Schools Facing Exceptionally Challenging Circumstances : A summary of the project evaluation Leadership for Learning

Educational accounts typically focus on schools in the centre of the social mainstream with much less attention to the stories of schools perpetually on the periphery. Such schools on the edge face a constant struggle to forge a closer alignment between home and school, parents and teachers, and between the formal world of school and the informal world of neighbourhood and peer group. The decline of traditional industries has stranded adults and young people on the periphery of economic life and the schools they attend often sit amid the rubble of run down neighbourhoods.