Community schooling for a civil society: educational reform within the Scottish context

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COMMUNITY SCHOOLING FOR A CIVIL SOCIETY: EDUCATIONAL REFORM WITHIN THE SCOTTISH CONTEXT1 Jon Nixon, University of Sheffield, UK, Julie Allan, University of Stirling, UK, Gregory Mannion, University of Stirling, UK

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the New Community Schools (NCS) initiative as currently being developed in Scotland. This major five year programme is one of a raft of educational initiatives that the Scottish Executive is supporting across local authorities. Drawing on documentary evidence and interview data we discuss the potential of this programme for professional renewal across a range of occupational groups involved in NCS: community, health and social workers as well as school teachers and pre-school practitioners. A key question, for us, is whether the initiative is able to support these professional groups in closer collaboration across institutional and professional divides, between schools and communities, and across the subject demarcations of the school curriculum. The permeability of institutional, professional and curricular boundaries is thus a key focus of the paper. We discuss this theme with reference to the work of a particular local authority in central Scotland. Finally, we highlight a number of tensions within the national initiative; tensions which focus on issues of power and control between centre and locality and between different interest groups within localities. The fledgling democratic structures supported through NCS at the local level are, we conclude, highly vulnerable to these tensions and potential conflicts of interest.

I wish, first, that we should recognize that education is ordinary (Raymond Williams)

I Introduction The New Community Schools (NCS) initiative as developed in Scotland has two main priorities: the encouragement of inter-agency working at the level of service provision and the promotion of closer collaboration between schools and communities at the level of institutional delivery. Drawing on the North American model 2 of the ‘full service school’ (i.e. the school that has the resources to meet service needs within the areas of health, community care, social work, as well as education), NCS would seem to assume a consequential link between inter-agency provision and community provision: as if the former could in some way guarantee the latter. This paper challenges that assumption and argues

1 Published 2001 in M. Valkestijn and G. van de Burgwal (eds) New Opportunities for Children: Good Practices and Research Regarding Community Schools. Utrecht: Institute of Care and Welfarew/NIZW pp. 79-97. 2 According to Barnett, Niebuhr and Baldwin (1998) a 50% increase had occurred in the number of school based primary care centres in the USA between 1993-94 and the publication of their paper in 1998. See, also, Short and Talley (1999) for an account of what they call ‘a significant paradigm shift’ in service provision within the USA.

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that there are serious difficulties in attempting to collapse a potentially radical community action agenda into a mildly progressive agenda emphasising coordinated service provision and professional collaboration. Joined-up policy, to adopt the jargon, may be desirable, but it does not in itself guarantee the devolution of power from policy-makers and professional practitioners to community leaders and parents. This paper reviews the background to NCS through a discussion of relevant policy documents and papers made available by local authorities relating to their Phase 1 NCS projects. (Part II.) It then focuses on the notion of a ‘new’ professionalism and outlines the conditions necessary to sustain a re-orientation of professional interests around a commitment to community schooling. (Part III.) The central section of the paper elaborates upon these themes with reference to work conducted in a single local authority within central Scotland. This section is based on interview evidence drawn from professionals, pupils, parents, community leaders and heads of services working within the parameters of NCS as developed during its first year within this particular local authority.3 (Part IV.) Finally, we highlight what we see as some of the emergent tensions between: the national ‘face’ of NCS and its local manifestations; the different and sometimes conflicting local interests that impact upon the development of the programme. (Phase V.) Our central concern, in this paper, is with professionals working together and working with communities. II New beginnings: devolution NCS brings together national policy and local initiative within a programme that could be seen as the symbolic expression of a national education system grounded in both the egalitarianism of state schooling and the traditions of public service through professional practice. ‘Community’ and ‘locality’ are themes which Scotland has frequently evoked to define what is distinctive and valuable about its educational aspirations. As McCrone’s (1992) sociological analysis of Scotland as a ‘stateless nation’ and Devine’s (2000) historical survey of ‘the Scottish nation’ both reveal, the traditional emphasis on egalitarianism and ‘getting on’ is part of the powerful and prevalent ‘Scottish myth’; a myth which both authors agree masks underlying codes of inequality and exclusion, of professional hegemony and self-interest, that Scotland finds hard to confront within its own institutional and organisational structures. Humes and Bryce (1999, 107) reinforce the point when they argue that the diversity of Scottish life has too often ‘been submerged in a standardised and idealised model of Scottish life which, with staggering improbability, manages to combine elements of Knox, Burns, Hampden, Red Clydeside and a kailyard version of community life’. (See also Humes, 1984.) Following this line of argument the significance of NCS should lie as much in its discontinuities with and implicit criticisms of the past (with what is genuinely ‘new’ and emergent) as in any sense it may convey of unbroken continuity and progression. ‘To make a new Scotland’, as Nairn (2000, 223) puts it, ‘the old one must be unmade’.

3 91 interviews were conducted: 45 with non-professionals (children and teenagers, parents, and other adults); 46 with professionals (health-related, community and family support, social welfare, environmental). 4 meetings with 3 pupil councils were also documented as well as a wide range of other meetings relating to the initiative. In additions, local, regional and national documentary evidence was gathered as part of a broader context study.

