Beyond the School Gates: Why Community Context and Connection Must Shape System Change

Schools are increasingly being asked to act as community anchors. Great work is happening in this space yet education, health and wider public services often still operate as disconnected systems.

Across the country, leaders are working hard to improve outcomes for children and families. The challenge is no longer ambition. It is connection and harnessing collective agency.

Over the past year, I have become increasingly immersed in systems leadership work. From coaching local authority SEND leaders through the East Midlands RIIA Systems Leaders programme, connecting with health professionals, working alongside a community organisation addressing deprivation, and more recently speaking at the University of Hull about the relational skills needed for place-based change in education.

The question I’ve been asked over and over again…

What exactly is systems leadership?

It is an important question and there is no single definition. Systems Leadership is well established in health, public services and industry but less in education. My own definition of systems leadership is that it is “an approach focused on understanding complex systems, fostering collaboration across boundaries, and enabling collective action to address interconnected challenges.”

My understanding has evolved through my experience of working at multiple ‘levels’. I see impactful systems leadership operating from grassroots community work to national policy influence and everywhere in between. This is a move away from the traditional top-down ‘systems-level’ leadership idea. And this multi-layered definition is important because if we are serious about realising the vision emerging across education and public services, then we must acknowledge the part everyone in the system plays in influencing positive change.

Systems leadership is shifting

The recent Schools White Paper states:

“We will support schools to be anchors in their communities, collaborating with each other and across public services.”

This is a welcome shift. The vision is right. Having worked across more than 100 schools as a teacher, executive headteacher and consultant, I have seen first-hand the limitations of a system dominated by narrow accountability measures, top-down directives and working in silos.

If we genuinely want schools to become anchors within their communities, then we cannot think about schools and trusts in isolation from the wider systems within which children and families are nested. We must look more intentionally at the connections across health services, local authority services (especially SEN), voluntary organisations, faith groups, employers and wider community networks. It is important to note that there is incredible work already taking place in this space but too often deep community connect is the exception rather than the norm.

Collaboration fails without relational connection

I have increasingly heard it said that education alone cannot carry the weight of community transformation and the burden of depleted services. I agree. But I also see extraordinary work happening across health, local authorities and the community and voluntary sectors. Much of this work is often not noticed. There is no criticism here but how we see each other’s roles and value and how we connect across the system has not been prioritised enough.

And recently, I have noticed that our systems are developing ambitious visions in parallel rather than in partnership.

If we are serious about place-based change, these visions cannot sit separately from one another. Last week, for example, I met with a fabulous systems leader working in the NHS.

Together, we kept returning to the same conclusion: the NHS 10-Year Plan and the Schools White Paper are asking for the same thing, connected systems rooted in communities. However, the reality of this connection is far from there.

You can have incredible leaders within education, but if they cannot connect effectively with equally committed leaders across health, community and business sectors, the long-term impact will remain limited. The challenge is not simply leadership within organisations, it is leadership across boundaries.

And that work begins with understanding context.

Place-based change begins with context

Assuming that what works in one place can simply be replicated in another poses one of the greatest risks to sustainable change. Communities are not interchangeable and the hard data we have available to assess change readiness may not provide us with enough information to move to a sustainable solution.

I often think about two very different communities I have worked within.

In one, there was a long-established network of collaborative headteachers, a strong voluntary and faith sector, trusted community spaces and a sense of local identity that connected people together. Strong relationships already existed.

In another community, although there were many equally committed individuals, the conditions were very different. Schools were spread across multiple trusts operating more independently. Community partnerships were weaker. Shared spaces were limited. Leadership networks were less established and more fragmented.

On paper, the first community showed higher levels of deprivation, so it might appear to present the greater challenge. In practice, however, the second community was likely to find collective reform far harder.

This is why place-based change cannot begin with one-size-fits-all solutions. It must begin with curiosity, with listening, with understanding the network, the assets, the relational conditions already present within a community.

Too often, we rush to solutions before truly understanding the contextual landscape and what it means for the work ahead.

The formal system and the relational system

In simple terms, every community operates through two systems simultaneously: the formal system and the relational system. The formal system includes organisational hierarchies, governance structures, accountability frameworks and funding arrangements. These are visible and relatively easy to map. The relational system is less visible, but often highly influential. It includes informal influence, historical tensions, community identity and the relationships that influence how decisions are experienced on the ground.

In my experience, improvement efforts often focus primarily on formal structures while overlooking the informal power landscape operating underneath them. Understanding this landscape matters enormously. Informal influence can either block change or significantly accelerate it. It can create resentment when left unacknowledged (something we are seeing on a national scale), or belonging, shared ownership and collective agency when intentionally engaged.

Questions before solutions

So what are the questions we should be asking before we rush to solutionising?

• What are the assets within the community?

• Who is already connecting to make change happen?

• What are the formal power structures?

• What systems influence decision making?

• Where is the informal power?

• Who are the unseen movers and shakers?

• Where are the connection blind spots?

• How effective is collaboration in creating impact?

• Who isn’t being heard?

  
  

And then what do we need to ask of ourselves once we have a clear picture of the community landscape?

• How do we surface tensions and address potential barriers with openness, integrity and courage?

• How do we build on what is already there to strengthen systems and connections that catalyse sustainable change around shared purpose?

• How do we design accountability and decision making that is fair and promotes community engagement?

• How do we build the sustainable skills within leaders at every level, across sectors, to do this important work, whatever the future throws at us?

If schools are to become true community anchors, then systems leadership cannot remain the work of isolated organisations operating alongside one another.

This work must become the shared work of connected people, rooted in place, working across boundaries with curiosity, courage and collective responsibility.

If you are doing meaningful work in this area, I’d genuinely love to hear from you.

My name is Tamara Zaple Rolfs. I help purpose driven leaders and organisations to work well together by building the relational capabilities to drive positive change. Do get in touch if you'd like to find out more about how we can collaborate, connect or work together. www.my-delta.co.uk tamara@my-delta.co.uk