Keywords

Introduction

The opportunity to better use and enhance school infrastructure through integration with programs and services targeted towards the broader community has long been recognised. The sharing of school-related social infrastructure dates back at least a century (Glueck, 1927). Nevertheless, Cleveland and Woodman (2009) observed that school facilities remain some of the most underutilised public and private assets in Australia, with most used sparingly outside of school hours, on weekends, or during school holiday periods. Additionally, Tayler et al. (2002, p. 1) observed that “a history of single focus, separate, specialised, and competing services has led to widespread dissatisfaction with service provision … viewed by many to be inflexible, inaccessible, or out-of-touch with the needs of contemporary families”.

While this situation continues to resonate, proposals to develop schools as community hubs are gaining momentum in Australia and internationally (Cleveland, 2016). But progress is frequently slowed as projects must navigate fragmented policy terrains to coordinate objectives, priorities, and funding sources, and build and sustain partnerships with service providers and local communities.

Policy research in this area has been largely neglected, with research in the field predominantly focused on architectural design and the program elements of shared schools, rather than policy-related issues. Limited attention has been paid to the challenges involved in coordinating social infrastructure provision (McShane & Wilson, 2017), or the intersections of education, social and urban policy, and planning (Vitiello, 2006). This lack of research into policy analysis may have had a significant impact on the delivery of schools as community hubs.

Informed by Bacchi and Goodwin’s (2016) concept of policy as constituting or representing problems, this chapter contributes to filling this policy research gap by discussing the policy environment and dynamics associated with developing schools as community hubs. Further, using a complementary performative and enactment perspective, which focusses on how local actors interpret and apply policy directives (Ball et al., 2012), the paper analyses a ‘schools as community hub’ project: Yuille Park (Prep to Year 8) Community College, located in Wendouree, in the central Victorian City of Ballarat.

The Yuille Park case study example demonstrates the ‘problem’ of a significantly disadvantaged community, while showing the contingency of policymaking ‘on the run’, evident in the gap between formal written policy issued by government with local adaptations and enactments of policy in a community setting. This example, it is argued, highlights some conceptual and methodological challenges of policy research, while serving as an instructive case study for policymakers in the field. We argue that application of this theoretical schema provides a useful explanatory framework through which to understand policy discourse, while calling attention to the value of policy and project development arrangements that enable emergent, place-based insights and local agency.

Interpretive Policy Approaches

Working Back from the Problem

Bacchi’s (2012; Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016) ‘What is the problem represented to be?’ (WPR) framework provides a critical interpretive policy analysis approach that offers utility as a resource, or tool, to facilitate interrogation of public policies, including those associated with schools as community hubs. WPR is intended to make clear that the point of the analysis is to begin with postulated ‘solutions’, such as policies, to tease out and critically examine their implicit problem representations. Bacchi suggests that a WPR analysis can be developed by asking the following questions:

  1. 1.

    What’s the problem represented in a specific policy or proposal?

  2. 2.

    What presuppositions or assumptions underpin this representation?

  3. 3.

    How did this representation evolve?

  4. 4.

    What is left unproblematic in this representation? Can the ‘problem’ be thought about differently?

  5. 5.

    What effects are produced by this representation of the problem?

  6. 6.

    How/where has this representation of the ‘problem’ been produced, disseminated and defended? How has it been (or could it be) questioned, disrupted and replaced? (Adapted from [Bacchi, 2012, p. 21])

The extent and detail to which such a framework is applied may vary between different policy cases. The underlying point to make is that public policy, whether in the fields of education, social services, health, or other domains, is, on Bacchi’s account “not the government’s best effort to solve ‘problems’; rather, policies produce ‘problems’ with particular meanings that affect what gets done or not done, and how people live their lives (Bacchi, 2012, p. 22).

Performative and Enacted Policy

As the case of Yuille Park shows, policy may not necessarily be formalised, authorised, or sometimes even written down. However, it is possible to identify a set of texts and practices, central-level policy directives, local adjustments and adaptations, to identify what was ‘problematised’, how local actors understood and responded to the problem, and how these dynamics shaped the evolution and outcomes of the project. Ball et al. (2012) argue that in educational settings, which are characteristically subject to waves of policy intervention, new methods, and changing approaches to student assessment mandated by central authorities (see also Ball, 2008), part of the skill repertoire developed by school leaders and educators involves interpreting and implementing such directives in the specific context of their communities, schools and classrooms. The rationales for this may vary: from resistance to what are perceived to be inappropriate or unworkable directives, to a need to broker or operationalise new policy changes or build partnerships, to responding to silences and gaps in the policy texts of central government agencies. In effect, local actors ‘perform’ when they speak back to policy or demonstrate the ways in which policy is enacted. As the Yuille Park project indicates, the transactions between central and local actors were somewhat fluid and emergent, where a loosely coupled relationship (whether intentionally established or not) afforded local agency and place-based adaptations.

