Bacon sandwiches and academic excellence: an unlikely alliance
by Victoria Hirst
Director of Communities
The Reach Foundation
What do a half-termly community leaders’ breakfast, a multinational grocery retailer, and a local authority all have in common?
No, it’s not the fact that the individuals overseeing all three may rely on Amazon for pretty much everything (no judgment—I couldn’t have made it through the first year of my child’s life without Amazon Prime).
And no, it’s not the fact that they all enjoy a bacon sandwich—although that may well be the case.
What unites them is a shared vision and a joined-up strategy to collectively improve pupils’ outcomes (both academic and holistic) in an area of Somerset where rural poverty means that many children do not grow up to enjoy a life of choice and opportunity.
And driving this work in Chard? Holyrood Academy, a local secondary school serving around 1400 pupils aged 11-18 in the surrounding area, as part of the Blackdown Education Partnership.
The challenge
The three groups above have (along with other civic actors such as local primary schools, health & social care, local businesses, charities and faith organisations) formed what, on the surface, appears to be an incongruous collaboration.
The unifying element, though, is their desire to work differently—more collaboratively—to ensure a more coordinated, coherent network of support for pupils and their families in their local area who experience disadvantages, ranging from food poverty to limited transport infrastructure.
Today, despite a 20% increase in the number of schools in England rated by Ofsted as ‘Good’ or ‘Outstanding’ since 2010, there remains a strong correlation between a child’s low socio-economic background and their success in school: pupils experiencing disadvantage are almost two years (22.7 months) behind their more advantaged peers.
As school leaders know all too well, poverty, debt, physical and mental health challenges, inadequate housing and limited transport networks are some of the barriers that thousands of children face to succeeding in school; these challenges are interconnected, as Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory helps to illustrate:
Bronenbrenner’s ‘ecological systems model’ via @Clinpsych_ind
The opportunity
There’s lots we can learn from those who have paved the way for social change. The desire to develop really strong school-community partnerships to strengthen families’ wraparound support and improve their outcomes in school is not new.
There are many examples of schools working with wider partners—be it public, private or third sector organisations—to alleviate some of the pressure on schools and families, and increase their capacity right from birth (and, in some cases, pregnancy). And there have been many advocates for the development of comprehensive place-based cradle to career models, with schools playing an integral role.
One of the most well-known examples of this work is the Harlem Children’s Zone, established by Geoffrey Canada and his team in the 1990s in New York. Since then, they have achieved a 97% college acceptance rate, supporting almost 35,000 adults and young people annually.
Another is the StriveTogether collective impact initiative which supports over 70 communities across the United States to develop cradle to career support, grounded in school-community partnerships. Their comprehensive theory of action (pictured below) breaks down how they go about doing this, and how they track change over time. Their partnerships demonstrate improved outcomes from kindergarten readiness to high school graduation and post-secondary completion.
Download StriveTogether’s full ‘theory of action’ document here.
In England, the government-led Full-Service Extended Schools initiative under the New Labour government focused on supporting families from cradle to career through place-based partnerships, with many schools continuing elements of this work despite funding reductions. Research studies have identified benefits such as narrowing the attainment gap between pupils experiencing disadvantage and their more affluent peers; improved health and wellbeing for pupils; positive parental engagement with schools and stronger school-community relationships.
And it feels like as the funding challenges have increased, as the cost of living crisis has deepened, and as schools, in turn, have experienced ever-growing challenges related to capacity, more and more of them are turning towards a collective impact approach to better support their pupils, their families and their staff.
An official definition of collective impact by the Stanford Social Innovation Review in 2010 described it as:
‘The commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem.’
This is based on the recognition that:
‘Large-scale social change comes from better cross-sector coordination rather than from the isolated intervention of individual organizations.’
In more practical terms, the Tamarack Institute (a Canadian organisation leading the way with collective impact support) outlines a key process for collaborative change with this work, informed by the work of Bela Banathy:
And the Wasafiri Systemcraft Institute provides a clear and helpful tool to support organisations to build collective capacity for change:
These organisations also identify some enabling conditions for this work which the Tamarack Institute summarises as:
A shift from needing to have the answers to being able to find the answers;
An understanding that the people who are closest to issues can contribute wisdom on what will work best for them;
The belief that community has capacity and can contribute;
Recognition that a community-engaged decision is more likely to meet community needs, gain more momentum, and be sustainable over the long term.
Being creative within the confines of a suboptimal system
My colleague, James Townsend, wrote recently about the ‘pervasive scarcity’ of our current clime, and the need for education leaders to embrace a ‘Jugaad mindset’.