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The Government published the NCS ‘prospectus’ in November 1998, inviting local authorities to submit proposals for Phase 1 projects (SOEID, 1998b). Thirty of the thirty-two local authorities submitted proposals and were each granted £200,000 for the financial year 1999-2000 (a total investment of £6 million by the Scottish Executive for the financial year). In this first phase the go ahead was given to 37 projects across these thirty local authorities. Each of these projects will run for three years. Over 150 schools, nurseries and family centres are already involved. A second phase of the initiative was launched in April 2000 and it is envisaged that a third phase will be launched in April 2001. Each of these overlapping phases is expected to last three years giving an overall funding period of five years (1999-2004). This paper is concerned primarily with the first ‘pilot’ year of the first phase (1999-2000) of NCS but looks ahead to the later phases in its concluding comments. The initiative is ambitious in scope and aims. The intention is that every authority will have at least two New Community School projects by 2001. Between 1999-2002, it is proposed that £26 million will be invested in total. The ‘prospectus’ set out the following as ‘essential characteristics’ of projects funded under the scheme:

A focus on the needs of all pupils;

Engagement with families;

Engagement with the wider community;

Integrated provision of school education, informal as well as formal education, social work and health education and promotion services;

Integrated management;

Arrangements for the delivery of these services according to a set of integrated objectives and measurable outcomes;

Commitment and leadership;

Multi-disciplinary training and staff development. (SOEID, 1998b)

and also listed a number of ‘likely features’ of NCS funded as part of these projects. Such schools, it is specified, are likely to:

have a positive, inclusive ethos …;

promote positive parent-child relations and family inclusion …;

provide out of school childcare;

provide student and family welfare services;

develop active health promotion and education …;

… ensure that an appropriate and stimulating curriculum is accessible to all students;

make adjustments to the curriculum when it can be demonstrated that … that student potential (will be) maximised;

work positively with informal education to help ensure that young people are challenged and stimulated to learn and engage actively with their communities …;

at the earliest possible stage, address the needs of vulnerable children …;

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provide a focal point for the community to engage in aspects of lifelong learning …;

operate study support schemes …;

operate an explicit policy of no exclusion …;

(in the primary sector) provide … a range of services for pre-school children …;

(in the secondary sector) enhance the quality of informal and informal education for work for young people at school; and

(in the secondary sector) prepare young people for further and higher education and enhance their future employment prospects.

(SOEID, 1998b) These lists balance items from an older (Old Labour) egalitarian agenda, a more recent (New Labour/Third Way) social inclusion agenda, while remaining ‘on message’ in respect of the Scottish Executive’s ‘setting-targets initiative’ (SOEID, 1998a). The ‘prospectus’ also highlights health as a major priority; re-emphasises the strategic importance of ‘personal learning plans’ for all pupils; and prioritises ‘multi-disciplinary staff development and training’. It makes explicit reference to ‘the full service school in the USA’ and to the beneficial outcomes associated with ‘full service’ (SOEIDb, 1998; SEED, 1999). Quite a balancing act. 4 Although established by the Scottish Office (as was), NCS is being developed by the Scottish Executive as a flagship of devolved government.5 A crucial question, then, is the extent to which NCS will play back upon the traditional hegemonies of professional and institutional self-interest and the extent to which it will help shape a more inclusive and participative and outward looking civil society within Scotland. In the following section we make explicit some of our assumptions in posing the question in these particular terms, prior to undertaking a more detailed discussion of the particular case. III Professional re-orientations: towards community-based change Nixon et. al. (1997a) argue that, within the new management of education, there are indications of an 'emergent' professionalism distinguishable from both the 'residual' and 'dominant' versions of professionalism that are more readily identifiable. Nixon and Ranson (1997) characterise this 'emergent' professionalism in terms of new forms of agreement-making that seek to reinforce (a) the primacy of the relation between professionals and their publics and (b) the need to ground that relation in an ongoing dialogue regarding the ends

4 Power and Witty’s (1999) analysis of Education Action Zones and ‘the third way in action’ serves as a reminder that any such balancing act runs the risk of leaving all interested parties dissatisfied (or, at least, none of them fully satisfied). 5 NCS is funded as part of the estimated £377 million ‘excellence fund’ which also includes a ‘core funding’ programme (focusing on alternatives to exclusion, study support and early intervention, reduction in class sizes, recruitment of classroom assistants, support for staff development in key areas, and implementation of the National Grid for Learning) and funding for ‘education action plans’. (See Scottish Executive, 1999, 11.)

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and purposes of learning. The terms and conditions of that dialogue, it is argued, make for 'learning professions': occupational groups whose sense of professional identity is derived from their capacity to listen to, learn from, and move forward with the communities they serve. Nixon et. al. (1997b) spell out some of the pedagogical implications of this perspective in terms of what they call ‘a pedagogy of recognition’. This perspective does not seek to deny the fragmentation and alienation of the work force. But it does square up to these problems in a different kind of way. It sees professionalism neither as a benign buffer between the public and the state nor as an oligarchic tendency whereby corporate power serves to increase a particular occupation's leverage. It sees professionalism as the capacity of an occupational group to be extrovert, generous and knowledgeable in its relations with professional colleagues, other professional groups, and 'the public'. It defines professionalism, therefore, not in terms of status and self-regulation, but in terms of values and practices. Why I do what I do is of the utmost significance; as are the deliberative processes whereby I address that 'why'. Without this emphasis on the moral purposefulness of educational practice there would be no claim to professionalism. (See Nixon, 2001a; 2001b) What is ‘new’ (and at the same time integral to a deeply contested tradition of democratic engagement and participation) is an emergent commitment by diverse professional groups to community-based change: change driven, that is, by the concerns and the agency of community members and groups rather than by the interests of the professional groups involved. In arguing for community participation as the motor of change, we would see ourselves drawing on a different North American literature than that usually associated with NCS: a literature exemplified by Cummings (1997) and Nielson and Beykont (1997) in their elaboration of what they have referred to as ‘the Community-Oriented Model (or Theory C)’. According to this model of change, they argue,

Management starts with the needs of the periphery rather than the goals of the center.

