The politics and ethics of school closure: a school at the heart of the community
MARION MOSER, Department of Geography, LancasterUniversity*[1]
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, Institute of Education, University of London, 5-8 September 2007
*Author is now Marion Walker at LancasterUniversity:
DraftConference Paper
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the norms and principles in practice that create conflict for the actors within a rural community affected by the threat of closure to their local primary school. Using primary data collected through interviews and observations the study shows the need for a reflexive methodological approach when collecting data at a time of heightened sensitivity within a tight-knit community. The paper illustrates the high level of resistance the ‘notice to close’ incurs and the resultant backlash the Local Authority experiences as the threat is presented by the school community and the media as an attack by outside officials on their rural community. Utilising Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, habitus and field the research shows how resources and ties to the locale and the community affect the parents’ responses to the threat of closure. The continuing policy shift towards greater parental power offers middle-class ‘professional’ parents the opportunity to create their own social community within their preferred locale and educational niche. Parents may now choose to create a school at the heart of their rural community, but this does not necessarily mean that the educational needs of all of the local children will be met. The study shows that the relationship between the school and its local community is both fluid and complex and that the metaphor of the school at ‘the heart of the community’ is more of a myth than a reality. The paper concludes that the market has the power to destroy communities as well as to create them and that the social communities that will succeed will be the ones with the most resources of economic and cultural capital.
Introduction: primary schools in rural areas
Like all schools, rural primary schools have been subject to government policies aimed at raising education standards through the marketisation of education and the institution of parental choice mechanisms. The impact of these policies, in the rural locale, has led to the development of tensions between schools and local communities. Fundamental to the problem is the contradiction between libertarian and free-market policies and a commitment towards communitarianism and the promotion of community ways. This is reflected in the mis-match between market-driven education policies that position schools as producers and parents as consumers of education, and communitarian-driven rural policies advocating the protection of rural communities and their key village services,which includes the rural primary school.
Within the market ideology collectivism is discouraged since the market places pressure on producers and consumers to be motivated by self-interest (Gerwitz et al., 1993). Nevertheless, the government pledge, in the Rural White Paper (DETR, 2000) to strengthen its policy against the closure of rural schools reflects the valuable role the school is seen to play within the local community and as such the pledge is a part of the government’s bid to retain rural services, analogous to retaining village post offices and subsidising rural transport. The reality is, however, that although the government evocatively suggests that “local schools are at the heart of many rural communities” (DETR, 2000, Chap.3.4.1), and that this is ‘a good thing’, rural schools need to compete with neighbouring schools for pupils in order to receive their total budget allowance.
Certainly rural policy appears at first glance to offer rural schools a safety net from all-out competition but the pledge is in fact a ‘presumption’ and not an ‘absolute’ against school closure. Though fewer now, school closures do still occur (Defra, 2004) and they are a key feature of the market-place model based on the notion of winners and losers. The ultimate threat of closure remains, and it is still necessary for rural schools to behave like businesses to promote themselves in order to be competitive and viable. However, rural primary schools tend to be small, and in areas with a low-density population the pupil roll is highly vulnerable to both fluctuations in the birth rate, migration flows and the vagaries of the market. The notion that competition enables the ‘good’ schools to thrive and forces the ‘poor’ schools to improve or be closed fails to take into account that in a rural context a school with falling pupil numbers may not necessarily be a school with falling standards.
Small schools[2], however, are more costly to run (LGA, 2000), even with the help of government grants, which have to be matched with funding from the Local Authority (LA). The tension created by market-driven and communitarian-driven policies therefore provides rural LAs, particularly those with a high proportion of small schools, with the added problem of balancing school and community service delivery with cost effectiveness. National rural policy places the local school as a key resource within the community yet as a consequence of county-wide financial constraints, some small schools will undergo reorganization, involving amalgamation, federation or school closure, as rural education policy is managed at the local level (Ribchester & Edwards, 1999) by the LA.
