[MUSIC] Hello again. This is Course 8: Developing Relationships, and Week 5: It Takes a Village to Raise a Child. The last lecture for this week is looking at a partnership approach to school improvement. What we can argue is that there are overlapping spheres of influence with young people's lives and this involves the family, the school, and the community. And each of these three has a substantial impact on how students learn and how they develop. What we can argue is, if we have regular positive frequent communication between these three groups, the family, the school, and the community, we will have a much better chance of improving the possibilities for young people to do well. If we think about it, the family is really critical in terms of how well students will do. It's the background that they have. It's the parents' attitudes to education. It's the opportunity to provide additional resources, computers, books. It's the opportunity to take children on holidays, and so on. All of these things impact on the positive opportunities for young people. And there are also various elements within the community that will impact on how well students will do in school. For instance, part of the community is government. And if governments don't supply sufficient funds to schools, then students will not do as well. If governments do not support education or demonstrate by their actions that they do not support education, then the rest of the community won't either. And if the community does not support education, then schools will be left alone to try it by themselves. So each of these three are very very important in terms of trying to promote positive student achievement. There are probably four factors that will assist us if we're trying to promote community involvement. The first one is if we as a school demonstrate a high commitment to learning to both the families and to the community, then they are more likely to also support a high commitment to learning. We need to have, if we want it to occur, a principal and teachers within the school that are positive about community involvement, that will focus on community involvement and will do the things necessary to enable community involvement to occur. So this will mean making decisions that will encourage the community to come into the school. It will also mean having communications with the community to demonstrate that the school supports what the community is trying to do. This in turn will generate a positive school community climate where people feel like they're partners in the process of learning. Finally, we also need a genuine, positive, two way communication between schools and the community partners. Community partners need to know what schools are trying to do and schools need to know how community partners are able to support them. So this two way communication is very important if we want to develop partnerships. What are some of the objectives that we might have for community partnerships? Firstly, we need to be very clear and we need to define very strongly, what sort of school and community partnerships we want. How can the community assist us, and how can we in turn assist the community if this partnership goes ahead? In doing that, we need to identify some of the areas in which schools are already partnering with the community. We might have to convince the community that we already have partnerships, that we're good at dealing with partnerships and those partnerships are positive. Having a list, or having an advertisement that identifies what you're already doing in the community is very important. We also need to let community leaders know and school leaders know how the partnership approach can actually impact positively on both sides. So if we step back a little bit, and we ask ourselves the question, If we want community partnerships, who will be partners of the school? So the question is, who are the various stakeholders involved in my school? I've given you a list here of the various stakeholders that could be involved. They include parents as you would expect. But it also includes other groups that have an interest in learning and an interest in schools. So I want you to just take a minute. Have a look at the list that is there. And I want you to think to yourself, is this group one of my stakeholders? Is it a stakeholder in my school? And then I want you to think, are there other groups that are stakeholders that are not on this list? [MUSIC] In order to promote partnerships we need to understand what the benefits of partnerships are. There has to be benefits for both the school but also for the community. But if we're trying to convince you as school teachers to start thinking about partnerships as a possibility, here are some reasons why partnerships with the community will benefit your school. There may be resources that you can't attract any other way. There may be experiences in the community that your students can have, that you can't provide within the school itself. It allows you to use community people to help you to make decisions. For instance, if you have an accountant looking at the cost of building a new building, or if you have a policeman who might be involved in decisions related to improving safety within the school. These are ways in which community members can actually participate in school decision making in a very positive way. We know that the partnership will strengthen your families, because what they will see is that the community is actually supporting their child in his or her education. You may be able to partner with specific groups that will enable them to cost share with new facilities. So, for instance, you may be able to afford a gymnasium for your school because the gymnasium will be provided in part by the community. The school could use the gymnasium during the day, and the community could use it before school and after school, which is when many people who work are likely to use the gymnasium in the first place. So once you had is a facility that is partially paid for by the school, partially paid for by the community that is being fully utilized in terms of how the money is being expended. What we could argue is that the facility, if it is used properly, will wear out, rather than rust out. It will be used to the fullest amount of time, and eventually need to be replaced, rather than being used for hardly any of the time and most of the community not having access. So what we're doing here is looking at various benefits that partnerships can bring to the school. So, how can the school build partnerships? What are the sorts of things that the school can do? The first thing would be to develop a policy. Let's define a vision to your partnership approach. In your school partnerships are designed to do what? We need to have clear goals as to how partnerships will be used in this school. Who will be involved? What sort of structures we need to build in order for those partnerships to be efficient and effective. Having developed strong and appropriate policies, we then need to establish communication with possible partners. This communication needs to be meaningful and it needs to be two way. We need to make sure that both the community partner and the school see a positive outcome from within the partnership. Again, if I use the example of the gymnasium as a way in which a school and a community can work together with a profitable partnership, that sees a positive outcome for both groups, both partners. We also need to respect the fact that sometimes partners might have a different starting point to what we do. Some of their interests may not be exactly the same as ours. So what we need to do is to negotiate. We need to respect different viewpoints, and we need to accept diversity as being appropriate. We will be talking in the next week about diversity. We need to respect the fact that within a diverse community there will be different perceptions of what it is that we need to do. Here is another list of things that the school might do to build partnerships. I don't intend to go through them. But essentially what we're looking at here is, how do we include people in decisions? How do we include parents? How do we make parents as leaders and representatives of the school? How can we create opportunities for the community to come into our school and see what it does, and see what it offers? What I'm suggesting here is the partnerships in order to be fruitful, need to be fruitful for both partners. We need to recognize that communities want their schools to be the best that they can be, and we need to recognize that schools can contribute, in a very positive way, to what happens in the community. It's when we work together that we reach the pinnacle of our achievements. The more we have as a partnership the better the both will be. Next week, having mentioned diversity as being an important issue in the developing partnerships, we are gonna look at diversity in more detail, and we're going to start by looking at important terms. Equity, equality, inclusion and disadvantage. So, until next week, thank you for watching. [MUSIC]