Editorial: Plan puts schools at the heart of communities
Ravi Chandiramani
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
Last month's Children's Plan contained an impressive array of funding commitments, pathfinders and action plans that will help shape services for children, young people and families over the next 10 years.
From birth to 19, the Plan builds on the moves towards joint working ushered in by the Children's Act and Every Child Matters. But as the dust begins to settle, we can see that the Plan demonstrates a fundamental shift in thinking on schools from the Blair era. It ups the ante on schools to embrace the Every Child Matters agenda as they haven't before, outlining a "new role for schools at the centre of communities and more effective links between schools, the NHS and other children's services so that together they can engage parents". A series of school level indicators for the five outcomes will be issued in the coming months. So they now have a duty to co-operate.
The relentless push during the Blair years for schools to have autonomy, and the associated preoccupations with parental choice and league tables, is being checked. The Children's Plan does not allow schools to opt out of the inclusion agenda. Competition is giving way, at least a little, to collaboration. This is a major development in the effort to tackle disadvantage and inequality. In recent years, parental choice has served to widen divisions between areas, with the present system helping to create communities that are either affluent and desirable or deprived and undesirable.
It might not be the end of league tables but the Plan's emphasis on schools will help see children as children first, rather than where they come from. The aim of providing five hours a week of cultural activity to all pupils is a welcome step in this regard.
In line with the theme of collaboration, the Plan also shows a determination to bolster the role of children's trusts, pledging to examine whether their "arrangements need to be strengthened, including by further legislation". The onus is on local authorities now to include the police and health services as well as the services they line manage.
The government will not want to legislate on these matters. The changes are for the good and will be achieved not by compulsion but by winning hearts and minds, creating wilful co-operation and negotiation. A progress report on the Children's Plan in a year's time will show how far we have come.
