Whilst participating in the project I have undergone a wide range of roles during my time in the school when working with the children, but I also had other roles outside of the school. This role was a management role, this role involved tasks such as fundraising, advertising, finding a venue etc. My role focused specifically on fundraising, I had to find ways of making money to help with the cost of the costumes, make-up, props, refreshments, the venue etc. In order to raise money I set up a tom bola, and also a bake sale. The bake sale involved making a wide range of cakes which we priced and got the children from the play to sell them at lunch time in their school. This role was the most important as if I did not do the fundraising and the organisation of events then the play would have been unable to go ahead.
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Part 3
This project has allowed me the opportunity to learn new skills, through training programmes organised by Hallam volunteering. This helped me to understand how to work with children and teaching me things such as what to do in different situations, which has built up my confidence immensely. For example we are not allowed to be left with a child on our own to ensure safety for both them and yourself. The training was detailed and specific making me feel very reassured when working with the children.
The best opportunity I have had from undertaking this project is a first hand experience with working with the children. I was able to help and work with the children, and I feel I have done this successfully as the children thanked us for our help and asked to come back next year. This feedback I received from the children really gave me a sense of satisfaction as I played a part in helping the children feel proud, as the children were all very proud of themselves as they produced a great school play. It was not only the children who appreciated our help, the teachers too were highly satisfied and have asked us all to come back next year to produce another school play.
Though the project I feel was truly successful, a few problems and difficulties did arise. I think the main problem I faced was a communication problem this was not a difficulty with the children but with other volunteers. This communication issue involved things such as problems of getting in contact with one another, emails would be sent but not received or received too late, and this just meant that little simple tasks took a lot longer to do, due to problems of contacting one another. An example of this was when I wanted to do the bake sale I planned to do it in the first week of February but due to not hearing from people and getting cakes and volunteers to the school to help and collect the money raised it didn’t actually take place until the last week of February. This communication problem just caused minor setbacks, but was a problem throughout the project.
A similar problem again we faced was as a group, this was a time management concern. With all of us being students we obviously had other commitments and finding time to meet up to discuss key issues such as when the performance was going to be when it was going to take place for example. So we all generally assumed that other volunteers were doing what they were assigned, but this was not the case and many jobs were never done which created more work for all the other volunteers, which caused hassle, but a hassle that was always easily resolved. It made us as a team stronger as we had to deal with things together making a great group rapport.
The experience allowed me to develop in many ways. It has given me a vast amount of confidence to speak out whilst in groups. This new skill was developed in both the school and the meetings, in particular the meetings, as I had to state what I had done in order to raise money. When working with the children I have learnt to be patient, I can not expect the children to do as I say, this was evident when the children had not leant their lines, but it was because of reading difficulties so I sat down and helped them through it at a slower pace than expected, but at an enjoyable pace, as the children were still having an pleasurable time.
The project has also allowed me to gain some responsibility, the project was important to me as I wanted it to be successful not only for myself but for the children. It made me determined to attend every session and make sure that the play was definitely going to go ahead, and be a great performance.
The experience has made me truly aware of the volunteering sector of society and it has definitely encouraged me to want to take place in other projects, and I am going to participate in another project next year with Hallam volunteering. Participating in both hands-on work and work in meetings, I have decided that when I go into full-time work I want to participate in a job which is defined as ‘hands-on’. I enjoyed and gained a lot more from the time I spent in the school, than the time I spent in meetings. The project has also made me consider working with children in the future, a great sense of worth is gained from helping children learn, and enjoy themselves. I think this will be something I will do as an extra activity in the voluntary sector as I can now see how important it is to help those in you community.
Overall the project has been successful not only for the children who got to put on a school play but for myself as I have learnt a great deal about the voluntary sector and how it helps wider society.
