Community Cohesion Toolkit for Nottingham City Schools
About this toolkit
The purpose of this toolkit is to support schools to consider how they are meeting the new duty to
promote community cohesion. In many ways schools are almost uniquely placed in terms of their
potential to support and develop community cohesion.
• As a universal service they are accessed by children and young people of all races and
religions/beliefs within the community and by children and young people across the whole
spectrum of disabilities
• They are responsible for educating children and young people about the diversity of
people’s experiences and beliefs
• They are located physically within a community and provide the opportunity for the
community to use it as a resource
• They form their own community of pupils, staff, governors, and parents/carers – with a set
of values, an ethos and vision
As such, much of the daily life of a school whether consciously or not, is actively promoting
community cohesion. The aim of this toolkit is to offer head teachers and other staff some
conscious (or focused) thinking about a number of key issues in implementing the new duty.
The Tool Kit has 6 sections
1. Defining community cohesion
2. Barriers and overcoming them
3. The role of extended services in promoting cohesion
4. Providing evidence for Ofsted through the SEF
5. Mapping of Nottingham schools’ activities
6. Useful web links
It has been developed by drawing on a variety of sources – published guidance documents,
national research, local knowledge and input from EIP and local authority colleagues. We hope it
will stimulate your thinking and encourage debate about how your school can contribute to
promoting cohesion amongst our children and young people and the communities they live in.
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1. What Is Community Cohesion?
Since 2001, much work has been undertaken to develop the community cohesion agenda
following civil disturbances in northern towns of England. Since the Cantle Report into these
disturbances was published in 2002, there have been many attempts to develop a full
understanding of what features a cohesive community might display – and there have been as
many attempts at defining the term.
What is perhaps clear is that community cohesion points to more than ensuring race equality – or
indeed gender and disability equality. It refers directly to how people are better integrated within
communities but also places upon public institutions and organisations a duty to promote equality
for all. The government has now established a working definition (Feb 2008) which is as follows:
Community cohesion is what must happen in all communities to enable different groups of
people to get on well together. A key contributor to community cohesion is integration which is
what must happen to enable new residents and existing residents to adjust to one another.
Our vision of an integrated and cohesive community is based on three foundations:
•
People from different backgrounds having similar life opportunities •
People knowing their rights and responsibilities •
People trusting one another and trusting local institutions to act fairly
And three key ways of living together:
•
A shared future vision and sense of belonging •
A focus on what new and existing communities have in common, alongside a
recognition of the value of diversity
•
Strong and positive relationships between people from different backgrounds
For schools, guidance on the duty to promote cohesion has been issued by the DCSF. This
guidance defines the communities schools should consider in developing their response to the
duty. These are as follows:
Community from a school’s perspective
For schools, the term ‘community’ has a number of dimensions including:
• the
school community – the children and young people it serves, their parents, carers and
families, the school’s staff and governing body, and community users of the school’s
facilities and services
• the
community within which the school is located – the school in its geographical
community and the people who live or work in that area. This applies not just to the
immediate neighbourhood but also to the city or local authority area within which a school
is located
• the
UK community – all schools are by definition part of this community
• the
global community – formed by EU and international links
In addition, schools themselves create communities – for example, the networks formed by similar
or different types of schools, by schools that are part of the specialist schools network, or
specifically in Nottingham by schools that work collaboratively through Education Improvement
Partnerships.
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2. Barriers and Key Issues in Schools Promoting Community Cohesion
MORI polling conducted for the Commission on Integration and Cohesion found that:
• 18% of people surveyed identified immigration/migrants as the main issue facing Britain
today – with this answer overtaking crime in MORI’s regular surveys in May 2006
• More than half of people (56%) felt that some groups in Britain get unfair priority when it
comes to public services like housing, health services and schools. (Although this seems to
be a stronger national than local perception – locally only 25% feel that some groups get
unfair priority)
• Of the 14% of people surveyed who said they were not proud of their area, the main
reasons were crime (55%), a feeling of lack of community spirit (43%) and concern about
poor facilities (29%)
This gives a sense of the barriers to building cohesion: mistrust of different groups, particularly
those new to the local community; a perception that public agencies are giving others special
treatment; and a lack of spaces for meaningful interaction.
