CES 4 Education

Robert Haflon

“Increasingly, our schools are critical to bringing our communities together. We want them to serve the public not just during school hours but after hours: to function as vital community centres; places for recreation and learning, positive places where children can be when they can’t be at home and school is no longer going on; gathering places for young people and adults alike. Bringing our schools into the 21st century is a national challenge that deserves a national commitment.”   -  President Clinton, July 11 1996

The Last Moral Force
[1]
Some critics argue that Bill Clinton’s prescription for schools is entirely wrong.  These critics argue that schools should take the Gradgrind approach to education:  to ensure that students are just educated to the best of their ability to prepare them for the world ahead.  The idea that schools should become wider community institutions, or even social workers, is seen as profoundly wrong.  This is because such a concept not only diverts schools from what they know best - educating - but it also means that they come to supplant the traditional role of parents.  The state thus becomes the surrogate parent, charged with taking over duties that are traditionally seen as the prerogative of the family. Nick Seaton, Chairman of the Campaign for Real Education argues: “I would think that most sensible parents will think that children go to school to learn English, maths and science and that schools aren’t intended to provide child care.”[2] But this analysis is too rigid.  At a time when communities are disintegrating and there is real and severe family breakdown, schools often serve as the last bastion of communities. When small shops have closed and local faith institutions are poorly attended, the school remains the one institution in a community that brings people together - not just children, but parents too. If a child comes from a broken home, then it is the school that will give that child order and structure, as well as a decent meal.  

Those who argue that it is the job of parents to provide a moral force for the children and not the state are not necessarily wrong. But family breakdown will take years - if not generations - to deal with, both through fundamental welfare and educational reform, and through significant changes to how we deal with crime and disorder.    Schools, by contrast, provide an immediate response to community breakdown, which few other public policies can match.  In poorer neighbourhoods with little economic power, the school can be the one body that empowers parents and pupils alike, and help transform the community. 

The harsh reality about the state we are in means that we need to rely on schools more and more - not just as a place of educational attainment, but also as a bedrock of community engagement. This is something that is now being recognised across the board.  Head teacher John Dunford, addressing the Association of Schools and College Leaders annual conference in March 2008, noted that: “Poor parenting and the erosion of family life are leaving schools as the only moral framework in many children’s lives”. Dr Dunford observed that schools not only had to teach basic behaviour, but also social skills, such as eating a meal together.  This was due to “long working hours” or “chaotic family backgrounds”: The old certainties have gone and with them the institutions, such as the church, which articulated those certainties.  So for some children, it is only the school that provides the framework that sets the line between what is and isn’t respectable” [3] The Association of School and College Leaders Union President Brian Lightman also stated that schools now had to parent pupils as well as teach them: “Teachers were expected to teach pupils who seem never to have an opportunity to have a conversation outside a school with an adult.”[4]

So, if in many cases schools have become the last moral force, the last solid bedrock of genuine community institutions in many of our neighbourhoods, how best to accentuate this movement?  How can schools really be empowered to become leading forces in their communities, acting as an anchor to strengthen communities and a bridging force to achieve positive societal change with longer term policies on welfare and crime reform? 

What is a Genuine Community School? 

“Real Education should educate us out of self into something far finer: into a selflessness which links us with all humanity”   -   Lady Nancy Astor 

Some mistake the idea of a Community School for one which just has extended hours and may offer playing fields for use on weekends and during the holidays.  Others might define a Community School as that which is started by local parents or a local organisation.  Whilst these schools have community characteristics, these kinds of schools represent an aspect, important nonetheless, of community involvement, rather than being the agent of community involvement. 

A genuine Community School should have as its primary aim building and harnessing social capital - the social glue that binds communities together. A Community School would act as a connector between parents, children, local business, public organisations like the NHS and the Police and voluntary organisations such as residents groups and local charities.  In essence they would become a one-stop shop - a magnet for essential services.  

Whilst ensuring that education remained at the forefront, offering other services would have significant benefits.  In poorer areas with lower aspiration and educational attainment, it would encourage parents to come to the school if other services such as health clinics were offered.  Schools that gave space for local charities - particularly those which work with problem youths - could have positive outcomes on helping schools dealing with children from troubled backgrounds.  Similarly, schools which offered ‘work stations’ for the police could have a significant effect on anti-social behaviour problems.  In Nottingham for example, a drugs charity, DARE  UK has had immense success in placing retired police officers in schools to help with education about drugs (despite losing a £165,000 grant from the Nottinghamshire Police in 2007 due to budget constraints),.

But how hard is this to put into practice?  Many will cite cost implications, lack of teaching time in the curriculum and loss of educational focus. But is this really the case? In Downs Primary School, Harlow, the Head Master David Yeld has a forward looking vision about the future of his school as a major community engager. His aim is to develop links with a regional University (Anglia Ruskin) and to establish a Family Learning Centre at the School. The objective is both to provide support for children and also to give advice to parents on work related issues. For the University such a project would give them a chance to access future students and help improve the skills base. Most importantly it would allow the University to develop their early years provision.  Far from being uncosted, the finance would be one million pounds if it were to succeed, with grants being sought from the European Union and the lottery. 