Fostering a link between the school and the local community has become a common theme within successive government policies since the 1988 Education Reform Act (DCSF, 2007; DfES, 2001a; DfEE, 2000; DfEE, 1998; DfEE, 1997; DfE, 1992). Current government thinking claims that a necessary and mutually beneficial relationship exists between the school and its surrounding community and this encompasses schools making links with parents, families, local residents and local businesses. Schools are encouraged to form partnerships with parents as a way to raise academic standards. As the DfES (2003, p.1) suggests, “Parental involvement has a significant effect on pupil achievement throughout the years of schooling”. Parents and local residents are encouraged to take part in school life by becoming school volunteer helpers and school governors (DfES, 2001a; DfES, 2001b; DfES, 2003). Further links with the local community can be made by opening the school building as a community space for out-of-school activities such as sports, Internet access and adult education (DfEE, 2000) and this is strongly encouraged for rural schools in remote areas where there are few local amenities (LGA, 2000).
However, alongside the more obvious benefits the rural school offers to its pupils is the less tangible benefit located in the school as a symbol of community identity. Forsythe (1984) suggests that this places the rural school as a focal point within the community, and that this perception is intensified in more remote areas where the school acts to promote social integration between people divided by both social and physical barriers, which includes providing the motivation for people to work together for what they consider to be for the common good. Forsythe (1984, p.215-216) suggests that the school is valued for the educational and social benefits it offers with the effect that the “school makes a community”. It is hardly surprising therefore, that any mention of school reorganisation will be considered by the local community to be a threat to their rural way of life. The high level of resistance this can incur, Forsythe (1984, p.222) argues, is in fact an expression of localism with the attack on the school seen as an attack by outside officials on the local community. Forsythe (1984, p.209) suggests the corresponding conclusion for the local people is that school closure will ‘kill’ the community. However, she goes on to argue (1984, p.222) that when a school is defended in this way, although the argument “may be local in intent, it is hardly local in content” since the school’s importance is established upon general cultural beliefs about rural schools per se rather than on the basis of the school’s specific contribution to one particular local culture. Forsythe (1984, p.221) does however make the case that when school closure is against the wishes of the local people it increases “their feelings of powerlessness and alienation with respect to the organs of local government, and can lead to enduring resentment”. The manner in which the LA closes a school within a community therefore seems to be of paramount importance.
Moreover, any changes threatening the image of the rural idyllic community, which includes the local school, is likely to be met by vigorous challenge from the middle-class in-comers determined to maintain the rural idyll (Pahl, 1970; Newby, 1979; Cloke et al., 1995). Indeed some of these middle-class in-migrants will include parents with the skills to defend their right to school choice and for those newly arrived urban in-migrants it is likely this will include the view that the local school should be at ‘the heart of the rural community’. Understanding what the ‘rural community’ means to people when they apply it to school choice is therefore relevant to the discussion about how schools and parents are operating within the educational market place in rural locales. Placing the local school at the heart of the ‘rural community’ maybe a myth that is perpetuated by the government to gain favour with rural voters (Ward, 2002), but the reality is that for those people who believe in the myth, the concept of the rural idyll matters to their rural way of life.
The policy of choice within education (DfE, 1992) enables parents to choose a school either in or out of their local catchment area. The extent to which rural schools respond successfully to market demands is therefore dependent not only upon their ability to retain the support of local parents but also the ease with which parents from outside the catchment area can engage in the daily migration to a school other than their local one. Indeed the rural school’s ability to attract pupils from outside the catchment may be crucial to its survival. The parents with the ability to engage in this daily migration are most likely to be those described by Gerwitz et al. (1995) as the ‘skilled choosers’, middle-class parents with economic and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) enabling them to optimise their choice of schools. However, this begs the question ‘which rural community is the local school serving’?
Methodology
The wider research project on which the paper draws set out to explore the dynamic relationship between schools, community, parental choice and social class by examining how four rural primary schools (within the same county) and the people who make up the respective school and local communities deal with the market. This paper draws on data collected at a small rural primary school and involves observations at the school and 19 interviews with staff, governors, parents, volunteers and council employees. Hill Top[3] is situated in an area with a low-density population and the school has experienced several threats of closure when pupil numbers have fallen. The pupil roll of 21 has halved in the past ten years and includes 9 children from out-of-catchment. At the time of data collection (Summer Term 2003) it seemed likely that the threat of closure would become a reality and this coloured events during my visits to the school.
