Background
Following disturbances in Bradford, Oldham and Burnley in 2001, the Government began a journey which six years later has seen a new department emerge from the Home Office – the Department for Communities and Local Government – and a cross-Government strategy which requires communities to plan their futures together. Schools are at the heart of those communities.
A number of milestones on that journey give a helpful context for the new duty on schools to promote community cohesion. Building a Picture of Community Cohesion, published by the Home Office Community Cohesion Unit in June 2003, states as its headline outcome:
The local area is a place where people from different backgrounds get on well together.
The contribution by schools to that outcome is a measurable one, the % of pupils achieving 5+ *-C grades at GCSE. The idea was that a community is more likely to be cohesive where children from different backgrounds have an equal chance of attaining good GCSE grades.
By September 2004 the profile of schools in this rapidly developing strategy had risen significantly and the Home Office published Community Cohesion Education Standards for Schools. It is a significant document which confirms the role of schools as being central to breaking barriers between young people and helping to create cohesive communities. It presents a more sophisticated and realistic view of the contribution of schools to this agenda.
So far strategy had focussed on analysing barriers to cohesion and defining the roles of stakeholders in moving the agenda forward. 2007 sees the Government achieving its own cohesion re the development of the strategy by making explicit connections with trends in other social and education programmes. Our Shared Future, the final report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, was published in June 2007, purporting:
- past built on difference as a foundation for
- A future which is shared
Achieving cohesion in our communities is now perceived to be about planning a shared vision of the future together. The focus is on what binds us together rather than the differences which divide us. It is about COLLABORATION and INTERACTION.
In July 2007 therefore the DCSF and DCLG published Guidance on the duty to promote community cohesion, a duty which came into force from September 2007 as part of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, and is now part of the Ofsted inspection framework (September 2008). The Guidance is non-statutory and outlines the way governors and leadership teams can mainstream their work and activities to promote community cohesion.
Focussing on our local agenda rather than the national, Northumberland’s new and developing Cultural Diversity in Education strategy also began implementation in September 2007, and will hopefully make a significant contribution to promoting community cohesion throughout the County as it unfolds.