Policy Case Study: Yuille Park P-8 Community College, Wendouree, Victoria, Australia

In the Australian context, Yuille Park is illustrative of an education-community model that was planned, programmed, and designed to what was represented as the specific service needs of its community. It opened in June 2008 as an exemplar ‘school as community hub’, pioneering a wave of investment in school-based hubs in Victoria Its genesis was the closing of two schools, Grevillea Park and Yuille Primary—a regeneration strategy that has been adopted in several similar projects, particularly in areas of low educational attainment (Department of Education & Early Childhood Development, 2009). The two schools were amalgamated to become a new education-community hub pilot, offering with twenty-two community service functions. Additionally, a pre-school operated by Uniting Care and Wendouree West Community House was relocated to the site to become Wendouree West Community Learning Hub, a whole-of-life learning and community centre (Figs. 1 and 2) embedded within the school. The current suite of facilities and services on the site, described below, point to the wide range of activities and suggest a complex management scenario:

The shared facilities include: meeting, conference, training, interview rooms; library; large multipurpose space designed for school assemblies; indoor sports (including basketball half court), functions and performances; home economics kitchen, and canteen space; art studio, and materials technology workshops complete with segregated storerooms; music activity, band practice, editing suite’. (Department of Education & Training, 2020, Facilities section)

Fig. 1
A photograph of the Wendouree West Learning Hub on a sunny day. It consists of a central open-air play area where some children are playing. The play area is surrounded by walking paths and nearby areas with grass and other plants. A single-floor building surrounds the area. There are some people walking, resting, and sitting on the grass.

Wendouree West Learning Hub School Courtyard (Photography by Emma Cross)

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Fig. 2
A nighttime photograph of the front view of the Wendouree West Learning Hub with the moon shining above and the nearby trees, the street, the neighboring buildings, street lights, and a light pole.

Wendouree West Learning Hub from street at night (Photography by Emma Cross)

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Today, Yuille Park operates seven days a week, accommodating both school and community groups. The following account of its development arises largely from resources and direct experience from the lead author’s work with the architectural firm that planned, designed, coordinated delivery, and led post occupancy evaluation for Yuille Park.

Policy Contexts

The policy narrative at Yuille Park begins with the ‘problematisation’ of a failing neighbourhood. The suburb of Wendouree West was originally built by the Victorian state government to accommodate rowing athletes for the 1956 Summer Olympics. Prior to the Yuille Park project commencing, Wendouree West had become run down, featuring boarded up shop fronts and poorly maintained infrastructure. Poor quality housing, petty crime, unemployment, student truancy, and poor community mental health were among long-term challenges. As described by community members, “declining work in the community also meant there was nothing left for many of us – we just sat at home, getting worried and depressed about things. We felt futureless about ourselves” (Wellbeing Wendouree Inc., 2008, p. 32).

The response to this situation took the form of an education-led intervention, where new infrastructure investment by State Government generated alignments with a community partnership focus on disadvantage. This new policy problematisation focussed on boosting human and social capital and service engagement, superseding earlier policy interventions that saw the ‘problem’ as individual and cultural, and which focussed on more overtly disciplinary strategies such as policing crime, and monitoring welfare entitlements and work activity.

Adaptive Education and Community-Enacted Policy

An integrated, education-led, community regeneration policy model was fundamental to Yuille Park’s planning and facility delivery. The policy process which emerged for Yuille Park may be viewed as the project’s most significant policy achievement. A preparedness to undertake ‘policy on the run’ was essential for achieving community consensus around services selection, programming, site planning, design options, operations, and facility management.

Community consultation and planning for Yuille Park began in 2001, seven years before the school and community hub eventually opened in 2008. The brief for the amalgamated school developed from both formal and informal participatory community engagement, through phases that loosely corresponded with feasibility, master planning, and functional facility design.

Customised Education Policy

Interdepartmental Advocacy State government advocates from both education and community portfolios were pivotal to determining a locally developed brief that achieved a high level of community consensus. Atypically, leaders from the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD), which became the/Department of Education and Training DET) in 2015, and Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) were willing to take calculated risks and work pro-actively to bring their agendas together, supporting locally generated solutions (Wellbeing Wendouree Inc., 2008). The regional setting of the project and established status of the suburb were also contributing factors. The project participants knew each other, and participatory engagement was possible with an existing community, whereas such a strategy may be less feasible in new outer-suburban growth areas. The development process was, however, complicated by the limited participation of the local government authority, the Ballarat City Council. Establishing effective multi-level governance, with in this instance the state-level authority responsible for education provision and the local government sector overseeing the inclusion of community and social services, has proven a complex undertaking in such projects (McShane & Wilson, 2017).