It would appear that for schools, the barriers to cohesion can be broadly divided into two:
1. General deprivation and community issues
2. The specific actions and performance of schools, and the local authority and other public
agencies that have an impact upon schools
Deprivation and Community Issues
In terms of deprivation and community issues, schools are frequently at the forefront of
understanding the impact of deprivation and also the changing nature of the local communities
they serve. Schools have to deal with the impact of poor health and diet, children living in poverty,
the impact of crime, bullying and racial tensions. Through admissions, they are among the first
public organisations responding to changes to inward migration or specific local issues such as an
increase in traveller families.
Ensuring that your school has good knowledge about the local community can assist you in
responding to and anticipating issues that may arise. In addition to generating your own
intelligence about local issues, engaging with the following Nottingham-specific approaches
should assist you in developing a better understanding of your community.
a) Education Improvement Partnerships – through sharing knowledge and intelligence with
other schools in your local area or faith community
b) Integrated Children’s Services Locality Management Group – three area groups, North,
Central and South, that bring together representatives from all services that provide
services for children. EIP managers represent schools. Each of the groups has a specific
remit to develop accurate data and intelligence about local communities and issues.
c) Neighbourhood Management – nine neighbourhood managers cover the City, aligned to
the Council’s Area Committee boundaries. Neighbourhood Management Teams draw
together a wide range of agencies, e.g., police, health, housing, schools, leisure and
environment, that provide access to a wider range of intelligence about local communities
that have an impact upon cohesion.
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Specific Actions Schools Can Take
The DCSF Guidance identifies three ways in which schools can concentrate their efforts in
promoting community cohesion. These are:
Teaching, learning and curriculum – helping children and young people to learn to understand
others, to value diversity whilst also promoting shared values, to promote awareness of human
rights and to apply and defend them, and to develop the skills of participation and responsible
action – for example, through the new ‘Identity and Diversity: living together in the UK’ strand
within citizenship education or Nottingham’s Global and Anti-Racist Perspectives (GARP) planning
tool for primary schools.
Equity and excellence – to ensure equal opportunities for all to succeed at the highest level
possible, striving to remove barriers to access and participation in learning and wider activities and
working to eliminate variations in outcomes for different groups.
Engagement and extended services – to provide reasonable means for children, young people,
their friends and families to interact with people from different backgrounds and build positive
relations, including: links with different schools and communities; the provision of extended
services; and opportunities for pupils, families and the wider community to take part in activities
and receive services which build positive interaction and achievement for all groups.
A range of specific actions that support these three areas could include the following:
• Ensure that you take action to develop and promote understanding of equality and respect
for the diverse range of cultures and religions/beliefs within the local area and in the UK as
a whole
• Ensure you take effective measures to address racial harassment and bullying in line with
the Race Relations (Amendment) Act 2000 and Nottingham City LA’s requirements as part
of the Common Monitoring Project
• Ensure that the syllabus on religious education promotes awareness of the importance of
good inter-religion/belief relationships and, in this respect, contributes to citizenship
education
• Ensure that you promote cross-cultural and inter-religion/belief contact within your own
parental network
• Ensure that the disparities in educational attainment are being addressed (in terms of
teaching and by use of role modelling and mentoring programmes)
• Obtain ‘value-added’ data on the educational attainment levels of the various groups (not
just broken down by gender and ethnicity, but by socio-economic status also) in the
community
• Develop school twinning and exchanges, to include teaching and learning projects, with
schools with different intakes to promote cross-cultural and inter-religion/belief contact,
respect and understanding
• Develop curriculum and extra-curriculum cross-cultural programmes and activities, e.g., for
arts and sport, parental schemes. Actively involve parents from different communities in
pre-school activities and out of school childcare
• Use Adult and Family Learning to encourage greater awareness, understanding and
participation amongst ‘mature’ learners
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3. Case Study
Extended Services Promoting Community Cohesion
Developing the core offer of Extended Services provides schools an ideal opportunity to embed
good practice in the promotion of community cohesion.
