North Prospect Community School in Plymouth is at the forefront of efforts to transform education. The school, which operates in one of the most deprived areas of the city, currently shares a site with a children's centre, GP surgery and adult learning centre and works closely with all three.
It is part of a cluster of schools that pool resources and is a key player in work to improve all aspects of the community it serves. All this tallies with the government's vision for a new school system, described in the recent consultation 21st-Century Schools - A World Class Education for Every Child, which will feed into a white paper due out this spring.
The government wants more schools to be like North Prospect. It wants them to work in partnership with parents, children's services and other schools, and ensure they're meeting the wider social aims such as supporting children's wellbeing.
Schools for the community
Above all, schools must reach outside traditional boundaries and no longer just be exam factories that place academic achievement above everything else. Instead of locking up when the school day is done, they must open their gates and become "hubs for the community".
It's an ambitious vision, so will it work in practice?
Norma Cadwallader, strategic director of children's services at Warrington Council and chair of the Association of Directors of Children's Services' educational achievement policy committee, believes it will be difficult to define what a 21st-century school should look like. "It is going to look different across local authorities and within local authorities," she says. "One strong theme is that schools should respond to community needs. So it's quite difficult to provide a simple blueprint."
A key challenge will be getting the right balance between promoting educational attainment and general wellbeing such as emotional and social skills, she believes. Within that it will be crucial to ensure the most vulnerable children and young people get the support they need in order to break the link between disadvantage and poor attainment.
Another challenge is leadership. "School leaders of the future must have skills that enable them to work in partnership, focus on their core activities yet help partners achieve their goals," says Cadwallader.
Training and workforce reform must keep pace with new expectations of schools and this includes more "shared responsibility" between professions, she adds.
Roles and responsibilities
Yet there's also a need for clarity about roles and responsibilities as schools branch out, says John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers (NUT). "The vision puts a very high premium on high-quality professional development for teachers and that there's no substitute for high-quality teaching," he says.
The NUT does not want to see teaching roles taken on by support staff, especially when it comes to children with special educational needs. It would like to see school clusters employ pools of experienced staff to do cover work.
Reforms must have the backing of the teaching profession, families and communities, adds Bangs, who believes government has tended to be too "top-down" in its relationship with schools. For example, it has said it will actively encourage greater co-location of wider children's services on school sites. These kind of arrangements must not be imposed but grow "organically", building on the work of local partners, says Bangs.
One of the biggest issues to be resolved in the 21st-century schools debate is accountability. Many, like John Dunford, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, argue that performance measures such as league tables have been damaging. The government has promised a new accountability framework and wants greater collaboration between schools.
"That's a very different message to the one we've heard for the past 20 years when schools have existed in a culture of competition that pits school against school in a beauty contest where there are inevitably losers," says Dunford.
Often those losers are children and schools in the most deprived communities, he adds.
New report card
The new framework will be underpinned by an annual School Report Card that will provide a "clearer, more balanced and comprehensive account of each school's performance", taking into account improvements to children's lives that don't show up in traditional measures like exam results.
"At the moment we're in a position where schools are incentivised to recruit the best pupils and what we need is to move towards a system where funding and accountability incentivise work with the most challenging," says Dunford.
The report card could help but people are anxious for more detail.
"If it's based on the current system, it would be a disaster," according to Dunford.
Schools will also be keen to know how accountability systems might apply to increased joint work across schools, says Hilary Emery, executive director for development and improvement at the Training and Development Agency for Schools (TDA). When it comes to funding, she believes schools will need support to make the most of government investment. This includes £265.5m up to 2011 to subsidise extended services and £295m to support sustainability.
"There is money in the system but it's helping schools and their partners look at how best to use those resources to meet their challenges and get the outcomes they want," she says.
More schools are employing school business managers to take pressure off teaching staff and the National College of School Leadership offers a training programme for this new breed of professional. It is working with the TDA on proposals for "school business directors" who could operate across more complex groups of schools and multi-agency partnerships.
Enthusiasm for change
Emery believes there is enthusiasm for change and says some schools are already going beyond what's expected of a "21st-century school".
A large majority are well on their way while a few still struggle with the theory that extended services and partnership work are the key to better education.
There's still a need to bust the myth that working in new ways inevitably increases teachers' workload, says Emery.
TDA's experience of remodelling shows it actually frees up teachers to concentrate on teaching. Those that feel overwhelmed need support from schools that are making it work, says Emery.
Meanwhile, children's trusts should be bringing schools together with other partners to develop shared understanding and strong partnerships.
Successful delivery
It's important to remember how far schools have come already, says Emery. "Two-thirds are already successfully delivering the core offer of extended schools and there is a tremendous amount of work being done," she says.
Plymouth's North Prospect Community School, for example, has transformed itself from a school that was haemorrhaging pupils in 1995 to a dynamo for change in its local community.
When the school moves to a new building in September, the transformation will be complete, says head teacher Chris Watts. He believes the 21st-century school vision is achievable but adds: "There is an issue around capacity."
Small schools and those in rural areas may find it harder to extend beyond their core function of delivering a curriculum. There's also a question mark over the capacity of partners such as health and social services to link up with schools. Professional boundaries can hamper collaboration, says Watts.
"It takes a lot of work to get people to work together," he says. "Things like the Common Assessment Framework are beginning to make it happen but it isn't necessarily people working together in that very personal way and you have to get to that level."
That's why there's a need for "risk-takers and champions" to lead the way, he believes.
He also feels government must be clearer about what schools should be doing, providing more examples and information about what is possible.
Partnership, believes Watts, is definitely the key and co-location of services does help.
"You need to understand each other's roles to be totally effective," he says. "The closer we work together, the more protocols we share, the more confidence and trust we build and the more chance we have of making an impact."
MILLENNIUM PRIMARY: THE FUTURE OF SCHOOLS
Millennium Primary School in Greenwich is "well on its way to becoming a 21st-century school", according to head teacher Amanda Dennison.
Its journey began in 2001 when the then Annandale Primary moved to a new, purpose-built building. More space and up-to-date facilities not only offered a better environment but also boosted the school's capacity to serve local families and the community.
"The new building is fabulous. There is a lot of light and glass, you can see people at work and feel connected," says Dennison.
Pairs of classrooms lead onto circular rooms for group work. Other facilities include an ICT suite, library, and dance studio and the school offers designated provision for children with autism.
Extended services include 17 after-school clubs, a toddler group and courses for parents.
When the school first opened, there were few other facilities in the area. But it has developed links with local organisations, including the O2 arena and David Beckham Academy.
It operates within a cluster of seven primaries, two secondaries and an early years centre. The cluster focused initially on developing extended services but now undertakes more joint work.
Dennison says her leadership role has become more diverse and the school's staffing structure has had to change.
So what do you need to do to become a 21st-century school?
"You need to be very organised, take a long-term approach and have confidence it's going to work," says Dennison. "And you have got to think creatively."