It focuses on strengthening value-knowledge rather than producing and distributing products.

It responds directly and flexibly to different needs rather than by uniform regulation. (Cummings, 1997, 217)

While many recent reforms (including those relating to notions of full service and integrated provision) incorporate elements of ‘Theory C’, we see the emphasis it places on community participation as requiring a fundamental re-ordering of existing systems and priorities. That requirement, as argued elsewhere, may be a matter of institutional survival for some schools located in contexts of extreme disadvantage. (See Nixon et. al., 1997b.) ‘Conventional schools fail in the periphery not just because they are poor – which they generally are – but’, argue Nielson and Beykont (1997, 263), ‘because they are poorly conceived’. What is required is not another set of remedial solutions to the problem of educational underachievement and disaffection, but a reconceptualisation of that problem and its underlying causes.

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With Gittell (1998), then, we see the need for a radically different approach to ensuring that educational excellence extends to those on the excluded margins of society:

We are witnessing an ever-increasing awakening to the fact that we have segmented our communities by separating service areas, professional empires, and targeted populations, ignoring the essential element of engaging citizens in the political process to achieve common goals. The result is declining community capacity to address major problems that are necessarily interdependent. To the extent that we separate policy areas, exclude citizens from the political process, and narrow the class of stakeholders, we will ultimately destroy cities. Twenty-first-century reform requires a new paradigm, based on integration within the community through a revitalization of institutions and an enhancement of citizen roles. (Gittell, 1998, 239)

Apple and Beane (1999) remind us, however, that this ‘new’ paradigm is but the latest expression of an ‘old’ idea: ‘the idea was, and is, democracy’ (Beane and Apple, 1999, 3). The problem, they argue, must be defined in terms of the conditions on which democracy depends. The point is not that these conditions must be met before school can aspire to be democratic, but that democratic schools are themselves centrally involved in the struggle to establish these conditions:

1. The open flow of ideas, regardless of their popularity, that enables people to be as fully informed as possible.

2. Faith in the individual and collective capacity of people to create possibilities for resolving problems.

3. The use of critical reflection and analysis to evaluate ideas, problems and policies.

4. Concern for the welfare of others and ‘the common good’. 5. Concern for the dignity and rights of individuals and minorities. 6. An understanding that democracy is not so much an ‘deal’ to be pursued

as an ‘idealized’ set of values that we must live and that must guide our life as people.

7. The organization of social institutions to promote and extend the democratic way of life.

(Beane and Apple, 1999, 7.) The ‘democratic way of life’, in this view, is neither an educational end in itself nor an educational means of achieving ‘the common good’. It is constitutive of life lived to the full: life at full stretch lived to capacity and realising the collective capacity of each individual to achieve her or his unique potential. IV Enhancing well-being through community schooling Within the particular local authority with which we are concerned the first phase of the NCS programme focuses on an area of approximately one and a half square miles and containing the most severely disadvantaged children within the authority. This area contains three primary schools (one of which being Roman Catholic caters for children from within and

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outside the area) and associated pre-school provision in the form of a nursery school and a family centre. Within each of the schools between 76% and 80% of pupils rely on clothing grants. The school leavers’ destination statistics for 1998 indicate that almost a quarter of school leavers are in the ‘known destination’ category and another quarter in the ‘unknown destination’ category. Thus, almost half of all 1998 school leavers living in the area did not enter higher education, further education, training or employment. Unemployment stands at 16% against a Scottish national average of 7% and an average of just under 4% for the council area as a whole. (Adjacent to this area is one of the most affluent suburbs in the council area.) The council intends that the associated secondary schools and their other primary feeder schools (all of which are located outside the area) will be included in the second phase of the NCS programme. A new secondary school incorporating the aims of full service provision is also being developed on a new site within the area as part of a wider regeneration programme. It is also intended (and stated in the original proposal submitted by the council) that over the five years of the programme all schools within the authority will become ‘new community schools’ in the sense of corresponding to the ‘essential characteristics’ and ‘likely features’ outlined in the original SOEID ‘prospectus’. The strategy, then, is not only to strengthen the ‘peripheral’ communities located in this area of multiple disadvantage, but to define this ‘periphery’ as central to authority-wide change across a council area that is both geographically and socially diverse. Poverty is a matter not only of material deprivation, but, as Sen (1999, 87-110) reiterates, of ‘capability deprivation’. Poverty affects the ‘well-being’ of individuals and families and has, therefore, a profound impact on their capacity to learn and, through learning, to flourish. The problem is to restore ‘quality of life’ (Nussbaum and Sen, 1993), while encouraging the individual and collective capacity of individuals and communities. NCS, in the area with which we are concerned, is providing an opportunity for schools to focus on ‘capability’ and ‘capacity’ as the fundamentals of educational renewal; and for ‘achievement’, therefore, to be seen in the wider context of ‘well-being’. How the relation between disadvantage and educational achievement is conceived has profound consequences for the way in which issues relating to ‘under-achievement’ are addressed and the way in which change is ‘managed’. Our evidence suggests four ‘fundamentals’ of change which seem to us to express the aspirations of those working most closely with, and within, the particular NCS ‘pilot’ project which is our focus of study. Each of these ‘fundamentals’ is centrally concerned with learning, but relates learning to the broader category of ‘well-being’ as conceived and elaborated by Sen. Framing the analysis in this way allows us to be faithful to a perspective which empasises not only that the ‘functionings relevant for well-being’ are interconnected, but that these interconnections must be recognised and supported in any serious attempt to enhance ‘quality’ of life: a perspective which NCS, at best, embodies and develops with a keen sensitivity to local and regional difference. Enhancing community well-being: community liaison group (CLG) ‘Community’ is a slippery term. One point of commonality for many of the inhabitants of this particular locality is a shared history of both material and positional suffering (or, to shift

