Week-12: School and Community

Education is an important tool in the development of communities and nations at large. The provision and management of quality education lies not only at the heart of central government but remains a shared responsibility of all stakeholders and the building of good working relationships among these stakeholders with particular emphasis on improving the school-community relationship. This stems from the fact point that education is seen as a social enterprise requiring the support of all stakeholders so that its contribution can benefit the entire society.

When used by educators, the term school community typically refers to the various individuals, groups, businesses, and institutions that are invested in the welfare and vitality of a public school and its community—i.e., the neighborhoods and municipalities served by the school.

In many contexts, the term encompasses the school administrators, teachers, and staff members who work in a school; the students who attend the school and their parents and families; and local residents and organizations that have a stake in the school’s success, such as school council members, education officials, and groups such as parent-teacher associations, and volunteer school-improvement committees (to name just a few). In other settings, however, educators may use the term when referring, more specifically, to the sense of “community” experienced by those working, teaching, and learning in a school—i.e., the administrators, faculty, staff, and students. In this case, educators may also be actively working to improve the culture of a school, strengthen relationships between teachers and students, and foster feelings of inclusion, caring, shared purpose, and collective investment.

The term school community also implicitly recognizes the social and emotional attachments that community members may have to a school, whether those attachments are familial (the parents and relatives of students, for example), experiential (alumni and alumnae), professional (those who work in and derive an income from the school), civic (those who are elected to oversee a school or who volunteer time and services), or socioeconomic (interested taxpayers and the local businesses who may employ graduates and therefore desire more educated, skilled, and qualified workers). Depending on the specific context in which the term is used, school community may have more or less inclusive—or more or less precise—connotations.

The links between any school and the community around it are manifold and can vary greatly in their nature. They are very relevant to the concerns felt by many about the contemporary organization and structure of schools. Opinions are expressed today that cover the whole range from those criticizing the school as being too isolated from the community to those alleging that the school is too closely interlocked with its environment. For example, a state of isolation is alleged by many educationists to characterize the relationship between the family and the school, which results in lack of academic success for many, especially working class, students, whilst left-wing writers often draw attention to the implicit connection between the school and the capitalist system, because of which most students, it is claimed, become subservient to a hierarchical class system.

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