Another community minded head teacher, Rose Pepper of Paringdon Junior School, (a remarkable school that has been transformed from a failing to successful school in recent years), believes that schools can become central to the community in a number of ways.  First by engaging parents, second by teaching children about community and actively involving them in it and third by using school facilities to bring in outside services and volunteers to work with the school. 

Under this scenario, a genuine community school would have the following:   workshops in which parents can work with children; a sustained effort to encourage teachers, parents and children to communicate more closely with the community by linking up with shops and businesses; and active encouragement of teachers and businesses to do work exchanges to allow more business involvement and financial support. 

There would be lessons which have children writing and thinking about what community engagement actually means.  In keeping with the belief of the school “as the last moral force”, the emphasis of citizen education could be defined around character education:  good character, respect, active citizenship. The last hour of the school day - for example on certain days of the week - could involve the children led by teachers in some kind of community activity, supervised and led by teachers, such as environmental projects and charitable work.  Such activities could also be done after SATs tests in the summer. 

Another objective would be to allow local people to use the school’s ICT computer suite.  For more involvement with public services, there would be police involvement in schools, and local politicians (the MP and Councillors) would be encouraged to use the school for surgeries, so as to encourage more people, particularly parents, to visit.  Huge support would be given to local people who might be happy to volunteer around the school, such as tending the garden and school fields, planting flowers and the like.  Regular clubs could be established to bring in additional members of the public.

Making it happen

The only way for Community Schools to really work is for the public to be actively engaged.  Schools, teachers and local institutions need to be encouraged and incentivised to work together. Greater democracy, changes to the national curriculum and incentivisation of public services businesses and charities would transform schools in their local community. 

School Democracy

School governing bodies should be changed to elected School Boards to encourage community involvement.  Parents, community representatives, charitable organisations, local businesses and even local politicians should be allowed to stand for election to the School Board.  Those elected would ideally be from the school catchment area or a certain radius. The School Board would be elected for a fixed term of around four to five years. Each School would determine how many representatives they wanted from each sector.  For example a school with a more business focus might want more business representatives.

Elected School Boards would have the effect of galvanising both the governing body and the school within the community.  School Democracy would alert the school’s activities to the wider community as members of the public and the school would be campaigning for votes. It would work much better than the existing system of appointing governors to the governing board where the only people who know about the school are those immediately involved. 

Incentivisation 

Schools as bedrock community institutions will only work if other public services are actively encouraged to get involved. Primary Care Trusts and GP surgeries should be offered financial incentives to share facilities with schools. A special earmarked budget could be established by national Government for public services to be given special funds for school community involvement.  Constabularies, for example, could have a special allocation of funds to allow local police to place police officers in schools.

Businesses which provided a local business-teacher-children exchange programme could be offered tax breaks in order to incentivise business and school collaboration. This co-operation would mean more than just sponsorship of buildings and donations: Tax breaks would only be provided for sustained collaborative programmes.  In the same way, tax breaks or easier access to grants could be provided to charities which undertook similar engagement with schools. 

Volunteer and Children Involvement

Community schools will only thrive if children and the local public are actively engaged together.  Changes to the National Curriculum could really begin to enmesh children and community together, as well as providing that “last moral force”.  If part of the National Curriculum at all levels of schooling was dedicated to community activities this would really widen the nature of schooling. Time could be allocated in schools to offer children the chance to volunteer in their neighbourhood such as with environmental projects and helping the vulnerable.

There should be a nation-wide website - a community databank in which schools and volunteers could register.  The schools would use the website to set out their community activities and volunteers could register on the site to show they were available to help and to see what community programmes were available.  The community website could offer prizes and awards for schools and volunteers for their community involvement. 

Overseeing this website - and to act as a catalyst for community schools - would be a new Foundation at arms lengths from government.  The Foundation would act as a pressure-group and coordinator with the sole aim of furthering schools as community institutions.  It could be part funded by the Department for Education with the majority of its funding coming from private funding, in order to protect the organisation’s independence. 

Conclusion 

It would be much easier to keep the status quo. Schools could carry on as before with the occasional hotpotch of community activity.  But the nature of schooling is changing.  Our current social circumstances mean that education cannot just be about reading, writing and arithmetic, with some sport on the side.  It has to provide more than just academic attainment - albeit still of utmost importance.

Family breakdown, community atomisation, barriers to social mobility and a loss of common values mean that schools have an enhanced role to play. By becoming bedrocks of the community, the school can offer teachers, parents, children and local residents a means of empowerment and positive collective action.  This is not about increasing the power of the state but a fundamental Conservative belief in buttressing civil society for the good of all.

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[1] The author would like to thank John O’Connor of the Harlow Educational Consortium; Rose Pepper, Head Teacher, Paringdon School, Harlow; and David Yeld, Head Teacher, Downs School,Harlow for their advice. The views expressed in the article are his own and not necessarily of the above or the Conservative Party

[2] “Extended schools ‘aid community’”, BBC, September 19, 2006, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/5357748.stm

[3] “School is ‘the last moral force’”, BBC, 9 March 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7286123.stm

[4] Ibid.