The ethos of Extended Services dovetails very closely with the duty to promote cohesion in, for
example:
• Consultation with pupils, parents, families and the wider community about the activities and
services they provide to ensure they meet the needs of all groups
• Working in clusters with other schools to build greater interaction and diversity into the daily
lives of their school and wider community
• Working with local voluntary and community groups to build stronger relationships with the
community, increase the range of activities and services they can offer, and gain expertise
in working with different groups who are already established in their area
• Embedding services and activities to their school improvement plan and to personalisation
to ensure they support the achievement of pupils from all different backgrounds
• Support for all parents through providing information, advice, and evidence based
parenting programmes which are designed to meet the needs of different groups
The NG8 EIP is based around the Hadden Park Family of Schools. In developing its extended
schools agenda, it has had the benefit of Hadden Park High being the pilot Full Service Extended
School for the City. However, in looking at the progress made by all the schools within the EIP
towards meeting the core offer ahead of the 2010 target date, it is worth noting how far its
experience and the activities it is developing support the community cohesion agenda.
• Multi-Agency Panel (CAF) Pilot – Hadden Park High has been running a Multi-Agency
Panel identifying additional needs for pupils for over three years. By successfully bringing
agencies together, pupils are being supported to overcome barriers to their achievement.
Through the Panel, the school supports its extended schools target of ensuring swift and
easy access to services, whilst also demonstrating its community cohesion commitment to
ensure pupils from different backgrounds, and with different needs, are able to enjoy similar
opportunities.
• Adult and Community Learning – a varied programme of adult and community learning
courses are run every day of the week at sites across the family of schools. These are
provided by a range of FE, private sector and community-based organisations. In an area
where there are higher than average levels of unemployment and low skills, schools are
now viewed as a community resource, and people who may otherwise be isolated due to
worklessness are able to meet other members of their community. Courses aimed at new
migrants from Eastern Europe and other groups of people with English as an additional
language have regularly been run. Through this approach, schools are able to meet their
extended school community engagement target, whilst promoting meaningful interaction for
people from a variety of racial and religion/belief backgrounds.
• Childcare – the Jigsaw Out Of School Club is run from Glenbrook Primary School and
offers after-school and holiday care for up to 24 children. Jigsaw’s intake is from schools
from three different families of schools, including a significant number from local faith
schools. In this way, the childcare offer is ensuring children from a young age are mixing
with children with different school experiences and religions/beliefs. In addition to the
formal childcare, Hadden Park and Glenbrook Schools run a regular free holiday activity
club which is open to all children between 8 and 14 living in the NG8 Area. Due to the
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number of special schools within the NG8 EIP, a focus on disability inclusion is beginning
to ensure that disabled and non-disabled children and young people are able to play and
socialise with each other in an out of school setting. This provision supports the extended
schools childcare target whilst promoting equality of life opportunity for children who may
be excluded from meaningful activities due to poverty or disability.
• The NG8 Band – music teachers in local schools recognised that children who had
enthusiastically played an instrument at primary school often dropped the instrument on
transition to secondary school. In part it was thought that this may be due to losing contact
through attending different secondary schools with friends who they had played music with
in primary school. A solution was to organise an area-wide band through a partnership
between Extended Services, the EIP and College Street. The band draws children from
primary schools across the area and from secondary school pupils who attend schools
across the City but who live in the NG8 postcode area. In this way, children and young
people mix across the key phases with pupils from a wide range of schools and,
importantly, are becoming a focus for local community pride. Performance opportunities
within the local area are being sought to encourage this local identity and pride (a particular
focus being on playing for older people to promote inter-generational contact).
Performances in the wider City, and in the future, further afield, demonstrate the sense of
community shared by young people from the area.
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4. Providing Evidence of Promoting Community Cohesion
Ofsted will begin the formal process of inspecting schools’ implementation of the duty to promote
community cohesion from September 2008. Clearly, then, it is of benefit to schools to evidence
the work it is currently doing and identify areas for development through the SEF.