Furthermore, as Becker (1971, p.268) points out, “by virtue of their positions” some participants may be recognisable and this is certainly the case for the county council employees and key stakeholders in this small community. For this reason it is important to try to protect the respondents from identification. I gave promises of confidentiality to the school, the participants and key stakeholders within the county and their trust has led me to believe that there are legitimate reasons for not being county specific in this public document. As a result I have decided to anonymise the county references from the analysis since an abundance from one particular county would lead the reader to guess the county involved and from there to trace the institutions and the respondents.
Hill Top: the school and the local community
Hill Top C of E School is located in an area of the county where the population is sparsely dispersed in a parish that is somewhat lacking in its infrastructure with only a church, church hall, the school and a pub. These key buildings are geographically isolated from each other with the result that visually the parish has no focal point. The school was built in the middle of the nineteenth century on the brow of a hill beside what is now a B-road used mostly by farm vehicles and wagons. There are no pavements leading up to the school and for health and safety reasons the LA ruling is that pupils must arrive at the school by car or taxi. Hill Top is an infant and junior voluntary controlled church school for 4-11 years. It has two classrooms, a mezzanine library, a quiet room, an office, a small kitchen, a pottery, a playground and gardens[4]. The school has two classes divided by the two Key Stages: an Infant Class with 6 pupils and a Junior Class with 15 pupils, including one child with a Special Needs statement and two children who are mostly home educated. Pupil attainment on entry is “typical for this age” (Ofsted, 1999). The school has two full-time teachers including the teaching head (she works with Class 1) with full teaching commitment and no allocated time for administration. The Special Educational Needs Coordinator works the equivalent of 0.1. School secretarial work is provided four mornings per week and is a job share between two women who are also mothers of children attending the school. The nearest nursery is attached to Riverdale C of E voluntary aided school, approximately 3 miles away in the next village, and which also hosts the nearest playgroup.
HillTopSchool is known locally for its supportive inclusive ethos and according to the school prospectus it provides a broad curriculum so that academic subjects are a part of, rather than the focus of, the school’s teaching. The school has a reputation for attracting an ‘arty’ set of parents or as parent Adam, whose daughter recently left Hill Top forout-of-catchment Riverdale, described them “the hippy lot.” Adam believes that Hill Top’s reputation for being ‘different’ has created a divide within Hill Top community with the parents who prefer a more traditional educational approach choosing Riverdale. However, parent Nick’s description of the parents at Riverdale is less forgiving and he said, “They give the impression of being a bit of a vacuous lot”. The insider feeling at Hill Top is that the parents choosing Riverdale are the wealthier parents and as Hill Top parent Lynne says, “Money talks, they are a bunch of snobs down there”. Hill Top certainly has a reputation for attracting a like-minded set of parents with educational capital[5] who could be described somewhat loosely as a group of parents who are not materialistic and who value the individual child-centred education their children receive at Hill Top. Nevertheless the group is not homogenous and consists of parents who are either out-of-work, work part or full time and live in rented or owner occupied homes. The factor that draws the group together is the top priority the parents place on the educational ethos Hill Top offers.
Headteacher Sylvia is aware that the school’s relaxed style does not suit all the parents who live within its catchment:
Some people don’t believe that it’s better for you to come to this sort of school and they perhaps have more academic hopes for their children. They cannot believe that we can be academically successful. You know they could come and have a look round and think ‘they’re all having a nice family atmosphere but are they learning anything’? And we could say ‘well look at our SATs results’, which to me aren’t very important but to them might be, and we say ‘look we’ve got 100% Level 4, we’ve got 50% Level 5 and we’ve got 10% Level 6; that’s how good we are’ but still they are not convinced…they want you to have school uniform, they want you to be having a spelling test every minute. No, they don’t seem to think you can do things in a broad way and that’s up to them, isn’t it? (Headteacher Sylvia)
Some parents have been so impressed by the child-centred one-to-one approach that Hill Top offers that they have re-located the family home. Bridget and her husband moved house from the city so that their three children could attend the school because Bridget says, “my mother-in-law said it was wonderful…the whole atmosphere of the school”. Nick explains that he and his partner Cathy found out about the school by visiting Bridget, “it was on a school day so they came to the school… and they were all so impressed they decided to move up”. At the time Cathy and Nick were unemployed and living in a council house. Cathy found a house to rent ten miles from Hill Top and moved the family so that the children could attend the school. Cathy felt that the move would be particularly beneficial for her eldest child: