REGENERATING SCHOOLS
Leading the transformation of standards and services through
community engagement
"The book is outstanding and deserves to have a very high profile around the world." PROFESSOR BRIAN J CALDWELL
IMAGINE……….
IMAGINE being able to create a school that allows total flexibility over what is learned and how and when it is taught …….
IMAGINE
a school which realises that for the long term the benefits
of collaboration far outweigh the short-term gains of
competition ………
IMAGINE a 21st
century
learning community, based on new forms of ownership and
structures for delivery, committed to building a culture of
lifelong learning …….
IMAGINE being able to spend two years planning and building
a state-of-the- art new school for the
21st
century
that reflects a community-oriented mission ………
IMAGINE developing and sustaining over time a leading-edge
school in a new housing area between two motorways which
had little formal or planned community facilities and,
among the population, low self esteem and little
educational expectation ……..
IMAGINE developing a school that becomes a pioneer and a
beacon when most children have not eaten a meal since the
last time they came to school ………
All these imaginings and more are explored in this book.
Each represents a real school, three in England, three in
other countries. Each of these schools has moved from
imagination to reality, and success, in their own context,
because they have understood and acted on some key messages
about the relationship between schools and their
communities.
Through that hard-won experience, and the underlying tested
principles in which it is grounded, they can point the way
for others who wish to transform standards and services for
children and young people in their schools by
understanding, then planning, building, and leading that
transformation.
At the core of the thinking behind this book is the belief
that, under the conditions that currently prevail, schools
acting alone and without real engagement with their
communities cannot achieve the greatest possible
improvement and transformation in learning. As a result
they will fail to equip their students adequately for the
world in which they will live and work.
There is an increasing awareness in both academic and
policy circles that high social capital enhances academic
success. Therefore, one answer to academic
under-achievement is not just to strive incrementally to
improve the efficiency of schools themselves, but rather to
focus also on increasing the social capital within their
community. If educational success is, in part, a function
of high social capital, then educational leadership has to
make the development of social capital a high priority.
The book
has grown directly from and builds on the experience of
developing and running a two year leadership development
programme for English secondary school leaders on behalf of
the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, as well as
substantial career experience in developing, leading,
supporting and inspecting schools and their community
dimension.
Over 200 school leaders have now passed through the SSAT
leadership programme ‘Specialist Schools and their
Communities: Developing Innovative Leadership for the
Future’ - over 5% of English secondary schools in just
eighteen months at the time of writing. This scale of
interest in a relatively short period of time is in itself
some indication of the potential appetite among school
leaders for fresh approaches and fresh thinking around the
national schools agenda, in ways which link creatively the
raising of standards, future visioning, and community
engagement, and address the implications of all that for
school leadership.
This moves beyond present understandings of the community
role of, for example, specialist schools in England, who
currently comprise over 90% of secondary schools in the
country and form the locus for many current government
aspirations for both school and community improvement. In
addition to a prime focus on raising standards, there has
been strong emphasis within the specialist schools
programme on providing targeted learning opportunities for
the local community, including other local school primary
and secondary schools as well as specific targeted groups
within the community. The added value here lies in the
learning outcomes for these groups within the community.
But there is, as well, an often unrecognised potential for
a real dividend for the school itself.
The shift now needed is for a step-change in emphasis from
the school as an institution with a sole focus on
institutional improvement to the school as an agency able
to lead community transformation. By focusing on and
improving community interaction, schools can begin making a
significant contribution to developing the entire
community’s capacity to learn, including very importantly
those for whom it has a statutory responsibility.
The purpose of this book is to explore what these ideas
might mean in practice, how those benefits could be
achieved without losing focus on the need to raise
attainment for all, and what the implications are for
school leaders now and in the future. Central to this
understanding is a concept of schools as agents of
regeneration, both for themselves and for their
communities.
Available
on Amazon at
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Regenerating-Schools-Transformation-Standards-Engagement/dp/185539457X