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the terminology, of both absolute and relative poverty). One of our interviewees, a local councillor and political activist, insisted that ‘you can’t ignore history’:

whether it’s the way professionals have acted before, or the way they’ve been organised, or whether there’s a wider cultural sense to be taken into consideration where people in the area have been scapegoated for problems that are not of their own making. I believe there’s still a class system operates even if Tony Blair and his crew don’t … I have a working class background in a different area. But when I came here the patterns of deprivation were very similar to poor working class communities across central Scotland and there was a historical pattern to them that’s tied up with the development of council estates through the slum clearance of the 1930s.

This same interviewee also argued, however, that ‘community’ is not just a matter of a shared past; it is also a matter of building a shared future through participation. For ‘community’ to mean anything its evolving history must be constructed through the active participation of those who comprise it:

It doesn’t matter whether you’re into politics or religion, you have to have some vision of where you want society to go and you have to spell that out … There has to be a process in place that recognises that people, irrespective of their place in life, have ideas about how they can better themselves - if they’re given the chance, and genuinely given the chance, to influence that … If you want to bring about social change that means anything, you actually have to involve the folk that you expect the social change to come from.

From the perspective of the professional groups with responsibility for providing ‘full’ service, this emphasis on community participation may involve real tensions. A social worker attached to the project pointed out that, under the terms of the Children (Scotland) Act 1995, social workers have a dual role of ‘caring’ (‘empowering’) and ‘protecting’ (‘policing’):

On the one side, it would be nice for us to make ourselves redundant through encouraging people to take on and work towards improving their lot in the areas where that is possible … And people can address that and people can be ‘empowered’, if you like, to take things forward. But, on the other side, within our schools we still have children in need who still require a case work service for their protection and I still have a role whereby I want to support and empower people, but I also have a role whereby I have to protect children. And if that means taking families to court I have to do that.

So, while enhancing community well-being undoubtedly has resource implications, it also has implications for the way in which professionals perceive their roles and responsibilities and how, in the light of those perceptions, they develop their professional practice. As another interviewee (with responsibility for the overall co-ordination of social work across the authority) pointed out, ‘mindset’ is of crucial importance:

There’s two things for me. You need resources to get initiatives going, yes, but … in order to set up the framework or the model for a way of working

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that in itself doesn’t require resources … It requires a change of mindset - a way of thinking outside the usual boxes.

One might with some justification argue that the more ‘managerial’ the professional role, the greater the emphasis on ‘mindset’ (as opposed to ‘resources’). The interview evidence suggests that parents and other community members are more likely (than other groups) to articulate their understanding of the project in terms of increased resources - and, in particular, the provision of a new secondary school within the area; that front-line professionals are more likely (than other groups) to surface concerns regarding increased demands which they see as having inevitable resource implications; and that ‘managers’ are more likely (than other groups) to wax lyrical regarding the need for professional ‘re-orientation’. These differences of outlook and response are significant and should not be overlooked. Evident in the interview evidence, it must be acknowledged, is a legacy of mistrust by locals of professionals and an easy recourse by some professionals and indeed voluntary workers to a ‘deficit’ view of the local area and the capacity of its inhabitants. Nevertheless, the potential for commonality of purpose is remarkable and focuses quite explicitly on the need for increased participation as a means of enhancing community well-being. It is difficult as yet to point to sustainable structures that will support and carry forward this sense of purpose. However, the establishment of a CLG (comprising parents, pupils, and other members of the local community) as a key element of the project is a significant development. The CLG along with the Executive Group (comprising in the main front-line professionals working within the area) and the Sponsors Group (comprising in the main Heads of Service or their equivalent) comprise the consultative and management structure of the project. (As the NCS extends to other areas within the authority it is possible that other CLGs will be established within those areas.) There is an attempt, in other words, to ensure that the local community is not only ‘represented’, but that it has a ‘presence’; that it’s capacity for direct action is acknowledged within the structure of the project and the consultative practices that this structure seeks to promote. The CLG is one of the mechanisms whereby ‘the politics of presence’ is affirmed. (See Phillips, 1995) Enhancing pupil well-being: personal learning plans (PLP) Structures and practices for enhancing pupil well-being are clearly in evidence. These often pre-date NCS but are being greatly enhanced not only through the provision of resources but through the endorsement that NCS gives to the well-established emphasis within the authority on the centrality of the child. The local authority officer with lead responsibility for NCS, recalling her earlier work as a headteacher and the values she and her colleagues are attempting to carry forward, made the following statement in interview:

I remember our first statement of what we were about was for everybody to be happy. And it seems so simple – and simplistic – but it’s not just that the children should be happy, the teachers should be happy, the other staff should be happy in a school, but also that the parents should be happy with the education the children are getting … I think if you don’t love children, and if you don’t care for them, and if you don’t understand where they’re coming from, you’re not going to be an effective teacher.