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Part 4
Social exclusion is a major issue in society today, and the school, which I helped at, is a school in a deprived area of Sheffield. It is in an area of Sheffield that is identified as an area of social exclusion. I want to identify how social exclusion is being tackled through the institution of education through policies by the government, and how the school can help the children become less likely to be socially excluded later in life. Thus allowing the children to have a fair and equal opportunity to a successful and stable life. There is a wide range of evidence to suggest that students from disadvantaged social backgrounds fare relatively badly within formal educational systems (Douglas 1964:4). There is a strong correlation between social disadvantage and school achievement. Those in the disadvantaged social backgrounds are at a much higher risk of becoming socially excluded thus posing a major issue for society to deal with.
Social exclusion is a term that has only come to use fairly recently. Social Exclusion as described by the Social exclusion Unit (www.socialexclusion.gov.uk)) ‘is a shorthand label for what can happen when individuals or areas suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low income, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown’. Room (1995: 49) has gone on to describe social exclusion as ‘the process of becoming detached from the organization and communities of which the society is composed and from the rights and obligations that they embody’. This describes how social exclusion involves people becoming disengaged with society as a whole, for example when a person loses their job, this not only involves a drop of income and important relationships fostered by the workforce such as unions.
The education system has largely been seen to play a key role in preventing social exclusion if all children manage to get a ‘decent’ education then they are less likely to become socially excluded later in life as they will be able to seek employment due to gaining qualifications whilst at school. And those with more qualification are more likely to be entitled to a higher wage. Those children who become socially excluded from school are at a greater risk of remaining socially excluded for life, as without qualifications it is difficult to get employed thus you will not be receiving an income and therefore relying on income support. It therefore seems logically to try and solve the problem of social exclusion, and it seems logically to try and tackle the issue through the education system, as this seems to be where social exclusion stems from.
This problem of social exclusion is a great concern of the governments, and it is suggested that through education social exclusion will hopefully decrease. If people become dissatisfied and disconnected from schooling, and further education, and then the labour market, they are more likely to pose significant problems for the welfare systems and society as a whole. The obvious way to stop draining society’s resources is to ensure that all people can gain access to the labour market. As Tony Blair states (SEU: 1999:6) ‘The best defence against social exclusion is having a job, and the best way to get a job is to have a good education, with the right training and experience’.
The Government’s three goals for tackling social exclusion include preventing social exclusion happening in the first place - by reducing risk factors and acting with those who are already at risk. It also includes reintegrating those who become excluded back into society; and delivering basic minimum standards to everyone - in health, education, in-work income, employment and tackling crime - using ambitious targets and extra resources. New Labours approach to the problem of social exclusion in the education system has focused immensely on raising the standards of achievement, and combating issues such as truancy and exclusion in order to provide all children with an equal education and a fair opportunity to enter the labour market.
Excellence in Schools was the first major education policy for he New Labour government. This incorporates a key emphasis on helping pupils achieve by tackling social exclusion with training skills such as behaviour support plans, ways on preventing truancy and advice on how teachers can discipline children to maintain behaviour in schools. Also encouraging links between community and schooling to maintain inclusion. Education Action Zones (www.standards.dfes.gov.uk) was set up to prevent social exclusion in the White Paper, EAZ are in areas of particular deprivation, and focuses specifically on those children who are excluded from school. It is evident that the government are increasingly concerned with social exclusion, and tend to focus on social exclusion in deprived areas of society, with high rates of unemployment.
New labour have dramatically changed the set curriculum for children aged between 14-19. It has stretched and become more diverse by reducing the compulsory elements of the curriculum. GCSE and A Levels have had less of an emphasis and there has been a large impact on promoting vocational qualifications and work-based and college-based activities for younger disaffected learners. (). This will allow students to gain skills, which will be beneficial for them to gain access into the labour market, thus hopefully tackling not only social exclusion but also unemployment. This makes the education system more diverse and equal to allow all students to gain a qualification, making them more employable.
