Learning the lessons

As contributors to Housing Today have frequently pointed out, the past two decades have seen major changes in housing policy. The residualisation of some estates has generated multiple social problems, making them a focus of attention and reinforcing concerns about the creation of an underclass in serious risk of becoming excluded.

Considerable effort and resource has been expended in improving the fabric and creating opportunities for residents of these estates. However, there is still concern that resources are not used effectively, services not integrated and the joined-up solutions so often advocated are still not emerging.

As researchers we are concerned that despite the rhetoric, housing policy - locally and nationally - is often developed without acknowledgement of the impact it can have on schools.

Changes in housing policy can often have unforeseen implications for what we chose to call the "delicate ecology" of a school. In our recently completed report Housing and Schooling we suggest such changes can compromise the achievement of a joined-up approach.

Current government thinking stresses the role of education in addressing the problems of an emerging underclass and in helping to reinvigorate local communities. The strategy of school improvement continues apace and standards are claimed to be rising. However, some schools, often those serving vulnerable communities, still face many difficulties. In striving to improve standards schools are faced with responding to the needs of the local population. Changes in that population can have a dramatic effect on the pupil intake, significantly altering its characteristics. Without adequate warning schools and teachers may not have the time to respond to these changes: new teaching and learning styles may have to be acquired; new resources developed and even new classrooms built. All in all, without adequate time to prepare, the delicate ecology which is a school can be significantly destabilised with often-negative consequences for the pupils and families it is designed to assist.

Our research looked at "Granville", a social housing estate in the north of England (its name has been changed to protect the identity of both the residents and the landlord). From its inception the estate had always been regarded as a desirable place to live and the primary school which served the estate had enjoyed an enviable reputation for its often innovative work with children. The relative stability of both the community and the school was, however, progressively fractured as houses on the estate were allocated on the basis of need in line with government policy. These changes not only increased numbers but also introduced pupils and parents with a range of needs not previously experienced by the school. In the eyes of the staff, standards - both academic and behavioural - were falling. They faced situations and challenges for which they had not had time to prepare. As pupil numbers rose, so the pressures increased and teachers reported that problems were increasing. As the school sought to confront these issues it was, of course, faced with additional pressures resulting from other policy initiatives creating yet more tensions and a feeling of powerlessness. In our terms this seemed to be an example of the failure of joined-up thinking.

Despite the calls for joined-up solutions we know relatively little about the relationship between housing and schooling. Connections between housing and education remain, in both research and policy terms, relatively under-explored. As the Chartered Institute for Housing has commented: "The connection between housing and education may not be the most obvious. This is reflected in the lack of comprehensive research investigating how the two interact."

However, our research seeks to fill in at least some of the gaps in our understanding of these issues.

Housing and Schooling charts the strategies adopted by one school and by the estate's landlord in their attempts to address this situation, setting out both their failures and successes. We would suggest that registered social landlords need to be more aware of how their lettings policies impact on local schools and argue for an extension of housing plus to incorporate issues related to schooling. However, we also suggest that landlords have to be wary of becoming front-line providers of education services. Instead, they should act as advocates for the communities they serve, helping schools to understand the changes in those communities and locking them into wider multi-agency strategies.

It is entirely likely that these destabilising effects are not restricted to the "worst estates". Even estates which are not in a spiral of decline are likely to have experienced shifts in population, and even schools which are not "failing" can be faced with more problematic pupil populations as the result of minor changes in letting policy. The lessons from Granville point to the need for agencies not only to concentrate on situations which are considered as especially acute but also to be sensitive to all situations where the delicate ecology might be disturbed. The key to us appears to be not the absolute level of difficulty (in terms of poverty, low attainment and so on) that estates might experience so much as the degree of change to which schools are required to respond.

Granville also highlights a further dilemma for those seeking a joined-up approach. This was not an estate which could be described as particularly problematic. The consequence was that the other agencies active on the estate - including the local education authority and its services - tended not to see the estate as a priority area. Although they provided adequate levels of service, they were not inclined either to invest disproportionately in the estate or to engage in ambitious inter-agency approaches and regeneration schemes. There were, for instance, no plans for Education Action Zones, or Health Action Zones and no ways to access moneys for New Deal for Communities or Excellence in Cities initiatives. One question therefore, is how can estates such as this access their fair share of attention and resources to prevent disturbing their delicate ecologies?

* Landlords can do something about a potentially destabilising situation by managing their lettings policies in order to create more balanced communities. They can also supply schools and LEAs with information about the impacts of their policies. This information should detail not only the numbers of children expected in the area, but also their likely characteristics and needs.

* Where communities are in transition, schools need to reorient their policies and practices in the light of the population they serve now rather than that which they served in the past. Schools cannot be expected to undertake this reorientation alone. They need to be locked into community-wide, inter-agency strategies.

* Landlords have an important role to play in acting as a facilitator of these strategies and representing the needs of the community to other agencies. There are good reasons, in particular, why the notion of housing plus should be extended to include work with schools.

Landlords face a dilemma in changing communities: should they focus on maintaining the best aspects of the status quo, or on reorienting the community, its institutions and agencies in order to meet the new situation? We would argue that maintenance is not a viable long-term strategy. Landlords involvement with schools should not consist simply of offering additional resources. They also have to seek ways of assisting in the reorientation of schools' existing practices.

Efforts at local level need to be supported by coherent national policy. This implies a clearer analysis on one another and the creation of stronger local co-ordinating mechanisms.

The area-based initiatives currently favoured by national government are welcome because they promote inter-agency collaboration and coherent area-wide strategies. Landlords can use these initiatives for their own involvement in educational and other social issues. However, there is a danger that such initiatives will bypass areas where problems are real, but are not yet acute. The more promising joint-planning mechanisms form area-based initiatives therefore have to be generalised to a much wider range of areas if endemic problems of fragmentation are to be addressed.