The SEF provides a number of opportunities for you to evidence the social context you are
working in and the particular work you are doing to promote community cohesion. The following
sections are those that offer the most specific opportunities:
1a The main characteristics of the learners. Provide social and economic profile of pupils, e.g.:
• Free school meals/social deprivation (particularly IDACI data)
• Ethnic minority/travellers/EAL etc
• SEN pupils
• Male/female ratio
1b Your distinctive aims and special features. Key features to highlight could include:
• Mission statement, aims and values
• Religious character
• Partner links with local schools (e.g. through EIP and Extended Schools)
• Extended provision
• Specialist status/special provision
• Other Units including Children’s Centres etc
• Work-related links
• Significant external agencies
1c Contextual issues that act as aids or barriers to raising performance
• Mobility of learners
• New migration
2a How you gather the views of learners, parents/carers and other stakeholders
• Analysis from correspondence, questionnaires, interviews, parent support workers, school
council, PTA
• Stakeholders include pupils, parents, teaching staff, support staff, governors, religious
institutions, community groups, local employers, other schools
3a How well learners achieve and standards in their work
• Cohesion focus could be on how your school supports pupils from different backgrounds to
experience similar life opportunities, through closing the attainment gap
4a To what extent learners adopt healthy lifestyles
• The role of sport/exercise in adopting healthy lifestyles has a well-evidenced impact on
community cohesion. Organised sport (particularly team sports) provides opportunities for
pupils to experience developing concepts of rights and responsibilities, mix with different
communities, ethnic and religious/belief groups and develop a sense of community identity.
4b To what extent learners feel safe and adopt safe practices
• Behaviour policies including sanctions
• Anti-bullying policy
• School rules, rewards systems, positive behaviour strategies
• Care and control around the school, start and end of day, in class moving between lessons,
lunchtimes and break times
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• Racial equality policy
• Feedback from pupils, parents, support staff
• Health and safety policy
• Impact of Drugs Education, Sex and Relationships Education
This is a particularly important section in terms of evidencing how your school ensures that
pupils develop strong and positive relationships across racial, religious/belief, gender and
disability lines. It also offers an opportunity to evidence how pupils can develop trust in the
school as an organisation to ensure equity and fairness.
4c How much learners enjoy their education
• Planned opportunities for cultural development
• Procedures to improve rates of attendance/punctuality and attendance records
• Exclusions, procedures in place
• SEAL, PSHE, circle time programmes
• Feedback from pupils, parents etc
• Evidence of opportunities to make visits, receive visitors etc
This is an opportunity to identify how the school promotes a common vision which pupils
respond to and identify with, as reflected by attendance and behaviour.
4e How well learners make a positive contribution to the community
A community cohesion specific section – clearly this section allows you to identify progress in
pupils’ understanding of and participation in their wider local and global community.
• Links with other schools, including international
• Children taking responsibility across the school
• School council, pupil interviews and questionnaires
• Playground monitors/buddies
• Community involvement, charities, fund raising
• Peer mentoring
4f How well learners prepare for their future economic well-being
• Mentoring schemes
• Work experience
• Business links
As discussed earlier, the impact of economic deprivation is the key factor in determining lack
of cohesion within communities. Efforts by schools to improve pupils’ future economic well-
being will have the most significant bearing on the likelihood that they will add to the cohesion
of communities they live in as adults.
5b Quality of provision: the curriculum and other activities
• Extra-curricular activities, outdoor education, clubs
• Community involvement through visits and visitors
• Inclusion for identified groups, e.g., provision for able and gifted children, special needs,
EAL, etc
• Home-school links
• Enhancement through EIP partner schools, other institutions
• Vision for the extended schools
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Questions to Consider in Developing Your Response to the Duty
As part of an EIP network workshop to consider community cohesion, a set of questions were
devised to stimulate thinking and discussion that you may wish to consider with your governing
body, staff, pupils or parents.
Living with diversity
How well does the school currently prepare young people for living together with people from
diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds, disabled people and diverse sexual identities? Are there
ways in which the school goes beyond providing knowledge of diversity to equipping people with
the skills for living together?
