ESRC seminar series: ‘Breaking the link
between education, disadvantage and place:
What future for area-based initiatives?’
Why do Neighbourhoods
Matter in Education?
Dr Carlo Raffo
Reader in Equity in Urban Education
University of Manchester
A reminder of the issues
 Educational disadvantage is found in all
parts of the UK but is specifically
concentrated in poor urban neighbourhoods
– De-industrialised cities, former mining areas
and industrial coastal towns and ports
 However….
– Spatial dispersion of educational attainments in
poor urban areas not consistent between
neighbourhoods
 Neigbourhoods matters!
What is it about Neighbourhoods that matter?

In much education policy disadvantaged urban places are viewed as ‘containers’
where the concentration of educational disadvantage is at its greatest. These
places contain many common attributes including:
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Low levels of employment
Poor health and housing
High levels of crime and teenage pregnancy
High levels of relative poverty
High levels of NEET etc etc
Problem with this approach is that it does not account for the way that equally
disadvantaged neighbourhoods can be differently categorised neighbourhood types
with correspondingly better or worse educational results (Webber and Butler)
There is something about place, over and beyond economic, environmental and
demographic descriptors, that matters
– Evidence to suggest that the identity and actions of young people and families reflects
the cultural, economic and historic social relations of particular places/neighbourhoods.
 Structure of feeling
– An understanding of these placed based social relations can be achieved by examining
the specific interpenetrations of the macro, meso and micro over time in neighbourhoods
– Educational identity of young people, although by influenced by schools, predominately
manifests itself through these interpenetrations
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What does all of this mean for neighbourhood/area-based initiatives?
In the first instance this depends on what forms of educational equity we want to
pursue through our area-based initiatives
What types of educational equity are we
trying to achieve in disadvantaged urban
contexts?
 A focus on Redistribution and/or Recognition (Nancy Fraser)
– Redistribution of educational outcomes
 Are we trying to ‘narrow the educational gap’ between those young people
experiencing the interpenetration of disadvantage and place (including
interrelated variables of gender, ethnicity) and their more affluent
counterparts?
– Issues of Recognition and educational processes
 Is there an educational misrecognition of individuals and groups
experiencing the interpenetration of disadvantage and place and, if so,
does it matter?
 What are the theories of change for educational equity in
disadvantaged areas?
– Redistribution
– Recognition
– Neighbourhood/Place
A theory of change for area based
educational equity – a focus on redistribution
 What creates area based educational inequalities?
– Everyday neighbourhood realities of economic
disadvantage linked to evolving educational identities
that create barriers to engagement with education and
that result in distributive educational inequalities
– These inequalities reflect a cross-cutting set of urban
place-based macro, meso and micro processes
 Stages to the theory of change - Problems,
interventions, proposed outcomes
Stages to the theory of change Problems, interventions, proposed
outcomes
 Neighbourhood/Area problems
– Young people need individual, social, cultural and economic resources to
improve their general educational identities and educational attainments.
– Young people, their families, neighbourhoods and communities, in varying
degrees, and depending on neighbourhood experiences, lack the appropriate
economic, cultural and social capital
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lack of local job opportunities for families,
lack of appropriate role models and networks of support,
lack of parenting skills,
lack of appropriate housing, health and transport etc
– Challenges of schooling in disadvantaged areas
 Difficulties of recruiting and retaining good teachers/headteachers
 Appropriateness of curriculum
 Behaviour and disengagement
 Taken together these problems create low educational attainment
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Types of area based interventions
Improved schools - interventions within schools in disadvantaged areas
– Targeted provision to young people with additional needs eg EAL, SEN, T&G, mentoring
– A focus on classroom improvements – the use of data, direct instruction, assessment and
differentiation etc
– Collaboration between schools
– Curriculum – choice (eg applied courses) and socio-emotional (eg SEAL)
– Improved leadership
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Improved families - interventions beyond schools but linked to families in
disadvantaged neighbourhoods
– A focus on supporting parents to support young people’s learning eg Sure Start
– A focus on interagency working in order to reduce barriers to educational success eg
Full-Service extended schools, Integrated social services
– Families and school choice
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Improved neighbourhoods - interventions beyond schools and linked to
disadvantaged places
– A focus on environmental factors (places not people)
 Housing (mixed income communities), transport infrastructure
– A focus on employment regeneration
– A focus on health eg Health Action Zones
– Integrating strategies – New Deal for Communities
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Enhanced economic resources to individuals - interventions linked to national
welfare and fiscal policies
– Taxation
– Benefits
Proposed Outcomes
– Reductions in poverty
– Improved employment, health, housing, transport
opportunities for families and young people
– Integrated services provided more targeted care and
support for young people and families
– Improved parenting skills and hence support for young
people with schooling
– Improved schools through school choice; enhanced
curriculum choices; improved teaching and learning,
and superior educational leadership
– All of the above leading to redistributed educational
attainments
A theory of change for area based
educational equity – a focus on recognition
 What creates area-based educational inequalities?
– Misrecognition of particular groups and individuals through a cross-cutting
set of macro, meso and micro institutional status injuries that result in a
lack of participatory parity at every level of civic life. This is particularly
reflected in the educational identities of disadvantaged young people and
their families and their experiences of school
 Stages to the theory of change - Problems, interventions, outcomes
 Problems for area based initiatives – dealing with status injuries
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Globalisation and the creation of urban outcasts
The stigmatization of place and communities
The institutional devaluing of individuals – eg racism, sexism
A lack of participatory parity in civic life
A lack of understanding of cultural difference by institutions and policy
Education in schools embodying all the above through formal curriculum
and assessment (academic), particular forms of teaching and learning
strategies (streaming) and the types of engagement with young people,
parents and communities (surveillance and policing)
– Taken together this misrecognition generates a disengagement with, and
resistance to, education by young people and families in poor
neighbourhoods
Types of area-based interventions
 Community-orientated schooling - bringing the community into
schools
– schools moving from being “enterprise” orientated institutions
(concerned with national policy drives for improved educational
attainments) to being “neighbourhood” orientated (concerned with
advocating the cultural recognition of young people, families &
communities).
– Schools and teachers engaging in the development of area/placed
based curricula that reach out and enable the different “funds of
knowledge” (Gonzales et al., 2005) of young people and communities
to be respected and utilised in schools.
– enhanced democratic governance of schools
 Schools and ‘authentic student voice’
– understanding the valued educational capabilities of disadvantaged
young people and supporting their freedom and autonomy to make
informed choices and to have control over their educational lives.
– curricular and pedagogical relationships in the classroom that that give
voice, choice and independence to young people (Hattam et al, 2009)
Proposed Outcomes
 Improved self and group identity/dignity
 Improved equitable relationship between
schools/teachers, young people and their families
 Improved understanding of, and empathy towards,
communities and neighbourhoods by
schools/teachers
 Improved local democratic governance of schools
 Improved engagement with schooling
 All of the above leading to improved educational
recognition and parity of participation of
disadvantaged individuals and groups in schools
Points for discussion
 How might current approaches to educational area
based initiatives (ABIs) be classified and which
type of educational equity appears to dominate?
 Should an integrated approach to area based
initiatives and educational equity be developed
that focuses on both redistribution and recognition
and that reflects issues of place?
– What would this look like and where might the tensions
be?
 What are the problems of ABIs that predominately
focus on either educational redistribution or
educational recognition or fail to recognise place?