Responsive Pedagogy and Customised POD Learning Environment An adaptable education policy enabled the development of a customised ‘learning hub pedagogy’ that was supported by a ‘pod’ learning hub architectural solution. This allowed for individual and group learning within an interdisciplinary environment that supported cross-curricular integration. A team-teaching approach was planned and developed, with buildings accommodating learning communities for Grades Prep-2, 3–5, and 6–8. Shared teaching environments were afforded through connectivity with staff work areas, both visually and physically. The learning spaces also included outdoor landscapes, multi-sport environments and a Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden (funded by a philanthropic trust), providing nutritious food used for student breakfasts and lunches, prepared at a shared commercial and community kitchen at the heart of the school. As a relatively unknown pedagogical approach in the State at the time, adoption of this program required trust-based leadership at both local and State level. With support from DEECD, the school principal led this ‘new’ learning hub pedagogy, working closely with a predominantly new and enthusiastic teaching cohort.

Risk and personal safety in operation Risk associated with personal safety, especially for children in a facility used by adult users throughout each day, was a concern which necessitated considered design solutions. Schools that operate successfully as community hubs reconcile strategies regulating access (for student/staff security) and promoting accessibility (for community participation). The masterplan responded quite deliberately to parental concerns about child safety by zoning different facilities on the site to ensure some functions were separated from school areas. These included training and workshop areas, which were accessed from street frontages, away for school entries and outdoor play spaces. This approach provided spatial design clarity for users, without the need for overt signage. Adult users quickly adopted predictable movement patterns, which were reinforced by rituals of daily or weekly use by many.

Policy Enactment for Skills, Training and Local Employment

In addition to primary and middle years education (P-8), adult education on site was supported by DHHS. Employment training, with a focus on technology skills, became popular, supported by the development of a shared learning space connected to the community-oriented library. In addition, the commercial kitchen was used to train chefs, including many who took up employment across the city. Over time, community members gained new skills that supported them to take up roles at Yuille Park and in the wider community. After the initial Yuille Park P-8 campus construction, within the past few years two additional campuses, focussing on vocational training for young adults, and specifically providing for young parenting students, have opened.

Flexible Procurement Policy

Over the unusually long consultation and planning period, year-on-year funding was budgeted by the Department of Treasury and Finance in response to emerging needs that were agreed by DEECD and DHHS. The acceptance of an extended, rather than typical project timeframe allowed planning and architectural design teams to be contracted earlier as well as for longer, enabling deeper engagement with members of the community, state department representatives and school leaders. This approach supported various forms of adaptation and refinement, as local needs were determined, and suitable design responses created and iterated. For example, the master planning process generated new neighbourhood transport connections to a new railway station and upgraded public space. These transport and recreation nodes later became locations for student-produced art installations, representing community identity and pride.

Filling Policy Gaps

The Yuille Park project may be viewed as the product of historic policy failures that inadequately addressed long-term unemployment and disadvantage, evidenced by consistently low socio-economic demographic data and conditions until recent years. The community-centred planning process that was ultimately undertaken filled policy gaps and failures to generate a place of community activity, pride, and employment in subsequent years. It is notable that no detailed written policy precedents, beyond the standard education and community health policies and facility standards, were available to guide social infrastructure development when Yuille Park was developed. Some written policy advocacy has occurred retrospectively (Department of Education, 2010, 2015), partly capturing opportunities from lessons learned.

The school’s opening became a catalyst for new housing development in the area (Wellbeing Wendouree Inc., 2008). Further, residential upgrades stimulated economic activity for the neighbouring commercial street.

In the first years of operation, Yuille Park attracted influential visitors, including the Australian Prime Minister, along with many local, interstate, and international visitors interested to see the school as community hub model that had been created. The project was formally awarded by the Victoria State Government and Council of Education Facility Planners International (now Learning Environments Australasia) for its design and was also recognised for urban community transformation and design by the Urban Design Institute of Australia.

Toward Integrative Policy Futures

As a case study, Yuille Park’s interpretative policy narrative provides opportunity for applying Bacchi’s (2012; Bacchi & Goodwin, 2016) ‘What is the Problem Represented to be?’ (WPR) framework. WPR policy analysis reveals vital perspectives on policy dynamics, such as those all-too-complicated integrative policy arrangements common to schools as community hubs. Despite fragmentation and a lack of pre-determined policy coordination around the Yuille Park project, the skill and continuity of key actors gave rise to a range of coordinated solutions across service provision, urban planning and facility design that over time have made a significant difference to a struggling community. Yuille Park represents investment in, and development of, shared resources that have aided the development of social capital in the area and generated neighbourhood uplift. The development of a ‘whole of life’ community centre (DET, 2020) has helped tackle complex intergenerational challenges, where less holistic policy approaches had failed, having perhaps mis-represented the problems endemic for decades the Wendouree area.

Looking towards the future for schools as community hubs, it appears essential that fragmented policy environments become better integrated. Relationships between relevant policy portfolios need to be better established to enable services to emerge in response to community needs, and in timelines relevant to developing and implementing new hub projects. Lessons learned about the policy entanglements that projects such as Yuille Park have successfully negotiated during years of operation also need to be captured and shared, making it easier for others to traverse often overlapping and therefore challenging policy terrains. Applying the policy theories of Bacchi and Goodwin (2016) and Ball et al. (2012) to seek deeper and broader insights into the policy environments within which schools as community hubs must exist can assist future leaders to take more projects like Yuille Park forward.