Researching Policy Settings for Schools as Community Hubs

Schools as Community Hubs are recognised for their significant contribution to communities. Yet these projects must negotiate complex policy relationships, across disciplines and various government jurisdictions to achieve stakeholder and community support, funding, and delivery for long-term integrated benefits. Policy research in this area has been scarce. This study – in the early phase of a PhD – researches policy relationships for schools as community hubs through an interpretative analysis lens of both Bacchi’s ‘What’s the Problem Represented to be?’ (Bacchi, 1999), focussing on policy ‘problematisation(s)’, and that of performative and locally enacted policy (Ball et al., 2012). This framework is applied to an interpretative policy narrative of Yuille Park (Prep to Year 8) Community College, in central Victoria, Australia. Now proclaimed as a ‘whole of life’ community centre (DET, 2020), Yuille Park relied on the skill and continuity of key actors who gave – with little formal policy direction – coordinated solutions across service provision, urban planning and facility design that has made a difference to a struggling community, generating neighbourhood uplift and helping to overcome entrenched intergenerational challenges.