Location, Location, Location: placing the rural primary school and the local community within the spatial market
MARION MOSER, Departments of Geography and Educational Research, Lancaster University*[1]
Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Manchester, 16-18 September 2004 and the Royal Geographic Society Conference 2005
ABSTRACT
This paper considers the changes rural primary schools and their local communities are making as a result of recent government policy and argues that including location in research on primary schools adds to the understanding of how the school-community relationship is played out and how this relationship then affects school responses within the educational market place. The boundaries surrounding rural communities are perhaps more visible than those in an urban environment so by studying the rural school, issues surrounding the marketing interface between schools and their communities are brought sharply into focus. Government thinking expressed within the Rural White Paper (2000) recognises the need to protect and provide key services to rural communities and as such the village school is seen as a valuable resource. However, rural primary schools tend to be small and in areas with a low-density population, hence the pupil roll is highly vulnerable to both fluctuations in the birth rate and the vagaries of the market. This is particularly problematic for schools with 50 or fewer pupils since they are sensitive to small changes to the pupil roll affecting standards and the school budget. The small rural school’s ability to attract pupils from outside its catchment may therefore be crucial to its survival. Set against the backdrop of the quasi-market and the mechanism of parental choice, this work-in-progress presents case studies of two primary schools, one situated in a rural accessible area, the other in a more remote rural locality. It illustrates the relationship each school has with its local community, which is in part due to both the rural nature of the community and to the school’s relative market position, to the consumer and neighbouring schools. Using primary data collected through interviews and observations the research shows each school operating within its own spatial boundary and highlights a number of issues involved in research on schools and their communities. The paper concludes that there is an assumption of ‘placelessness’ in education policy but since place is a property of the entity under research, including space and place into the equation adds to the contextuality of research on schools and the distinctiveness of individual school trajectories within the spatial market.
“Local schools are at the heart of many rural communities.”
(DETR, 2000:3.4.1)
Introduction
This paper argues that including geographic location in research on primary schools adds another dimension to the complex layering of understanding on how the school-community relationship is played out and how this relationship then affects school responses within the educational market place. Space and place are not merely containers (Rose, 1993) but properties of the entity under research and, as such, including space and place into the equation adds to the contextuality of research on schools and their communities (Reay & Lucey, 2000; Reay, 1996: Connell et al., 1982). The boundaries surrounding rural communities are perhaps more visible than those in an urban environment (Cohen, 1982) so that by placing the rural school in the spotlight, the paper highlights the relevance of location to the surrounding marketing interface. There is an assumption of ‘placelessness’ in education policy but place does matter (Harvey, 1985; Massey, 1994) to the extent that where a school is situated not only imposes structural limits to school responses through access to resources and a finite number of pupils but also affects the community response to the school at an emotional level.
The school-community relationship
Fostering a link between the school and the local community has become a common theme within successive government policies since the 1988 Education Reform Act (ERA) (DfES, 2001; DfEE, 1998; DfEE, 1997; DfE, 1992). Schools are encouraged to form partnerships with parents, governors and local businesses and for the school to be used as a community space for out-of-school activities such as, sports, Internet access and adult education (DfEE, 2000). Both current government thinking and academic research acknowledge that a necessary and mutually beneficial relationship exists between the school and its surrounding community. But the term ‘community’, and its associated connotations, encompass a number of fluid definitions ranging from national to neighbourhood levels (Blair, 1999); to notions of citizenship (Savage & Atkinson, 2001); to home-school partnerships (DfEE, 1998; Edwards & Warin, 1999); to community action used as a euphemism for class action (Dennis, 1984; Gerwitz et al., 1995). I argue that this creates confusion over school responses to the market and an ambiguity regarding the role that the school’s spatial position plays in the school-community relationship.
Any description of the school-community partnership will be affected not only by the location of the school but more specifically by the school’s relative spatial position to the consumer and neighbouring schools (Taylor, 2002). The shift in education policy towards choice and diversity (DfE, 1992) has opened up the possibility of parents considering schools other than their nearest, and for schools to offer a service to their catchment area and beyond. In the rural context this has increased the competition within the quasi-market formed among village schools and their neighbours, wherever they are situated, in accessible or remote rural locations or on the rural-urban periphery.
Alongside the more obvious benefits the village school offers to its pupils and the wider community is the less tangible benefit invested in the school as a symbol of community identity, with the school positioned by local people as a focal point within their community (Forsythe, 1984). Nevertheless, although the government evocatively suggests that “Local schools are at the heart of many rural communities” (DETR, 2000:3.4.1), and that this is in fact a good thing, rural schools are not protected from the vagaries of the market. Placing the school within its spatial context therefore, not only brings greater depth of understanding to the responses rural primary schools are making to government policy but also how those responses are then impacting upon the local community.
