The power of community collaborations to improve children’s learning and wellbeing

“This is not one person’s programme: it’s everyone’s programme” (Municipal Director of Education, Akuapem South, Ghana).

Bertina - a primary school teacher in Ghana’s Akuapem South District - tells us about an interaction she had with the mother of one of her pupils. The child had been coming to school late, and infrequently, and Bertina had called the mother to school to discuss the issue. But the meeting had not gone well. The mother accused Bertina of disliking her child and emotions escalated. The mother left, and Bertina felt frustrated and anxious. The absenteeism did not improve.

We were visiting Bertina’s school to learn more about the Communities of Excellence Programme (CEP). In Akuapem South, CEP is part of a Ghana Education Service initiative, supported by T-TEL, with funding from the Jacobs Foundation. It aims to enhance community engagement with and ownership of educational activities and outcomes. Its mission is to support children’s social and emotional learning and 21st century skills development, as well as improve literacy and numeracy outcomes. It does this by creating conditions in which actors across the education ecosystem - including newly trained community volunteers - are motivated to work together more collaboratively.

Bertina said that in the past she would have left the situation there - seeing it as unresolvable. But inspired by her CEP training, she approached the head teacher for advice. The head teacher took it to the School Management Committee (SMC) (made up of a diverse range of school and community stakeholders) who arranged a mediation meeting. Bertina was able to speak to the mother again “but without the anger this time, so she did not feel blamed”. Between the mother, Bertina and the SMC mediator, a plan was established to encourage the child to attend more regularly and more punctually. Bertina said: “I felt protected and happy, like I wasn’t alone in the argument. CEP makes you feel like you are part of something bigger as a teacher, like you are not alone”.

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For nearly three decades, studies from around the world have suggested that teachers are the central school-level determinant in pupil learning. Billions of pounds have been invested in initiatives that aim to research and improve the quality of teaching and increase the number of teachers working in education systems. Our own work has extensively championed this focus. But what if this is not enough? What if the focus on teachers is too narrow? What about other roles that support learning?

In parallel with a focus on teacher education and support, over the past five years a team from The Open University’s Centre for the Study of Global Development and the Education Commission’s Education Workforce Initiative (EWI) have been collaborating on a series of initiatives focusing on education workforce research and reform. More recently we have been exploring what we call ‘learning teams’: how different actors work with teachers in new ways to support children’s learning, with an emphasis on collaboration and partnerships. This is a move away from the model of a single teacher being responsible for the learning and wellbeing needs of (potentially) hundreds of pupils, to a more holistic approach involving a range of professionals and community members in respectful, collaborative practice to transform pupils’ education experiences and outcomes.

‘Learning teams’ embraces a diversity of partnerships, alliances, relationships and networks appropriate to different contexts that are created to address specific needs and challenges: they might focus on actors within schools, collaborations between schools and communities, or with different sectors and external agencies. We are specifically interested in initiatives (coordinated systematically and/or at scale) where collaboration has required (or inspired) people to extend or adapt the scope of their roles, potentially leading to new forms of practice.

Because there is so much diversity in how these teams are formed and how they function, and because there is no consistent terminology to represent a central commitment to collaborative practice, it can be difficult to get a handle on how common learning teams approaches are. But there is emerging evidence that such collaborative practices can have significant benefits for pupil learning and teacher well-being and motivation, even though concerns around the scale, embeddedness and sustainability of such approaches are commonly articulated.

Our most recent study of learning teams has included an analysis of 17 countries’ Education Sector Plans; an extensive literature search; engagement with organisations around the world working with team-based approaches; and the CEP case study. While this is a scoping study, we plan to extend this work over the next few years to deepen our understanding of different types of learning teams, their histories, and the tools and conditions which enable and complicate purposeful, effective and efficient team working across a variety of education ecosystems and for different purposes.

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CEP has only been running for just over a year in Akuapem South, but it was clear that certain enabling factors were supporting collaborative practices and leading to shifts in how teachers, school leaders and community stakeholders worked together. These included shared visions for learners in the communities, strengthened structures (like the SMC), volunteer ‘brokers’ with high levels of social capital who were able to connect different groups and mediate challenges, solutions and resources across local boundaries, and of course funding to support opportunities for engagement and collaboration activities and events at school, community and district level.

There were also challenges to these collaborative practices. These included limited pathways for sustained, scalable joint action around pupil wellbeing, potential tensions between school and community priorities and the sustainability of the volunteer roles within the programme. There were also equity issues between communities’ different capacities for fundraising and engagement, and some ‘contrived collegiality’ which looked organic but was administratively controlled (although this could also be an important first step to instigating routines of dialogue between actors which have the potential to become embedded ways of working).

Even if teachers are the most important school-level determinant of pupil learning outcomes, they cannot work alone, and cannot support all learners by themselves. Our engagement with CEP demonstrated that communities were taking small but important steps to supporting teachers through a wide range of collaborative practices. As one of Bertina’s colleagues said: “[Before CEP] we were lone teachers. We didn’t share. But we are not embarrassed now - we can support each other better. Working together is more interesting and you feel more like you are part of a team. CEP has reduced the shame - we feel that as teachers we are now ‘doors open’ ”.

By Alison Buckler, Freda Wolfenden, Kwame Akyeampong (The Open University); Memory Malibha-Pinchbeck (independent researcher); Katie Godwin (The Education Commission)