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We would point to the review procedures generally, and PLP in particular, as instances of practice and structure directed towards the well-being of pupils. One of the local primary headteachers described her hopes for the way in which the review process might be elaborated and strengthened under NCS:

I’m thinking of a meeting we had yesterday with a child’s social worker, her foster parent, her escort that takes her to her therapist once a week, the class teacher, and myself meeting and talking about problems, looking at strategies, looking at ways forward. That kind of meeting is fairly common … It’s happening more and it will happen more. Where before it would have involved going out to the social work office and sitting in on a convened case meeting, now we are more liable to say, ‘Come along to the school and we’ll discuss that.’ What we would like to do to improve this interagency practice is have these kinds of meetings on a much more regular basis without there necessarily having to be a reason for it.

The institution of PLP is one of the ways in which the authority, through NCS, is seeking to integrate the review process into the routines and practices of schooling. The local authority officer with lead responsibility for NCS spelt out the principle of pupil ‘ownership’ that underpins this initiative:

It’s not the teacher’s document, it’s the child’s document – where they specify targets for themselves within school but also outwith school. So, if they’re involved in an out of school club or sports activity, they can invite comment from coaches, wherever they’re working, or other adult helpers to tell them how well they’re doing. But the children set the targets for the next week, not just in terms of educational attainment, but they set themselves targets for outwith school activity, perhaps home activity, perhaps health and fitness … Just now the schools have kind of ‘captured’ PLP, but it’s developing in such a way that they belong to the child. The child will realise that self-improvement and the effectiveness of self is what we’re moving towards.

As the following extract from the interview evidence reveals, the importance of ‘ownership’ was also emphasized by pupils

- Who do the PLPs belong to? Whose are they? - Ours. - Ours, because we decide who we show them to. - Ours. - Ours, so if somebody laughs at it, who cares? It’s no their thing, is it? It’s

ours. - If you’ve got something that you really enjoy doing but you’re not very

good at it, it doesn’t really matter if it’s silly or not because you want to improve on it.

- Who sets the targets for your PLPs? - We set the targets. - If we ask we get help. If we dinnae want help, we dinnae ask.

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- We set the targets, but if we’re stuck … the teacher can help you with them. - How’re your teachers enjoying it, or not enjoying it, so far? - They’re enjoying seeing us, like, we’re learning through this. So they’re

going to enjoy, like, seeing us learn and then they know we’ve been learning off these PLPs.

The PLP scheme is more than a mechanism. It is a (very Scottish) culture: of self-improvement and self-reliance, of corporate responsibility and accountability, of regard for one’s own well-being and for the well-being of others. Like any culture, it disperses values and renders practices and structures value-rich. So, pupil’s satisfaction in their own learning becomes a source of professional satisfaction for their teachers; and, as the following comments (from parents within two different family units attending a school PLP open-day for parents) show, that pride in learning is also embraced by parents who thereby see themselves as both learners and as complementary educators:

I always thought N. (daughter) was shy but she seems not be in school. She seems to come out of herself and she does mix a lot more with other children, whereas if you were at home, you wouldnae really know that … This is my first child and learning the phonics at the start was a whole learning process for me as well. When she comes home with these sheets and says, ‘that’s the way we’re going to be learning the sounds’, I mean, I was learning as well as N. (Mother of primary school pupil)

I think you’ve got to look a wee bit deeper than normal – drop your kids off at school, pick them up at half past three or whatever. You’ve got to look a bit deeper than that. It’s the parents, it’s our responsibility. I think it’s valuable for Mrs. G. (daughter’s teacher) to see that she’s not just bringing kids in, teaching them, then sending them home again … And it’s important to K (daughter). I don’t think there could be anything worse than a family involvement in the school and none of the family turn up. I think that would put the child a wee bit low, ill at ease, if there’s no support from their family, you know. (Father of primary school pupil)

What we see here is a circle of learning that draws in pupils, teachers and parents; and that, through the broader review procedures, involves other professional groups and agencies. But at the centre of that circle, at least in terms of the structures and practices reviewed above, is the child as learner: the pupil. Enhancing family well-being: breakfast and after school club NCS has also provided a framework within which before and after school facilities gain a renewed sense of educational purpose. The breakfast club, for example, has the basic aim of ensuring that children are sufficiently well nourished to fulfil the requirements of the school day. But, as one of the school cleaners (also a parent) recognises and is truly proud of, the provision of this facility has other important consequences in terms of health awareness and the broader aims of social and personal education:

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There are a lot of kids out there that come to school and they dinnae have their breakfast, whether they get up late or they’ve never got the time, or they’re working. When the kids come in here they have their breakfast for 40p. and they get good value …It’s their club. It’s the kid’s club … I’ve got three kids myself to go to school at half past eight, so they’ll go into the breakfast club and have a drink … I used to give my kids cornflakes, rice crispies. I used to give them sugar, but I stopped it. Because I think too much sugar’s bad for the teeth … Though I wouldn’t put a bowl of fruit on the table and I wouldn’t have put yogurts out on the table not at that time in the morning … Well, I think it makes quite a lot of difference to the children. They come in and they’ve got their own wee group … There’s nae ‘oh, she’s no sitting beside me’. They all sit together and they talk about football; they talk about what’s went on in the school the day before. It’s a good wee social event for them.

That ‘good wee social event’ is also recognised by one of the headteachers as providing not only the conditions necessary for learning but as constituting a kind of extra-curricular resource – a reinforcement of the curriculum as it relates to health education:

It is about nutrition. But there’s actually more to it than that, because we would have children coming in about quarter past 8 and hanging around in the playground until 9 o’clock. Now the one’s that come in early tend to be there with their 40p to join the breakfast club. So, it’s also about safety and comfort. But they’re more likely to buy their breakfast with their 40p now than buy crisps and junk … They have a vocabulary for healthy eating now.

