How The Ravensbourne School is bringing the outside in
The Ravensbourne School (E21C) in Bromley
As you approach The Ravensbourne School in Bromley, you could be forgiven for thinking that you’d arrived at a Victorian museum or art gallery. With its beautiful red brick exterior, elegant classrooms (in some cases with tiled walls), and listed buildings within its quadrangle, it is clear that the school has been a key local landmark for over a century. Headteacher, Mark Ridley, is keen that it continues to take responsibility for its position as a vital civic institution in Bromley.
Mark Ridley
Headteacher
The Ravensbourne School
Mark passionately believes that schools have a moral purpose to be strongly connected to the communities they serve. This is clear from the energy he and his staff have channelled into deeply understanding the assets and challenges within their local community, as a means through which to develop strategies to better support pupils and their families across a range of outcomes.
Having listened to a wide range of pupils and their parents and analysed a range of statistical data on outcomes for families across the different Bromley wards, Mark and the team identified the ward in which a significant number of pupils with poor attendance and poor attainment lived. They identified 40 families whose children were on a trajectory to achieve poor outcomes and they set about developing asset-based, relational strategies to support them.
How it started…
First, Mark recognised that this work required clear direction and sufficient time.
He subsequently created a distinct role within the school—the equivalent of a teaching & learning responsibility (TLR)—to ensure the work could be done well. He employed Martin Love, a history teacher of 28 years with a deep knowledge of the local community, to lead the next stage of the work. Martin set about listening to more families about what is currently putting pressure on them and others around them. To do this, he sought the support of two school staff members who are also passionate about this work: Lara Hobbs (Careers Lead) and Sally Tregidden (PA to the headteacher) and ex-parent of the school. Together, they invited members (normally parents) of the 40 families into school to speak with them.
These invites, though, tended to be met with suspicion, or a reluctance to come into school for a conversation. Undeterred—and, to a certain degree, unsurprised—the team started to think about other, more innovative, ways to engage with the families.
How it’s going…
At the time of writing, they are getting in touch with the parents to see whether they would prefer to meet them for a coffee at a local café or community centre instead. The staff are very conscious of the unequal power dynamics when a parent is invited into a school and they are keen to reduce these dynamics as much as possible, and instead meet the parents where they’re at.
As part of the strategy to work alongside parents in their communities, from September 2024 there will be a person in post whose remit could include strengthening school-community relationships, with a particular focus on supporting the 40 families identified from the original data scoping.
E21C—the school’s trust—has secured funding for this full-time, two-year post which will also involve leading the ACE Tutoring programme in school to help close the attainment gap for Pupil Premium pupils.
In terms of wider support for families, Lara has recently discovered Bromley Children and Family Voluntary Sector Forum through a local friend who is heavily involved with the charity. From a chat about the school’s burgeoning community work, Lara learnt about a range of services, activities and clubs available to pupils and their families in Bromley.
Where it’s going…
The school is now in the process of working out how they might be able to co-locate some of the forum’s services on their school site, as well as signpost pupils to enrichment and holiday activities.
After recent discussions, the school will now be hosting one of these summer camps for the most disadvantaged students within the borough this summer for 6 weeks. These discussions have also led the team to consider a plan to establish a Community Action Partnership Panel (CAPP), comprised of key individuals and institutions who work with young people and their families. The aim is that this will include the two local E21C schools and representatives from the local authority, among others. The goal is to develop strong relational links, share key information and develop collective strategies to support families.
Within the wider trust, Mark and the team are keen to share what they’re doing and why, and to reflect on their successes and challenges in building strong school-community support to improve pupil and family outcomes. They will be presenting to the E21C trustees at the end of the school year on their work, with the intention that other schools within the trust can start to develop their own school-community partnerships in their specific contexts.
But the work of understanding The Ravensbourne School’s community is by no means complete. At the end of a strategic meeting when asked about next steps, Martin, the current lead staff member, reflected, “We carry on listening. The listening is ongoing. It’s never done.”
Key takeaways
Having visited Ravensbourne and seen the team in action, the following factors feel key to the success of the work, all of which feel applicable to different school contexts:
The trust is bought into this work.
The headteacher is bought into this work.
There is a clearly defined remit for the staff member overseeing the work.
There is time and headspace to do the role.
Staff hold up the lived/learned experience of others and place this at the heart of the process of understanding the assets and challenges of the community.
There is local representation on the core community team.
The team uses a mixture of qualitative and quantitative data to carefully identify:
Pupils at risk of achieving poor outcomes, and
The contextual reasons behind this both within and beyond school.
Staff are resilient and persistent: they find new/different strategies if one doesn’t appear to work the first time and they don’t give up on trying to engage non-engaged families.
Staff celebrate ‘small steps’ and ‘quick wins’—recognising that these are key to building momentum and creating deeper, long-lasting change.
Staff never stop listening to and learning about their school community.
Staff are open to working beyond the school, with other schools and local organisations.
