Abstract:

School (institution) using resources from the immediate environment helps create or nurture core conditions of teaching and education, and can bring a lot of benefit for the development of students. The use of environmental resources is made possible by establishing and developing by the school (institution) cooperation with institutions and organizations operating in its environment, and the local community. Collaboration can take many forms, from information sharing, to organising joint projects, and may concern a different number of entities, depending on the needs and wealth of the local community. The use of environmental resources to enrich the conditions in which learning process is carried out means also the use of natural, architectural, historical and geographical resources, which may, in this respect, constitute invaluable wealth.

The role of the school in many environments is not only limited to learning children and adolescents. Often, school becomes an institution that also affects the development potential with respect to the social environment in which it operates. Actions taken by the school can be applied in different needs of the local community, for example, education, culture, law enforcement, charity (helping those in need) and others, whose nature may stem from specific characteristics of the local environment. Of course, these activities do not constitute the core task of the school, therefore, one should take an appropriate measure to evaluate them. An example of a concept of connecting the school with its environment is "Core-Plus" (Townsend, 1994), which fulfills the basic (core) responsibility for education of children, and additional (plus) obligations to assist in the implementation of educational aspirations amongst members of the local community.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the nature of relations between schools and the local community. The analysis uses data from studies carried out in the course of external evaluations conducted at Polish schools. This year, 48 schools of different types participated (primary, junior high and high) from all over Poland. Implementers of the test procedure were visitors in charge of evaluation, prepared to carry it out during the 160-hour training cycle. The study was attended by: headmasters, teachers, parents of students and representatives of the local community (school partners and representatives of the local self-government). The test procedure used numerous tools for data collection, among them quantitative methods (online survey) and qualitative (IDI, FGI). The examination procedure was carried out in schools within five working days.

Research results shows that schools make more use of local community resources for their needs rather than engage in activities supporting the local environment. Between schools and the local community there is dominating cooperation that results from legal provisions, and using the organisation offer on a commercial basis. Actions taken by schools together with local community organisations are the result of joint planning to a much lesser extent.

Keywords:

Cooperation, school, local community.