Community engagement can help to create an inclusive educational environment where all students feel seen and valued. As our schools become increasingly diverse, actively involving the community can help schools to bridge the cultural, socioeconomic and experiential gaps that can otherwise alienate students. Early in 2025, we met with colleagues from various schools and the Department of Education (DfE) to discuss the importance of community engagement in education. This blog will explore the vital role of community engagement in education, highlighting some examples shared by colleagues, and addressing some of the challenges that schools face in developing and implementing effective community partnership work. 

Why is community engagement so important?

• Creating a sense of belonging

Community engagement and working with members of the community within the school fosters a sense of belonging and dismantles the barriers that may lead to feelings of exclusion. In our discussions, visibility and representation of a student’s or a teacher’s own community were endorsed as a way of making everyone feel valued and seen within the school. Reducing the fear of the unknown through understanding social differences was discussed as a way in which to build an inclusive school community.

• It takes a village (or community) to raise a child

Schools reported that by engaging with and creating partnerships between families, local organisations and wider networks, a supportive infrastructure can be created to support all students and families.

• Increasing opportunity and aspiration

A school has limited resources and capacity but by engaging with external partners the scale of support and opportunity for students can be vastly increased. Young people may also benefit from a broader range of perspectives, leading them to explore careers and pathways that they may not have previously considered.

• Improving attendance

Participants discussed how feeling seen and represented in school can improve students’ attendance as it helps them to feel as though they belong. In turn, by attending school more regularly, students’ feelings of confidence, wellbeing and resilience may improve. Furthermore, by being in school, young people can be kept safe and be supported more effectively.

How can we empower community voice and build partnerships?

Members mentioned a number of different community engagement strategies that they found to be effective. These included but are not limited to: 

• Inviting representation at decision-making events. Inviting community members into decision-making processes in school can empower individuals and groups who may otherwise feel marginalised. This can be done by inviting parents, local leaders and community leaders to discussions around policy and practice in school. This unification of the wider school community can mitigate the them and us mentality that can sometimes permeate educational environments.
• Developing a community magazine. This publication can share local opportunities and resources for families and connect them to additional support services. It can be easily translated into home languages using translation software (although it might still be worth checking with a member of the community to ensure accuracy of translation). It can also showcase the partnerships that work across the school community.
• Hosting cultural workshops.  Providing space for workshops to happen in school can improve representation and visibility and in turn, remove the fear of the unknown, increasing understanding and celebrating diversity within the community.
• Developing volunteering opportunities for community members in school. Some schools have created routes from volunteer work to employment within the school community. This exposed students to aspirational role models and routes they could pursue to future careers, alongside developing work opportunities for community members.
• Sharing alumni success stories. Inviting alumni back to speak with students and share successes post-education with the community has promoted role model representation within schools and engaged young people with post-school options. It also highlights the diversity beyond the school community.
• Hosting arts-based activities for the whole community. Inviting local groups of dancers or musicians into the school to share their performances has enabled one school to benefit from increased access to cultural experiences. 

The challenges and how to overcome them

Despite the benefits of community engagement for schools, barriers and challenges can impede schools from committing to this work. Below we explore some of the common challenges discussed and how schools have overcome these:

• Time

School leaders and teachers all discussed the challenge of committing time to this work when their workload is already heavy. However, some leaders discussed the benefits of the time commitment in the long run, explaining that developing a centralised hub of resources that the school can draw upon has made access to support for their community easier, now that this has been established. They discussed the importance of having this as a strategic priority and therefore enabling schools to protect time for this work. 

• Knowing who to contact

We discussed that when people approach school, they are often unable to reach the correct person to facilitate and develop the partnership, and school staff often no longer live within the community and lack the relationship with community leaders to access support. Schools spoke of  so-called gatekeepers often not passing emails on to  staff to protect workload, which can become a significant barrier to engagement. 

Schools discussed having specific role assignments and a central email where contacts can be saved and followed up by the appropriate people. Leaders also spoke about prioritising visiting community leaders and attending events within the community to ensure that they are visible and known, so that the community feels part of the school too.

• Representation within the school

Staff teams, especially senior leadership teams, are often not representative of the communities they serve. This is a significant barrier for students and communities to see themselves as part of the school in the teams serving them. Schools spoke of ensuring that their leadership teams all sat on community boards and groups so that they understood their community and made links. Actively recruiting from the community, and establishing volunteer routes into employment within some schools has also successfully increased representation. 

A school also spoke positively of recruiting support staff who could speak home languages. This has enabled them to engage with families more easily and has also built that sense that the school is for all.

• School facilities no longer being accessible to the community 

It was felt that it is no longer the case that the school is at the heart of the community.Leaders and teachers spoke of the inability to offer their facilities to the community outside of school hours as they were no longer able to pay for staff to open, close and clean the facilities. 

• Lack of training for leaders in how to engage the community 

It was acknowledged that most school leaders were originally teachers and have learned to lead via various courses and experiences. However, it was felt that the lack of focus on the importance of community engagement has meant that some school leaders fail to recognise the importance of this work to the success of their schools. 

The group felt that the following actions would help this work to flourish in schools:

1. A nationwide strategy setting out priorities for community engagement which leaves enough room for schools to exercise the necessary agency to implement this work
2. Commitment to addressing the representational imbalance of teachers and leaders across the system
3. Community engagement and therefore inclusion to be celebrated as part of the inspection framework for both state and independent schools equally
4. Training and support for school leaders to navigate the complexities of engaging in and sustaining reciprocal relationships, and a focus on complex problem analysis in national programs such as the NPQs 
5. A centralised system where schools could access national opportunities for support and those in the community and beyond could register their offer. This would enable equality of offer to schools, as all would have the opportunity to engage. It would also ease the challenge for external agencies willing to help and access a wider pool of schools
6. Ring-fenced budgets for this community engagement work.

In conclusion, community engagement is not merely an adjunct to education; it is fundamental to fostering a truly inclusive sector wherein all members feel supported and valued. By prioritising relationships with families, communities, and organisations, schools have the opportunity to improve student wellbeing, aspirations, attendance, and outcomes.