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Community engagement

Schools cannot meet the complex needs of young people alone. As a school leader, you need to be aware that community engagement and participation play a key role in furthering children’s wellbeing. Encouraging engagement involves you in activities such as holding challenge workshops and community conversations.

Why is community engagement important?

Schools will not meet the complex needs of children and young people by working in isolation. The Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda encourages more authentic relationships between schools and families, the wider community and other agencies. This community engagement allows schools to address the five ECM outcomes for children’s health, safety, achievement, social contribution and economic wellbeing.

Activities drawing on community involvement to integrate the five outcomes enable us to see the links between standards and wellbeing. For example, a breakfast club can demonstrate the integration of all five outcomes by:

  • focusing on IT and communication skills (enjoying and achieving)
  • serving a healthy breakfast (being healthy)
  • involving older students as peer buddies (staying safe)
  • publishing a community newspaper for the area (making a contribution)
  • employing local parents and working with a local farmers’ market to supply fresh produce (furthering economic wellbeing)

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What are the issues of community engagement for school leaders?

Research on community engagement is beginning to show a positive impact on pupils, families, communities and other groups when children’s wellbeing and learning are promoted as interdependent.

The major issues, from your perspective as a school leader, are to develop collaborative ways to:

  • improve student achievement by making the curriculum more relevant and working more closely with parents
  • make schools more accountable and increase democratic involvement by encouraging local people to have a say in decision making
  • build social capital within communities by encouraging adults as well as children to learn
  • develop the role of schools as moral agents, promoting social justice and responsibility for youth by tackling challenges such as racism
  • promote the school’s self-interest by developing good public relations and making more information available to help people choose a school

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What are the dos and don’ts of community engagement?

Do…

  • initiate action based on real rather than perceived need
  • use word of mouth – it is more effective than written communications such as flyers
  • engage in small-scale pilot activities which allow reflection and risk-taking
  • use local people to resource the development
  • develop and employ local role-models as community learning champions to encourage local people to take part

Don’t…

  • be hasty in building relationships - allow time to establish trust between partners

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Practical examples of community engagement

Making the most of ECM and linking it to achievement involves you in different conversations and partnerships outside school. Below are two practical examples of how to use these conversations to best advantage.

The challenge workshop: this is a forum for bringing together people with diverse perspectives on a shared issue or problem. The workshop involves them in a series of activities to help move their thinking forward. By creating powerful learning environments, challenge workshops encourage the best contributions from all participants and enable them to work together to tackle a shared issue.

Community conversations: this is a vehicle to allow everyone to share the diverse views they hold. In this conversation, keeping people engaged is more important than achieving a quick outcome. Generally the focus is agreed by the group and the outcome is not preordained. These conversations exist with no prescribed agenda. There may be nothing to do as a result of the get-together. A deeper understanding of each other’s hopes and fears and an understanding that the agenda is set by the group might be enough in the early stages.

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Related publications and resources