Reimagining English schooling: Unlocking potential through community partnerships

The 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) changed the direction of statutory education in England by introducing a culture of competition between schools. A market in education was created that placed school against school in neighbouring communities with the aim of the ‘fittest’ ones surviving while the weaker ones failed and closed. By the end of the 20th century, the epidemic of neoliberalism served to shift all of our public services through creation of these quasi-markets towards competition. While schools led the way, other essential services we rely on such as water, energy and transport fell foul of marketisation. We all became consumers ostensibly to improve efficiency and the quality of the final ‘product’. Over recent years this approach has become discredited as transport and other services return to democratic control, whereas schools remain locked in a straitjacket of competition. During the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, schools become much more than a competitive education service, they rapidly transformed into an essential mainstay of our communities, indeed of our society. This article will utilise the learning from research across three diverse secondary schools that provided accounts of their experiences prior, through and post pandemic. We use an understanding of their experiences to help reshape English schooling and through this argue for a repositioning of school as an essential community resource that is well placed to respond to the growing needs of communities if it is given adequate resourcing, freedom from competition and a new cooperative environment to do so.