There is an erosion, here and elsewhere, of the institutional boundary between family and school: an erosion that we see as having tremendous educational potential. But that border country - between school and home, education and family, formal and informal learning - is not easily managed, regulated, governed. It is, as the local authority officer with lead responsibility for NCS reminds us, a border country full of troubles:

I’ll give you an example. I had a parent in here yesterday who had a four year old with her. And the four year old sat for an hour and a half without moving from the chair, in front of me, staring at me, or staring at my screen saver, which has got butterflies and things on it. But he didn’t move and I got a smile every now and then, whenever he recognised what I was saying. So, here we had comprehension in relation to what was being said. But at the end ... I said to the little boy, ‘that was absolutely brilliant, you sat there for an hour and a half, and you’ve been so well behaved’. And she said to him, ‘oh, that won’t last, he won’t be in school six weeks before they exclude him’. And I thought, well, and the older daughter was there because she’s been excluded and she was sitting listening to this conversation … There are three children in the family, the first two are damaged. The third one is about to be … So, NCS? If we can work early enough with parents … work with them and help them with managing children in difficult behaviour situations or whatever, then I think we can make a difference.

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The ‘if’ in that last sentence seems immense – insurmountable. But breakfast and after school clubs, however ordinary and unremarkable they may appear, occupy that troubled border country between school and home and attempt to achieve a sense of orderliness and well-being for the children concerned. For example, the after school club presents a model of living and working together, of acknowledging ‘that there are other people’; a model which, as the organiser suggests, is different from both school and home and could not compensate for the lack of either, but which complements and supports both in unpredictable and hugely important ways:

It’s for the kids, to help the kids. To help them learn, communicate with one another, and educate them … The rules are respecting one another and respecting the fact that, if there is a group building up they give that group space, they don’t annoy them … There are a set of rules where they don’t run round in the room. They’ve got to acknowledge that there are other people. If a certain person’s sat there playing a game, they’ve got to wait till it’s their turn. And, as I say, the whole concept is respecting everybody, giving them their place. Really behaving. A standard of behaviour that we accept … For some kids it’s like their sanity, because they’ve got about seven wee brothers and sisters and they can just come up and read a book at the club, whereas they’ll never get a chance to do that at home. Or even just to have their own piece of paper and pencil and draw, because some of them might not have pencils and paper … We’ll never, ever fill the parents’ gap, we’ll never be able to fill that, but hopefully at least the kids’ll have somewhere to come and there’ll always be somebody here for them. But we’ll never, ever be able to take the place of the parents that should be there. But we’ll maybe be able to have them a room that they can come to or an ear that they can talk to.

It is the ‘ordinariness’ of this account which is compelling. We’re not talking grand theory, big ideas, or even sophisticated management strategy. The account reminds us that it is through the little things – the books, the paper, the pencils – that society aspires to civility. NCS is supporting the family, and promoting its well-being, by locating it within this rich nexus of mutual support and responsibility. Enhancing professional well-being: staff development

Staff development is central to the approach developed by the authority in relation to

NCS. The ‘model’ of staff development that is emerging has two main foci –

professionals learning to work together and learning to work with communities. The crucial point is that these two foci are mutually dependent: ‘understanding communities’ necessarily involves professionals in learning from and with one another: pooling their specialist knowledge of the area (its needs and resources, its families and children, its history and aspirations) so as to create a shared professional knowledge base. Professionals cannot work with communities unless they also work together as professionals; and, conversely, that inter-professional collaboration lacks a sense of educational purpose unless directed towards increased community engagement with the ends and processes of schooling. The

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sustainability of NCS is dependent on professionals internalizing this dynamic relation between their shared understanding, their inter-professional practice, and their commitment to community participation. The staff development activities have included evening seminars on topics relating to NCS, participatory sessions on the work of particular professional groups (‘day in the life of’), opportunities for work shadowing across professional groups, and two post-graduate (‘Masters’) modules on ‘inter-agency working’ and ‘multi-disciplinary action research’ (offered by the local institution of higher education). There has been some discrepancy in the level of involvement of different services in these various activities, but community (including community support workers, adult education workers and local sports development professionals), education (including teachers, classroom assistants, support workers, peripatetic workers, home link workers and educational psychologists), family support (including social workers and other professionals involved in the welfare of families and their children) and health (including health visitors, clinical psychologists and other employees of the health board or primary care trust) have all participated to varying degrees in the staff development activities. Education service professionals have provided the greatest number of participants in each category of activity, while the evening seminars have been best attended by each service area. The opportunity for work shadowing has proved particularly beneficial in fulfilling what the staff development consultant with overall responsibility for the programme sees as one of the most pressing staff development needs of many of those involved in NCS:

One of the first things that all the staff pointed up right at the beginning when NCS was first mentioned was the requirement for quality staff development. Because we knew absolutely zilch, at least the majority of chalk face workers as it were knew zilch, about social work department procedures … didn’t know any named social workers or anything like that … ‘What do you actually do all day?’ is one of the things that you used to hear most frequently. But since the staff development, and the shadowing in particular, they know what they do all day and that has been a number one influence on changing people’s previous views on colleagues in other agencies.

Professionals (from health, education and family support respectively) made the following comments regarding what they thought they had gained from observing and being observed by colleagues in other services:

We knew already what the health visitor did but being in the classroom has been great for us. Seeing what the teachers has been awesome. The sheer creativity of it. You know I’m feeling very cocooned here in the classroom. In the classroom you get the child’s view and that’s very important. But when you go out you get the adult’s view, their slant on things.

