article
Community cohesion
20 March 2009
While some schools, often by nature of their location, serve a
predominantly monocultural population, in todays’ multicultural
world many schools are to some extent responsible for educating
children and young people who are diverse in terms of cultures,
religions or beliefs, ethnicities and social backgrounds.
Promoting community cohesion is not a new idea in schools.
However the Education and Inspections Act 2006 introduced a duty on
all maintained schools in England to promote community cohesion and
on Ofsted, to report on the contributions made in this area. The
duty on schools came into effect on 1 September 2007. At the start
of this academic year Ofsted began inspecting schools on this
area.
In the light of these legal developments all schools have had to
consider how different aspects of their work already support
integration and community cohesion; to take stock of what has
worked so far, for them and for other schools; and consider where
there may be scope to improve their existing work through a more
explicit focus on the impact of their activities on community
cohesion.
Ahead of Ofsted commencing that part of its inspection remit, a
disturbing survey was published in August 2008 which suggested that
a significant number of schools were in danger of failing their
legal duty to promote understanding between different communities.
According to the Ipsos MORI research for education charity DEA.
clear regional and racial divides are exposed, with white pupils
being significantly less likely than black and Asian pupils to
believe it is a good idea for people from different backgrounds to
live in the same country. Key findings included:
- Only 50% of young people thought it was a good idea to have
people of different backgrounds living in the same country.
- Young people in Yorkshire and Humber were twice as likely as
those in London to think that people of different backgrounds
should not live in the same country.
- Black (76%) and Asian (66%) pupils were significantly more
likely than average, and more likely than White pupils (47%), to
believe it was a good idea to have people of different backgrounds
living in the same country.
At the time Hetan Shah, Chief Executive of education charity
DEA, said,
“As children and teachers prepare to go back to the
classroom, these deeply worrying findings show that school
inspectors may find a significant number of schools are failing in
their legal responsibility to promote community cohesion. An
education system that leaves English children intolerant towards
those from different backgrounds gives us a society with tensions
that have the potential to erupt at any time. Schools should be a
place where young people can learn to get on with those from
different backgrounds and understand the wider world they live
in.”
Certainly the survey provided a sense of some of the barriers to
building cohesion: mistrust of different groups, particularly those
new to the local community; a perception that local authorities are
giving others special treatment; and a lack of spaces for
meaningful interaction. In this context careful attention needs to
be given to the published guidance “Guidance on the duty to promote
community cohesion” published on 19 July 2007.
Definitions
The guidance defines what is meant by community cohesion and how
schools can contribute towards it through their teaching and
learning, their work to raise standards and ethos, engagement with
the community and extended services.
Community cohesion is defined as meaning “working towards a
society in which there is a common vision and sense of belonging by
all communities; a society in which the diversity of people’s
backgrounds and circumstances is appreciated and valued; a society
in which similar life opportunities are available to all; and a
society in which strong and positive relationships exist and
continue to be developed in the workplace, in schools and in the
wider community.
So what does “common vision” and “sense of belonging” actually
mean? The report of the Commission on Integration and outlined a
common vision as one where: “There is a clearly defined and widely
shared sense of the contribution of different individuals and
different communities to a future vision for a neighbourhood, city,
region or country.”
This recognises the contribution made by individuals within any
community and the fact that people will naturally hold different
ambitions, aspirations, beliefs and life experiences. But
importantly, it places a strong emphasis on how they will also
share important characteristics and experiences with those from
their own and different communities.
As for a definition of ‘sense of belonging’ the Commission
referred to this as:
- There is a strong sense of an individual’s rights and
responsibilities when living in a particular place – people know
what everyone expects of them, and what they can expect in
turn.
- There is a strong sense of trust in institutions locally to act
fairly in arbitrating between different interests and for their
role and justifications to be subject to public scrutiny.
Community from a school’s perspective
For schools, the term ‘community’ has a number of dimensions
including:
- the school community – the children and young people it serves,
their parents, carers and families, the school’s staff and
governing body, and community users of the school’s facilities and
services;
- the community within which the school is located – the school
in its geographical community and the people who live or work in
that area. This applies not just to the immediate neighbourhood but
also to the city or local authority area within which a school is
located;
- the UK community - all schools are by definition part of this
community; and
- the global community – formed by EU and international
links.
In addition, schools themselves create communities – for
example, the networks formed by similar or different types of
schools, by schools that are part of the specialist schools
network, or by schools that work collaboratively in clusters or in
other models of partnership.
Many schools will operate across all of the above dimensions,
for example by providing extended services for the local community
and forging links with other schools regionally or internationally.
The guidance suggests that schools should not limit themselves to
one particular dimension but may want to consider the initial
dimensions first - acting within the school and the area where the
school is located - before considering the wider community, EU and
international links.
How does a school contribute towards community
cohesion?