These tools are indicative of what we all know: that, on their own, schools cannot tackle the deep-rooted challenges that many pupils and their families experience. And we also know that, despite a change in government, budgets for schools (and wider civic institutions) will not drastically improve.
Should schools be expected to lead this wider partnership-building work?
In an ideal world, arguably not. But they also have a very good opportunity to do so. As highly-visible, locally rooted, trusted institutions delivering a universal service, they are uniquely well-placed to develop strong relationships with families and a range of powerful civic actors.
In doing so, we believe that they can play a key role in a joined-up response to the complex social and economic challenges faced by their local communities:
If we are to make the best use of our position as a universal service, we must understand the concerns, difficulties, joys, and hopes of our children and the adults caring for them. We can begin to build this understanding through collecting and making use of a wider range of data than might currently be typical.
—Community Anchoring by the Confederation of School Trusts (2022)
Such an approach requires a long-term view of what success looks like, from birth to post-school destinations, and suggests the need for a broader narrative about the role of schools (and, ideally, a funding structure to match this).
But despite the considerable contextual challenges within which schools are working, we are seeing a range of innovative and effective examples of school-driven collective impact across England. The unlikely band of comrades in Chard is not unique.
The Ravensbourne School in Bromley, for instance, is bringing together—that is, convening—a range of partners to support a group of 40 families whose children have persistent absence from school. Through analysing a range of pupil data the school identified that all of these families live in one particular ward and they have created a diverse team of people (parents, staff, community actors, local government employees) to understand why, and develop a collective, joined-up response to better support them.
Meanwhile, King’s Oak Academy in Bristol, is working collaboratively with its local authority and other civic actors to develop a school-community hub to reduce pressure and increase capacity for local families (and, in turn, school staff). Recently, through school-community partnerships with local youth organisations, they have had particular success at improving the attendance of a group of pupils with persistent absence. For several pupils this meant 100% attendance for those engaging with the groups, in some cases, up from around 30%.
And in Bodmin, the Cornwall Education Learning Trust is working to establish a Community Interest Company (CIC) to improve post-16 opportunities and outcomes in the town by partnering with local creative and higher education institutions. These are just a few examples of the collective impact work that schools are leading in response to place-based challenges.
What are we learning through this work?
In collaboration with these school leaders across England we have identified six characteristics of ‘cradle-to-career leadership’ which we believe will support schools to enhance the capacity of children’s family and community contexts to support better outcomes.
As alluded to above, this requires schools to engage with barriers to learning in children’s family, community, and wider socio-environmental contexts. Specifically, it involves:
Recognising children’s outcomes across a range of domains, including health, education, housing, and material well-being;
Developing a deep understanding of the assets and needs that exist in children’s lives and in the communities they serve;
Building strong relationships and partnerships with families and other civic actors and institutions working with them.
Despite potentially facing similar challenges on the surface, though, no school context is the same and these principles must be carefully tailored to each community. In our work with schools, the starting point for their cradle-to-career development involves three data collection tasks to begin to better understand the communities they serve:
Map existing assets (this might include a youth centre, GP surgeries, and other schools);
Analyse the available statistical data across a range of indicators (this might include data from the 2021 Census, the indices of multiple deprivation or local government websites);
Run a listening campaign to better understand what is putting pressure on pupils, their families and wider community members.
Through these activities, we believe schools are better placed to start to identify some of the non-school factors for poor pupil outcomes in school. For example, the issue of poor attendance is a persistent challenge for schools, particularly in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
On attendance: Verity Howorth (Director of Training at The Reach Foundation) spoke to Jonathan Black (Executive Headteacher and West100 alumn) about the work he and other senior leaders conducted at his previous school, Holyrood Academy, to better understand children’s sense of ‘connectedness’. Head here to listen to that conversation in full.
Applying the process above, schools are arguably better able to pinpoint what factors might be influencing pupil attendance, as The Ravensbourne School, among others, is demonstrating. These may range from poor local transport links to limited transition support from primary to secondary. In partnership with other key local actors, they can then start to identify possible solutions and build support so that:
Children gain the support they need to thrive from cradle to career;
Families feel supported and connected;
Teachers feel p[art of an effective system of support for children and young people;
Communities are strengthened over time.
It feels probable that the examples of work outlined above resonate with every school leader who reads this. All schools are doing some form of collective impact, and they have been for decades.
But the need for this work feels greater than ever. In a world of polarised views and fragmented systems, we need to mobilise our many shared values and bring disparate—but willing—groups together to achieve positive social change. There is evidence that this approach works, so let’s crack on and do this.
Over the course of the next academic year, we will be sharing examples of schools leading collective impact work in their communities, along with implementation tools and reflections on what has (and hasn’t) worked. Please do get in touch with us if you would like to contribute to any of these pieces or share any feedback.