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It has made a big difference to how people see us, seeing how busy we are and the scope of our remit, seeing the breadth and depth of our involvement with families.

Central to the ‘model’, however, is that this mutuality of understanding is directed outward, beyond the interests of the professional groups concerned, to children and families, pupils and parents, service ‘users’ and their dependents. So, other staff development activities have had a more explicit community orientation; involving groups of professionals (sometimes working alongside community members) in, for example, researching aspects of their own practice, gathering the views and opinions of children and parents, developing new ways of working, studying instances of community action at the local level. Professional well-being is intricately bound up with the well-being of families, pupils and the wider community. V Concluding comments: a ‘political imaginary’ It should be emphasised that the particular project we are using as a focus for our analysis of NCS is as yet at an early stage. The instances cited above of professionals working together and working with the community represent significant but vulnerable developments susceptible to multiple pressures and tensions. We are trying to trace what Werbner and Yuval-Davis (1999) have theorised as a ‘political imaginary’: a commitment to extending the horizons of possibility by increasing the opportunity for participation and engagement. The prime purpose of our developing analysis is to understand how participatory frameworks for learning may be sustained, deepened and extended at precise points and within specific sectors. Our aim, therefore, is not to reproduce simple success stories, but to piece together complex stories of struggle within which the contested bases of 'success' are examined. In setting about this task we feel our analysis raises a number of more general points regarding the tensions inherent within NCS as a national programme focusing on, and prioritising, local needs. We would argue that these local needs are matched by other sets of needs that are systemic and structural. The ‘locality’ with which we are concerned in this particular study speaks back to ‘the state’ in terms of its own agenda of ‘need’ (and, in speaking back, affirms its own ‘community’ of interest):

The need for local 'authority'. Without the backing of the statutory powers divested in the local authority, the project we are studying would be insupportable. Similarly, without a continuing commitment to enablement and negotiation by that local authority in the exercise of its powers, the project would be unsustainable. Given the decimation of local authorities south of the border and the continuing commitment within certain political quarters to the further devolution of powers to schools, this point is crucial. A middle-tier of 'authority' between state and school is in our view essential if complex cross-boundary ways of working are to have any hope of success. Equitable 'settlements' across the wide variety of local interests that NCS aspires to embrace would be unthinkable without that presiding 'authority'. The task for the local authority is not to exercise power, but to exercise 'authority' through the sharing of power. That is an enormously difficult task, but one which NCS recognises and supports.

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The need for an alternative paradigm of educational change. Schools urgently need to progress beyond the dominant 'school effectiveness' paradigm. This is, again, enormously difficult given the extent to which that paradigm is used to legitimate both central government policy and the way in which local authorities implement that policy. A paradigm which limits 'effectiveness' to 'school effectiveness' is wholly inappropriate to an initiative which is based on the assumption that 'improvement' presupposes inter-agency practice and community engagement. Schools need to understand that their own effectiveness is dependent on the effectiveness of civil society as a whole: families, play-groups, community centres, youth clubs, neighbouring schools, etc.. They also need to develop the practices and institutional structures that square up to that understanding. They require a paradigm that acknowledges that they can only become effective if they engage their commitment to learning across boundaries and on a broad front: not a 'school effectiveness' paradigm, but a 'community engagement' paradigm.

The need for a politics of redistribution. The politics of 'recognition' and 'difference' are not incompatible with a politics of 'redistribution'. Indeed, we would argue that the former requires the latter: in order for some kinds of 'difference' to be 'recognised', a 'redistribution' of resources is sometimes essential. Again, this is difficult. Electorates, it would seem, can cope with a notion of 'equality' that says everyone should be treated the same or a notion of 'inequality' that says everyone is (inherently) different. What politicians and policy-makers are wary of is a notion of 'equality' that says everyone should be treated differently: according, that is, to her or his needs. But that is precisely what is required of a national programme such as NCS that, espousing egalitarian principles, aspires to the recognition of difference. Strong leadership at the national and local authority levels will be essential in ensuring that the underlying principles of NCS in respect of equality and difference are carried forward.

The need for professional renewal. Professional training is to a large extent a process of professionalisation into the specialist practices and mores of the particular occupational group concerned. Trainee nurses are initiated into nursing; trainee teachers into teaching; trainee social workers into social work … That sounds like ‘common sense’, until one realises how much of this training has to be ‘undone’ through the kind of inter-professional staff development outlined above; and, if professional training misses out on inter-professional understanding, it is often equally remiss in orientating the professional towards community concerns and the kinds of skills and understandings necessary to work alongside community members as complementary educators. We see the role of the university as central in ensuring that, across the caring professions, professionalism is outward looking, theoretically grounded and divergent, independent and disinterested in its ethical orientation, and above all (when push comes to shove) on the side of public rather than professional or private interest.

It is difficult to move beyond Williams’s (1989, 14) enduring formulation of what all this is about:

I wish, first, that we should recognize that education is ordinary: that it is, before everything else, the process of giving to the ordinary members of society its full common meanings, and the skills that will enable them to

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amend these meanings, in the light of their personal and common experience. If we start from that, we can get rid of the remaining restrictions, and make the necessary changes.