As a starting point, the guidance suggests that schools build
community cohesion by promoting equality of opportunity and
inclusion for different groups of pupils within a school. However
just as each school is different, each school will make an
important but different contribution to community cohesion. Each
will therefore need to develop an approach reflecting:
- the nature of the school’s population – whether it serves
pupils drawn predominantly from one or a small number of religions
or beliefs, ethnic or socio-economic groups or from a broader
cross-section of the population, or whether it selects by ability
from across a wider area.
- the location of the school – for instance whether it serves a
rural or urban area and the level of ethnic, socio-economic or
religious or non-religious diversity in that area.
The Guidance suggests that a schools’ contribution to community
cohesion can be grouped under the three following headings:
- Teaching, learning and curriculum – helping children and young
people to learn to understand others, to value diversity whilst
also promoting shared values, to promote awareness of human rights
and to apply and defend them, and to develop the skills of
participation and responsible action – for example through the new
‘Identity and Diversity: living together in the UK’ strand within
citizenship education.
- Equity and excellence – to ensure equal opportunities for all
to succeed at the highest level possible, striving to remove
barriers to access and participation in learning and wider
activities and working to eliminate variations in outcomes for
different groups.
- Engagement and extended services – to provide reasonable means
for children, young people, their friends and families to interact
with people from different backgrounds and build positive
relations: including links with different schools and communities
and the provision of extended service with opportunities for
pupils, families and the wider community to take part in activities
and receive services which build positive interaction and
achievement for all groups.
What does a school need to consider in promoting
community cohesion?
The Guidance explains that under the headings set out above,
each approach a school takes is likely to include a range of
activities, some of which will take place within an individual
school, whilst others will take place between different schools or
between schools, parents and local and wider communities. Within
each school, it is for the governing body and senior management
team to discharge the duty to promote community cohesion as part of
its leadership and management role, leading the school and
involving the school workforce and pupils in the promotion of
community cohesion.
Helpfully the guidance does provide case studies. One relates to
a secondary school in Walthamstow where there are 32 Somali pupils,
of a total of 506 pupils. The school set up a Somali parents'
group. The school started the project by translating a Minority
Ethnic Achievement Project (MEAP) questionnaire into Somali to
gauge the satisfaction of pupils and parents of Somali students
with their sons' schooling. Having reported the findings which were
generally positive back to the staff, teachers were asked to
identify the issues they considered contributed to the low
achievement of the school's Somali pupils. The reasons included
poor organisation, difficult behaviour, low literacy levels and the
lack of parental involvement. The parents were then invited into
school and asked what support they required to help their sons'
educational achievement. The meeting was interpreted by a Somali
support teacher. The school then dealt with concerns the parents
had and offered extra literacy classes and mentoring for the pupils
using the support teacher to work closely with the most disaffected
pupils as well as increased support in-class for those still at the
early learning stages of English and literacy.
However Arguable schools that serve a predominantly monocultural
population may find the duty to promote community cohesion more
challenging to effect. However, the guidance provides suitable case
studies to show that appropriate work can be done even in this
environment. An example is provided of a small rural primary school
in Cumbria that has 32 pupils on roll, of whom 100 per cent are
white British.
The Guidance explains:
“By nature of the school's size and location it is important
for it to look outwards and consider ways to broaden its pupils'
understanding and experience. The school has taken a number of
approaches to do so. Firstly, the school works collaboratively with
a number of other primary schools in the area to develop joint
curriculum activities. Secondly, the school has established video
conferencing facilities that link the school with different schools
in their network and in outside the area. The School also makes
good use of the internet, for example to offer the pupils virtual
tours of temples and mosques that would otherwise be geographically
difficult to reach. Home access to web based programs by the
children is managed by the school.”
The outcomes of this approach are described as ensuring that
pupils are well equipped for secondary school and curious and
knowledgeable about the wider world and other cultures.
Headteachers in the participating schools are already planning
other activities and have benefited from the opportunities to share
experiences with staff in other schools.
Collaborative activities with other schools where the pupils mix
with larger numbers and different groups of children, enhance the
pupils' social development.
Clearly then there is a wide scope of activities that can be
taken on to seek to discharge this legal duty. However, it is to be
hoped that Ofsted inspectors will be alive to the fact that while
at the level of the curriculum schools are on the face of it in a
position to can promote community cohesion by developing their
students’ understanding of the potential causes of tensions between
different communities, this is a very challenging area.
There are of course many cross currents in education which cut
across the specific requirements for community cohesion. For
example, the negative impact of poverty and racism, the use of
wealth to move away from undesirable schools, the segregation of
schools along ethnic lines, housing policy and the lack of
employment opportunities - these topics can be controversial,
complex and sensitive, and teachers are understandably nervous of
actually stirring up conflict in their efforts to teach on these
issues.
Suffice to say then that community cohesion is a complex area in
which not everything is exactly as it may first seem. Change takes
time and the introduction of a legal duty upon schools to promote
community cohesion, though worthwhile, cannot be expected to have
immediate effect.
This article was first published in Education Law
Update