The role of the school trust in enabling a sense of place
This paper does not offer recommendations but rather a set of principles for reform. We believe that the incoming government could take a more radical approach to educational reform, building on good foundations and the evidence that has been established over many years. This could sit alongside a wider approach to public sector reform aiming to promote resilience and collaboration among civic actors in a place.
Public sector reform could be built around the central organising principles of devolution and place:
Devolution meaning local systems that are built collaboratively, designed to respond to real lives.
Place defined at the neighbourhood level, local level, and regional or system level.
People’s lives are not organised around departmental boundaries. Reform should therefore be organised around places rather than institutions. Instead of separate systems for health, policing, employment, housing and education, the focus becomes the whole ecology of a locality. Greater Manchester’s integrated approaches to homelessness and health provide examples of this philosophy.
We believe this approach would enable a coherent, large-scale reform approach across government departments.
Building the resilience of places is linked integrally to the resilience of local institutions and the relationships between and among them. Structural reform should have as its core focus resilience-building, while strengthening the imperative of collaboration and collective leadership in place.
In addition to the main paper, we are also republishing Dixons Academies Trust civic impact report. This report provides an example of the type of work that trusts might do in partnership, to enhance the lives of pupils and their communities.
