children’s lives than others. Amendments to the national standards agenda would help schools to take on a wider role by allowing them greater choice over the mechanisms for enhancing children’s learning and life chances and by removing unhelpful targets. New structures at local level, linking schools with other schools, as well as partnerships, agencies and community groups would also help them to play an active part without feeling overburdened.
Prof. Dyson said: “Any attempt to extend the role of schools in area regeneration initiatives runs the risk of increasing the tensions between their ‘core business’ of raising attainment and the additional tasks they are being asked to perform.”
He added: “Rather than considering how schools can contribute to the regeneration of disadvantaged areas alongside their core business, it might be more appropriate to ask: ‘What is it about schools’ core business that enhances the opportunities of all children in all the communities that they serve?’ and to act upon that.”
