In September 2007 a new legal duty
was introduced for schools to promote community cohesion.
From September 2008 OFSTED began inspecting the contribution that
schools make to community cohesion.
For schools the term ‘community’ includes the following dimensions:
the school community, the community within which the school is
located, the UK community and the global community. The main
focus of the duty is cohesion across different cultures, religious
or non-religious, ethnic and socio-economic groups. School
programmes, however, need to consider how other aspects of the
equalities agenda e.g. gender, sexual orientation, disability and
age are interconnected with the aspiration to promote community
cohesion. Schools need to reflect about how they support
everyone in the school community to get on well together, as well
as in the wider context how people from the school interact with
those from the local neighbourhood, wider community and those from
further afield. This should be considered in terms of factors
including: rural-urban, young-old; rich-poor; good-poor housing;
good-poor health to foster understanding and bring communities
together.
On 10 November 2008 a conference was held at Trinity Park, Ipswich
on Community Cohesion and Citizenship. The school staff and
governor delegates were able to attend a number of different
workshops to hear about projects being undertaken by schools across
the county. From school twinning with Kenya, to family
history, to engaging with disaffected young people, to promoting
linguistic diversity.
ISIS presented information about how the duty to promote community
cohesion can be woven through many subjects in the curriculum
including citizenship, geography and history. While the Extended
Schools team gave some ideas about how they can support schools
with building links into the wider community.
Sir Keith Ajegbo, who after many years as a Headteacher now advises
dcsf on community cohesion, gave the keynote address. He
framed his talk around the three broad perspectives that schools
can base their contribution to community cohesion around:
1. Teaching, learning and the curriculum
2. Equity and excellence
3. Engagement and extended services
To view the results from the OFSTED schools inspections,
in relation to Community Cohesion in Suffolk,
click here (xls 31k). To view all
of the OFSTED Inspection results go to their
website.
In support of out-of-school-hours educational opportunities for
children and young people, many of whom come from our minority
ethnic communities, Suffolk County Council have produced a
'Directory of Supplementary Schools in Suffolk'. It is
particularly important for mainstream schools, who now have a duty
to promote community cohesion, and may not be aware of the
Supplementary Schools in their area.
Related Documents
Inspecting maintained Schools' duty to promote Community
Cohesion (PDF 49k)
Duty to promote Community Cohesion in
Schools (PDF 48k)
Possible approaches to Community Cohesion in
Schools (PDF 52k)
Community Cohesion Case Studies (PDF
169k)
Related links
SCC Information about
Schools and Schools Services
Supporting information from Teachernet
SCC Extended Schools
Services