Schools in Communities

Developing student agency with projects to embed your school in the community.

What is Schools in Communities

A programme supporting school leaders to work with students to create authentic social action projects for the benefit of students, their families, and their communities.

This is done by developing relationships and partnerships with neighbouring institutions, such as faith institutions, charities and employers, in order to put schools at the heart of the communities they serve.

You can now register your interest for 2021/22 by clicking below.

Why take part

Creating authentic action projects with community partners will help your school deliver a whole education by:

+ Making learning more relevant and engaging

+ Allowing students to take responsibility for their own learning

+ Supporting learning in various settings

During the COVID-19 crisis the value of the community around a school has never been clearer. This project aims to harness the relationships between schools and communities to best support young people in all aspects of their lives.

Community project

Alongside your students, you will design community action projects throughout the year, using principles of community organising and design thinking.

Expert input

You will receive expert input in the form of: four virtual training sessions to support you to plan, implement, embed and sustain your work; three coaching calls to offer you bespoke pedagogical and curriculum support; and access to a number of expert webinars.

Tools and frameworks

You will learn how to use different tools which will aid your projects, including stakeholder mapping to collate potential local partnerships and a theory of change to understand how to ensure your projects are impactful.

Learning network

The project cohort will form a learning network to share ideas and challenges in and beyond the programme, and will be matched into thematic groups of schools completing similar projects.

What are the expected outcomes?

For students

Improved student agency and real world translatable skills.

For teachers

Improved coaching and curriculum design skills.

For school leaders

Improved understanding of the issues faced by your students and their families, as well as strengthening your school’s place within the community.

Community project examples

Community projects led by schools using this approach have included:

+ Campaigning for better local transport provision.
+ Petitioning for access to more adequate green spaces.
+ Organising more significant interactions between young people and older generations.

You can discover some examples of innovative community based practice in these videos from our 10th Annual Conference.

Explore what participants in our schools in the community webinar, co-hosted with Teach First, tweeted on the day here.