Promoting multiple identities and a shared sense of belonging
What does the school do to reflect the multiple identities of its pupils and other people in the
locality? How does it cultivate a sense of commonality between people of different ethnic,
religious/belief, disability and sexual identities?
Equality and inclusion
How does the school respond to the educational needs of different communities? Are there any
communities or people who are alienated, excluded or disadvantaged in accessing your services?
Social responsibility
How well does the school respond to disadvantage and exclusion within the community of the
school, neighbourhood or religious/belief groups.
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5. Mapping of Community Cohesion Activities in City Schools
Through the network of EIPs in the City, a mapping exercise was undertaken in December 2007
to identify the range of activities schools are involved in that support the promotion of community
cohesion. This was not an exhaustive audit but an illustrative exercise to provide examples for this
toolkit. The results are grouped under broad headings and can act as an aide-mémoire to prompt
your thinking about what your school currently does, or as an ideas bank to develop future
activities.
Community Focus
• Working with Area Committees, community partnerships, police/wardens
• Involvement with Neighbourhood Week of Action
• BSF – developing schools as a community resource, community engagement in planning
and consultation activities
• Local environmental projects
• Engagement with local churches, mosques and temples
• Extended school activities – childcare, holiday play schemes, health sessions, adult and
community learning classes
• Playground notice boards – promoting community events
• Involvement in local planning issues (working with developers of new buildings)
• Business sponsorship/volunteers in schools
Participation, Cooperation, Personal Skills and Development
• School Councils (and area/city wide forums)
• SEAL
• Pupil counselling services
• Philosophy 4 Children teaching
• Transition programmes and support
• MALT
Support for Emerging Communities
• EAL classes – pupils and parents
• Supplementary schools hosted on school premises
• Refugee Forum – access to advice via school
Learning/Aspiration/Parental Engagement
• MFL work
• Mega Read/Literacy Projects
• Beth Shalom Links
• Family Homework Clubs
• Reading Mentors
• BME Mentoring
• AimHigher/Aspire
• Links with universities – student placements and volunteers
• Healthy Schools Award
• Family Learning
• Parenting Classes
• Parent/family counselling
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National/International Dimension
• European School Linking – Madrid/Vienna
• International visits and school links
• Charity Fundraising
• International Student Placements
• Specialist Schools Trust Network
• International Schools Award
Sports
• Inter school competition and festivals
• Youth sports leader awards
• Sports volunteers
• Adult coaching courses
• Links with community sports clubs (coaching/facilities)
Creative
• Area Bands
• Community Murals
• Creative Partnerships
• Community Arts Festivals
• Family of Schools Music Festivals
• Art competitions
An additional mapping exercise has been undertaken by Jane Daffé which identifies key local
initiatives against the Every Child Matters outcomes. This table is reproduced below:
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Initial Guidance For Schools: A Selection of Activities Which Evidence Support for the
Community Cohesion Agenda
Evidence mapped against the ECM outcomes
(Individual schools will certainly have further examples)
BE HEALTHY
• Anti-bullying strategies
• Restorative justice/peer counselling (ABC)
• Counselling services in schools
• Creative Journeys - art therapy sessions for pupils from asylum
seeker/refugee families
• Post-trauma counselling sessions for pupils from asylum seeker/
refugee families displaying emotional/mental health issues
• SEAL/PSHCE
• DARE
STAY SAFE
• Anti-bullying/restorative justice services/peer counselling
• Effective systems for dealing with and reporting racist incidents/
Common Monitoring Project
• ERACISM course for Yr 5 pupils
• SEAL/PSHCE
• Behaviour and attendance strategy
• Disproportionate exclusions pilot
ENJOY AND ACHIEVE
• Behaviour and attendance strategy
• Disproportionate exclusions pilot
• GARP – Integrating Global and Anti-racist Perspectives within the
primary curriculum
• Citizenship curriculum
• SEAL
• EMAG funding in schools – support for pupils with English as an
