In the coming days, schools around the country will play host to all manner of Christmas events - nativities, carol concerts musical recitals and more.

These events are part and parcel of the long-standing community engagement that schools carry out during the year and many pride themselves on their “outreach” activities and the “benefits” they offers to the community.

This, in itself, is no bad thing.

A one-way street?

Yet I worry that too many schools fall into the trap of seeing this sort of engagement as a one-way operation: they give something to their community and feel good about themselves for doing so.

The transactional nature of this relationship has become one where schools believe they invest and spend for community benefit, with little perceived appreciation of what comes back from the community.

In reality, though, it should be seen as a relationship that goes in both directions, whereby schools gain from their communities, too.

If we were to look at this as a business would - which, given that much of what we do in education draws ideas from other sectors, seems apt - we can see why the reciprocal aspect is required.

In a business, members of your “community” are your customers - and they are your most precious asset. You need to understand them, identify what they want and need, and then engage with them to communicate that in a meaningful way.

There is no “off-the-shelf” way to do this - it requires analysis and insights about what will work best in your context, as well as an investment of time, effort and resource.

Know your community

This is something schools are capable of doing. After all, many understand that delivering a curriculum can be done contextually and you adapt how you deliver it to suit the needs of the environment you are teaching in.

Community engagement should be no different from a well-sequenced, coherent and contextual curriculum that is fit for purpose within your setting.

It means genuinely understanding who you serve and the world your school exists in. Too often, senior leaders of schools drive to their school in the morning and drive home in the evening, but know little of the reality around the school in terms of pupils’ and families’ experiences.

This is often the case in areas of higher deprivation, where you typically have more middle-class school leaders working within the working-class community in which the school is situated. The divide between community and school leaders in these settings, if the bridge is not created by the school, can be painful to observe. 

Without the active building of a bridge by the school, community engagement feels hollow - something that is being done to parents and pupils, rather than with or for them.

It is something parents and pupils see through very quickly and will lead them to turn away from, or be passive at least, in how they engage with a school.

True engagement 

To make it meaningful, schools must show themselves not only as a place where a concert is put on or a sports match takes place but where the community is invited in. Somewhere that community groups can make use of the facilities for an evening or weekend, where there is an open-door policy that welcomes families in, where the parent-teacher association meets regularly and is a forum for real dialogue.

How many schools could let their kitchen and dining facilities be used over Christmas by charities to host lunches for elderly people, for example? Or invite them to see the school Christmas play? Yes, there are safeguarding policies that must be adhered to and so on, but it shouldn’t be a barrier to true community engagement.

It also means recognising that it is not just the parents of a school that are the community but also the wider population affected by the school’s presence, through, say, traffic and noise at drop-off times. Those in the immediate vicinity of our buildings, those in our villages, towns and cities, are all a part of the communities we serve.

Engaging with them - whether through newsletters or responsive replies to any concerns raised - can help people appreciate and value having a school nearby and the role it plays in the community.

Many schools do this with aplomb while others may need to rethink their strategies or have an honest look at their engagements to date and reflect on whether they are done only for the benefit of the school.

The role of multi-academy trusts

Of course, as more schools are now part of multi-academy trusts (MATs), it is something leaders at the centre have to think about, too. For many, this will mean setting out the ethos they want their schools to have when it comes to how they engage with communities and giving guidance if required.

This will be harder for trusts where schools are based over wide geographical areas as they may not know each school’s demographics as well. But they can still outline the ideals they want to instil and hold people accountable for that.

As they grow, MATs need to remember that they serve a range of communities, and those in their schools need to see the commitment from the MAT to instilling the values of community as a family of schools before they can expect individual schools to engage with their communities. We can’t expect our school leaders to reach outside of their school gates if we can’t reach out from our offices to the people who work for us.

It is down to leaders at the school level to interpret what is meaningful and effective community engagement for their own settings.

Why it all matters

Many will say this is the “soft” side of school leadership - that delivering teaching and learning, and assessments and outcomes, is what really counts and everything else is secondary. But I don’t agree at all.

First, if we return to our business comparison, we can quickly see why this matters from a financial point of view: with fewer pupils coming into the system in the years ahead, schools that provide good education and are seen as part of their communities will be the ones that thrive.

Second, and perhaps even more importantly, better understanding our families, our pupils and our communities can only lead to better relationships.

That, in turn, can only lead to better outcomes - something that everyone wants for our children.

Sufian Sadiq is director of the teaching school at Chiltern Learning Trust