A contested rurality
In England 20 per cent of the population are described as living in rural areas so that in a country with an urban majority it is understandable that those people living in rural communities experience life as part of a minority group (Atkin, 2003) to the extent that the differences that exist between rural communities may simply go unnoticed or even be considered to be superficial. However, recognising the particular nuances between rural communities is necessary for developing an understanding of a community’s particular culture (Cohen, 1982) and part of this understanding needs to take account of the spatial context within which the community is located. Rural areas are not homogenous and the term ‘rural community’ may refer to a market town, an outlying village or an isolated hamlet. “Not all rural areas are remote but most remote areas are rural” (LGA, 2000:5) and so perhaps the most suitable distinction to be made about rural communities is that a difference exists between the ‘accessible’ and the ‘remote’. A school situated in a rural accessible location with good transport links to bigger settlements will respond in different ways to policy change than a rural school in a more remote location. Following the demise of public transport in rural areas and the rise of car ownership the concepts of accessibility and remoteness are nevertheless income dependent, since private-car ownership decreases the barrier presented by remoteness and therefore increases accessibility to services (Robinson, 1990). Remoteness will be less of a barrier to school choice for those parents with a car which facilitates the daily trip to and from a school outside their catchment area. However, the time cost of two trips a day should not be underestimated for parents with busy lives.
The Government recognises that many rural areas have lost their local services such as, the post office, the doctor’s surgery and the village shop, and as such are suffering decline. This has resulted in a ‘vision’ to improve service provision in order to create “a living countryside, with thriving rural communities” (DETR, 2000: 2). The government pledge, within the Rural White Paper (2000), to strengthen its policy against the closure of rural schools, reflects the valuable role the school is seen to play within the local community and as such the pledge is a part of the government bid to retain rural services, analogous to retaining village post offices and subsidising rural transport. This interest in rural issues demonstrates New Labour’s concern to move away from its traditional urban roots through the portrayal of a ‘one-nation’ party with what Ward (2002) suggests is an “increasingly stretched definition of rural” as a way to maximise votes. Certainly the pledge appears at first glance to offer small schools a safety net but the pledge is in fact a ‘presumption’ and not an ‘absolute’ against school closure. There is no doubt that those schools with 50 or fewer pupils, described by the Office for Standards in Education (OFSTED) as ‘very small’[2], remain in a vulnerable position since they are sensitive to small changes affecting both standards and the school budget. Moreover, small schools are costly to run, even with the addition of government grants, since these are dependent upon matched funding from the Local Education Authority (LEA). National rural policy places the local school as a key resource within the community yet some schools may still undergo federation[3], amalgamation or school closure, illustrating what Ribchester and Edwards (1999) suggest is rural education policy from the centre played out at the local level. The ultimate threat of closure remains, so it is necessary for rural schools to promote themselves in order to minimise their vulnerability.
The rural primary school market
Following on from the 1988 ERA the market-driven structure of choice and accountability has placed pressure on schools to attract pupils and on parents to become discerning consumers. Within the market ideology collectivism is discouraged, since there will always be ‘winners and losers’ (Chubb and Moe, 1990) and this places pressure on producers and consumers “to be motivated first and foremost by self-interest” (Gerwitz et al., 1993: 234). In locations where there is a low-density population the competition for pupils will be all the more intense. The notion that this competition has created a “consumer heaven” ignores the reality of ‘the cruel market’ (Ball, 1993: 6). How rural primary schools respond to market demands is dependent not only upon their ability to retain the support of local parents but also the ease with which parents from outside the catchment area can engage in the daily migration to a school other than their local one. These parents are most likely to be those described by Gerwitz et al. (1995) as the ‘skilled choosers’, middle-class parents with resources such as economic, educational and cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984) enabling them to optimise their choice of schools. Paying attention to the school’s spatial position requires an understanding of people’s access to that geographic space and the resources that are contained within it, to the extent that “differential access to social power and material resources” affects the parental choice process (Reay, 1996: 581). As Ball points out (1993) the market acts as a class strategy through which the middle classes reproduce their social advantage whilst at the same time enabling the over-subscribed ‘successful’ schools to be covertly selective with pupils. Crucially, the location of the school affects not only the school’s ability to attract consumers but more importantly the ‘type’ of consumer the school attracts.
Rural school responses to the market inevitably include advertising school successes, promoting links with the local community and selling their rural distinctiveness, which usually includes the advantages associated with their small size. Small primary schools tend to be popular with parents because “they have a positive ethos with a family atmosphere, close links between staff and parents, an important place in the local community, and good standards of behaviour” (LGA, 2000:11). One of the most commonly associated devices for primary schools to advertise their academic success is through the league tables. This is not, however, the case for small schools with ten or fewer pupils on the roll in Year 6 because with such small numbers of pupils being assessed there is “the risk that individual pupils could be identified” (DfES, 2004). Since the majority of rural schools are small this inability to engage with the annual public scrutiny of their Key Stage 2 SATs results (Standard Assessment Tasks) may be to their marketing advantage with those parents concerned more with school ethos than academic reputation. League tables provide only one element within a set of criteria adopted by parents in their decision to choose a secondary school (Gerwitz et al., 1993:251) and the same must be said of the mechanism of choice within the primary sector.
The pivotal nursery link
It appears, however, that for some parents the parental choice process begins well before the child’s entrance into statutory education. At primary level the move into the reception year is perhaps the most obvious transition point but the less obvious earlier pre-school transfers cannot be ignored. As Maguire (2001) points out, for those schools that have undergone a change of status to include nursery provision, the important stage between non-statutory pre-school provision and primary school intake will see the primary school working hard, first to attract the available rising three-year-olds into the nursery, and then “to retain all the available rising five’s from the nursery” (Maguire, 2001:36). It is clear that primary schools with nursery status for three-year-olds will have a marketing advantage over nearby schools without such provision.