additional language and other ethnic minority groups at risk of
underachieving
• Ethnic Minority Services consultant work with schools – curriculum
and resource development, INSET/advice and guidance re needs
of vulnerable or underachieving groups
• EMS – support with admissions, induction and integration of pupils
from asylum seeker/refugee families, traveller families and those
new to English
• BPAP - Black Pupils’ Attainment Programme
• BCAP - Black Children’s Attainment Programme
• EAL Toolkit
• National Strategies intervention funding to schools
• NRF funding – academic coaches/isolated EAL pupils in non-
EMAG funded schools
• Target setting for ethnic minority groups
• Gender/ethnicity data monitoring
• AimHigher – priority groups/criteria for positive action on Higher
Education
• Black Teachers’ taster course – positive action
• Community schools – developing partnerships with mainstream
schools
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MAKE A POSITIVE • Disproportionate exclusions pilot and links with Nottingham Black
CONTRIBUTION
Families in Education (NBFE)
• Anti-bullying strategies
• Restorative justice services/peer counselling (ABC)
• Effective systems for dealing with and reporting racist
incidents/Common Monitoring Project
• ERACISM course for Yr 5 pupils
• Primary Parliament
• School Council
• Pupil Voice initiatives
• SEAL
• Art therapy sessions for pupils from asylum seeker/refugee families
• Post-trauma counselling sessions for pupils from asylum
seeker/refugee families displaying emotional/mental health issues
• Fund-raising activities
• Activities within local community
ACHIEVE ECONOMIC • Work experience placements
WELL-BEING
• AimHigher – priority groups/criteria for positive action on Higher
Education
• Extended schools
• Parental involvement and training opportunities
• Parenting Strategy
• Specific parenting programme for BME parents
• PATRA training opportunities
SERVICE DELIVERY
• Governance Structure (Equalities Shadow Board, BME Working
Group, Children and Young People’s Shadow Board etc)
• International Dimensions/Global and Development Education
(MUNDI etc)
• Schools work to celebrate diversity/create ethos and environment
that is respectful/inclusive
• LA officers’/schools’ links with wider community (voluntary and
community sector groups)
• Multi-agency working practices
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6. Community Cohesion, Diversity and Inter-Faith Web Links
www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/Communitycohesion - Discussion, reports, case studies,
resources
www.schoolslinkingnetwork.org.uk - National school linking programme – strongly promoted by
DCSF to support schools duty
www.globalgateway.org - International version of linking programme
www.multiverse.ac.uk - Resources for teachers on attainment of pupils from diverse backgrounds
www.garp.org.uk - Primary teachers’ planning tool to enable incorporation of global and anti-racist
perspectives (produced by colleagues in Nottingham)
www.britkid.org - A website about race, racism and life as seen through the eyes of the Britkids –
interactive teaching resource for KS2/KS3
www.qca.org.uk/qca 6753.aspx - QCA Respect for All section – resources for promoting diversity
in the curriculum
www.runnymedetrust.org - Resources for promoting multi-ethnic Britain
www1.coventry.ac.uk/researchnet/icoco - Institute of Community Cohesion - resources, conference
papers, research findings, case studies
www.integrationandcohesion.org.uk - Reports and news items from government commission on
cohesion
www.diversityanddialogue.org.uk Interfaith and secular groups working with young people to
enable contact and dialogue to build understanding across communities
www.aauk.org Alif Aleph UK website – British Muslims and Jews promoting positive contacts
between communities
This document was written by Nick Lee with the advice and editorial support of Nottingham City
Council, Children’s Services School Improvement Community Cohesion Steering Group: Andrew
Blow, Catherine Conchar, Jane Daffé , Karen Smith and Pat Whitby. Thanks also to Emily Raggett
for editing and production of the final copy. May 2008.
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Document Outline
- Community Cohesion Toolkit cover
- About this toolkit
- 1. What Is Community Cohesion?
- 2. Barriers and Key Issues in Schools Promoting Community Cohesion
- 3. Case Study
- 4. Providing Evidence of Promoting Community Cohesion
- 5. Mapping of Community Cohesion Activities in City Schools
- 6. Community Cohesion, Diversity and Inter-Faith Web Links