Social exclusion in Giddens eyes is at the centre of ‘third way’ politics. Third Way is a political party based in Britain which advocates a practical decentralisation of power through constitutional reform and the creation of a society in which wealth is more equitably distributed. It is a party that is rather different from the rest, Third Way combines democratic socio-economic reform and inclusive nationalism with co-operative internationalism and ecological awareness; supporting the right to genuine self-determination for peoples throughout the world. The resultant synthesis, still evolving, offers an alternative approach to politics this is a new perspective, in contrast to the failed and outdated dogma of past and present governments (www.thirdway.org).
Giddens suggests that giving priority to overcoming social exclusion can be seen as a way of modernizing the redistributive approach to inequality. Giddens describes the process of social exclusion as mechanism for the detachment of certain groups from the mainstream of society. Unlike the government he sees exclusion as a dual process. (Giddens,1998:24-25). He sees that people from the elite classes exclude themselves from state-provided services. He then also adds that there is another group of people who fail to benefit from and public services. Giddens identifies that these two processes of social exclusion are interdependent. He states that the governments Social Exclusion Unit only focuses upon the ‘poor’ who are excluded in society and not those who are ‘rich’.
The problem he identifies with those trying to tackle social exclusion is that the governments focuses largely on the symptoms of social exclusion rather that the causes. Giddens has set a specific proposal and argues that:
- People should be involved in the labour force and not just dead-end jobs, Giddens believes that those in dead end jobs are more likely to get dissatisfied and thus result in social exclusion.
- The need of those who cannot work should be provided for
- Policies for inclusion should ‘stretch well beyond work’
- Community focused approaches to the eradication of poverty should be developed which permit more democratic participation
- Economic resources should be used to support local initiatives
These proposals all seems fairly similar to those proposals made by New Labour, the difficulty with such proposals are issues such as the cost and the resources needed to tackle the problem.
Giddens insight into tackling social exclusion does add a new dimension to solving the issue social exclusion with the two interdependent processes. This adds to the issues that social exclusion is an issue that will take time and effort to overcome as it is a broad issues and affects all aspects of life including education, health, housing and a lack of more general social amenities. (Giddens, 1998: 49)
Giddens goes on to suggest that social exclusion can be solved through reflexive modernisation. Reflexive modernisation refers to the way in which advanced modernity ‘becomes it own theme’. (Marshall, 1998:557) He argues that the problem should not be targeted directly at those socially excluded, but by beginning where the exclusion begins which is education, so like the government, Giddens identify that the institutions are what need changing in order to prevent more exclusion, through new educational policies, such as The White Paper and Education Action Zones.
It is evident that social exclusion is at the heart of government policies and that equality and opportunity for all needs to be considered in order to demolish deprived areas of society and reduce the amount of people who are considered to be socially excluded from society. New Labour and the Third way do have a strong commitment to social justice and believe that the state has an active role to play in creating opportunities for individuals to become part of an inclusive society. Though they have offered ideas and proposals in order to address the problems of social exclusion, I am yet to find whether any of the policies in the education system have actually been successful in reducing the outcome of social exclusion. From working at a school in a socially excluded area of society I am able to see that through some changes in the education system these children will be able to get employment and hopefully become part of an inclusive society.
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Bibliography
Douglas, J W B (1964) The Home and the School, London: MacGibbon and Kee
Room, G. (1995) Beyond the Threshold. The measurement and analysis of social exclusion, Bristol: Policy Press.
Giddens, A. (1998) The Third Way: The renewal of Social Democracy. London: Polity Press
Laybourn, K. (2000) A Century of Labour: A History of the Labour Party 1900-2000. Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing Limited.
Marshall, G. (1998) Dictionary of Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
Powell, M. (1999) New Labour, New Welfare State? The ‘Third Way’ in British Social Policy. London: Polity Press
Social Exclusion Unit (1999) Bridging the gap: new opportunities for 16-18 year olds not in education, employment or training Cm4405 London: HMSO.
