COMMUNITY COHESION

From September 2008 ALL schools have to comply with the community cohesion legislation

Community Cohesion is a new duty for schools to address. Further details of the requirement and ways in which some schools have approached this issue will be posted as soon as the material becomes available. The site below is the Local Government web-page for community cohesion. It gives guidance for this new legal obligation.

http://www.neighbourhood.gov.uk/page.asp?id=1200

The Community Cohesion team is a government unit under Ted Cantle which produces some very good material. Unfortunately, it is all copyrighted and so the materials cannot be shown on this web-site. However, a link to its web-site is legal. You will probably find it useful if you are thinking of producing some guidance for schools on this statutory duty. If you have done so or produce something, then please contact me through the web-site. I can put it on this page for sharing.

http://www.lga.gov.uk/Documents/Publication/communitycohesionactionguide.pdf

How can schools contribute towards community cohesion?

The guidance explains how every school will make an important but different contribution to community cohesion, depending on a range of factors including the nature of the school's population and the location of the school.

Broadly, a school's contribution to community cohesion can be grouped under the three following headings:

Teaching, learning and curriculum
Helping pupils to learn to understand others, to value diversity whilst also promoting shared values, to promote awareness of human rights and to apply and defend them, and to develop the skills of participation and responsible action.
Equity and excellence
To ensure equal opportunities for all to succeed at the highest level possible, striving to remove barriers to access and participation in learning and wider activities and working to eliminate variations in outcomes for different groups.
Engagement and extended services
To provide reasonable means for children, young people, their friends and families to interact with people from different backgrounds and build positive relations: including links with different schools and communities and the provision of extended services with opportunities for pupils, families and the wider community to take part in activities and receive services which build positive interaction and achievement for all groups.

Further support for schools

Along with the guidance, an online resource pack has been developed to provide additional support to schools in meeting their duty to promote community cohesion. The resource pack provides further information for school leaders and governors on the duty and how they can meet it.

This can be accessed throught www.teachernet.gov,uk

Below is a web link to the NAS/UWT position on social cohesion. The article gives an overview of the situation in Britain and is helpful in putting the issues into context

http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/Templates/Internal.asp?NodeID=73506

The BRITKID website developed by Chris Gaine is a very useful resource for developing awareness of different cultural and social groups/individuals. It focuses on different characters all from different ethnicities in a school and they discuss topical in a way that relates to young people's lives. It can be used in Enlgish, PSHE and Citizenship lessons and if you are creative in other curriculum areas as well.

The web link is: http://www.britkid.org.uk