The ‘big idea’ carried forward by NCS is not the ‘full service’ school, ‘integrated provision’, or ‘joined-up policy’. These are just new-fangled means to old egalitarian ends. What matters is the ‘ordinariness’ of education: its grounding in ‘ordinary members of society’, ‘full common meanings’ and ‘personal and common experience’. These are the underlying purposes that must shape and inform the developing structures and practices of NCS if it is to have credibility as a beacon of the Scottish Executive’s attempt to revivify civil society through programmes of democratically grounded educational reform. References Apple, M.W. and Beane, J.A. (eds.) (1999) Democratic Schools: Lessons from the Chalkface. Buckingham: Open University Press. Barnett, S., Niebuhr, V. and Baldwin, C. (1998) Principles for developing interdisciplinary school-based primary care centers, Journal of School Health, 68, 3. 99-105. Beane, J.A. and Apple, M.W. (1999) The case for democratic schools, in M.W. Apple and J.A. Beane (eds.) Democratic Schools: Lessons from the Chalkface. Buckingham: Open University Press. pp. 1-29.

Cummings, W. K. (1997) Management initiatives for reaching the periphery, in H.D. Nielson and W.K. Cummings (eds.) Quality Education for All: Community-Oriented Approaches. New York and London: Garland Publishing. 215-245. Department for Education and Employment (DfEE) (2000) Schools Plus: Final Report. www.dfee.gov.uk/schools-plus (May) Devine, T.M. (2000) The Scottish Nation 1700-2000. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. (1st published 1999, Allen Lane, Penguin Press.) Finn, G.P.T. (1999) ‘Sectarianism’ and Scottish education, in T.G.K. Bryce and W.M. Humes (eds.) Scottish Education. Edinburgh University Press. 869-879. Gittell, M. (1998) Conclusion: creating a school reform agenda for the twenty-first century, in M. Gittell (ed.) Strategies for School Equity: Creating Productive Schools in a Just Society. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Humes, W.M. (1984) The cultural significance of Scotland’s educational system, D. McCrone (ed.) The Scottish Government Yearbook 1984. Edinburgh: Unit for the Study of Government in Scotland. 149-166. Humes, W. and Bryce, T. (1999) The distinctiveness of Scottish Education, in T.G.K. Bryce and W.M. Humes (eds.) Scottish Education. Edinburgh University Press. 102-111.

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McCrone, D. (1992) Understanding Scotland: The Sociology of a Stateless Nation. London and New York: Routledge. Nairn, T. (2000) After Britain: New Labour and the Return of Scotland. London: Granta Books. Nielson, H.D. and Beykont, Z.F. (1997) Reaching the periphery: toward a community-oriented education, in H.D. Nielson and W.K. Cummings (eds.) Quality Education for All: Community-Oriented Approaches. New York and London: Garland Publishing. 247-265. Nielson, H.D. and Cummings, W.K. (eds.) (1997) Quality Education for All: Community-Oriented Approaches. New York and London: Garland Publishing. Nixon, J. (2001a) Not without dust and heat: the moral bases of the new academic professionalism, British Journal of Educational Studies, 49, 3. Nixon, J. (2001b) Imagining ourselves into being: conversing with Hannah Arendt, Pedagogy, Culture and Society, 9, 2, 221-236. Nixon, J., Martin, J., McKeown, P. and Ranson, S. (1997a) Towards a learning profession: changing codes of occupational practice within the 'new' management of education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 21,1. 5-28 Nixon, J., Martin, J., McKeown, P. and Ranson, S. (1997b) Confronting ‘failure’: towards a pedagogy of recognition, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 1, 2. 121-141. Nixon, J. and Ranson, S. (1997) Theorising 'agreement': the bases of a new professional ethic, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 18, 2. 197-214. Nussbaum, M. and Sen, A. (eds.) (1993) The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Phillips, A. (1995) The Politics of Presence. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Power, S. and Whitty, G. (1999) New Labour’s education policy: first, second, or third way? Journal of Education Policy, 14, 5. 535-546. Scottish Executive (1999) Improving Our Schools: Consultation on the Improvement in Scottish Education Bill. Edinburgh: Stationery Office. Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) (1999) Raising Standards – Setting Targets. Setting Targets in Scottish Schools. National and Education Authority Information 1999. Edinburgh: Audit Unit/HM Inspectors of Schools. (December) Scottish Office Education and Industry Department (SOEID) (1998a) New Community Schools: The Prospectus. Edinburgh: Stationery Office. (March) Scottish Office Education and Industry Department (SOEID) (1998b) New Community Schools: the Prospectus. Edinburgh: Stationery Office. (November)

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Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sen, A. (1993) Capability and well-being, in A. Nussbaum and A. Sen (eds.) The Quality of Life. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Short, R. J. and Talley, R. C. (1999) Services integration: an introduction, Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 10, 3. 193-200. Werbner, P. and Yuval-Davis, N. (1999) Women and the new discourse of citizenship, in N. Yuval-Davis and P. Werbner (eds) Women, Citizenship and Difference. London and New York: Zed Books. Williams, R. (1989) Resources of Hope: Culture, Democracy, Socialism. London and New York: Verso. (‘Culture is Ordinary’ was first published in N. Mackenzie (ed.), 1958, Convictions. MacGibbon and Gee.) Acknowledgements: Earlier versions of this paper were presented at: the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference (Critical Perspectives on Citizenship as/for Education Symposium), Cardiff, 7-9 September, 2000; and the European Educational Research Association Annual Conference (Education for Social Inclusion Symposium), Edinburgh, 20-23 September 2000). A full version of the paper is to be published in a forthcoming issue of International Journal of Inclusive Education. Correspondence. Professor Jon Nixon, University of Sheffield, School of Education, 388 Glossop Road, Sheffield S10 2JA, UK. E-mail: [email protected]