Social inclusion never seems far from national agendas. However, a parallel drive to raise standards can be particularly problematic for our most challenging schools. New research from NCSL, ‘Social inclusion: leading under pressure’ explores some of the common characteristics of school leaders tackling these issues.

Here three headteachers facing social problems on a daily basis talk about how they cope with leading under these pressures.

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Polly Honeychurch, headteacher of Cottage Grove Primary School in Portsmouth. The school is situated in a deprived inner-city area. “Most children come from social housing, we have 50 per cent special needs and above average mobility,” says Polly. There are around 350 pupils, from nursery to Year 6.

The school is putting a huge amount of energy into building positive relationships with parents. Despite this, there are often occasions where things are simply out of the school’s control. “We’re situated in an area of high crime and high drug use. One Monday, I came into school to discover one of our parents had been stabbed on Saturday night, right outside our school gates. This had a massive effect on the school community.”

Polly freely admits that standards are “not high” but feels she needs to battle these social and emotional issues before she can get her pupils in a position to learn.

“The standards agenda is frustrating at times. I get reports from police that a family has had a drug raid or domestic violence at home and then those children come straight into school the next day. We then expect them to sit down at their desks and learn when they have all of those things running through their head. They need to be able to offload before starting to learn,” she says. Dealing with the social and emotional aspects of learning is the key to Cottage Grove’s approach.

“We need to remember that emotional issues are behind a lot of behavioural problems,” Polly says. Polly feels the way forward is through community leadership. “It’s not about education leading – we don’t have all the answers. The families at school I have concerns about are the same families causing concern in the community, so it makes sense for us to work together.”

Despite these challenges, Polly can’t imagine working anywhere else. “I worked in inner city schools for 17 years and I’m passionate about making a difference here. We’re less than a mile from the beach and when we take the children in reception down there, for some of them, it is the first time they have seen the sea. We’re aiming to show children there is another world outside the square mile they live in.”

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Hazel Pulley, headteacher of Caldecote Community Primary School in Leicester, faces equally challenging social problems. The school is situated in a predominantly white area of Leicester in an area of social housing with serious deprivation.

“We have a lot of racism in this area,” says Hazel. “It is a high crime and high drug-use area. Sadly we have high male death rates linked to mental health. There are many young, single parent families and there is a lack of male role models. Child protection is also a big issue.”

Two years ago, Hazel made the decision to have no exclusions and inclusion is an issue close to her heart. “This year we have achieved our aim of no exclusions. I just couldn’t do it, when you exclude a child you are starting to write them off. We’ll educate any child except for the seriously violent as we wouldn’t be the right place for them.”

The school started by internally excluding pupils. “I gave up my office, it became the exclusion room because it had its own toilet. We now use a system of time-out cards. If a child needs time out, they’ll be escorted to our den, a bright coloured room where they can reflect on what they need to change with a behaviour mentor. They have six chances a day to turn things around.”

“Children are never labelled here. You are never a naughty child, you are a lovely child who is making some wrong choices. From this platform, you are giving the child a license to change.”

Hazel feels the key to the school’s culture comes down to leadership. “I’ve been a head for 16 years in four schools so that helps my confidence. But it’s about the whole school leading. We have a flat leadership structure, there is no SLT. Instead, we have strategic leadership groups which change, everyone who wants to can take part in leadership. Trust and vision is what makes it work. It wouldn’t work if everyone did not believe in the vision.”

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Debbie Sanderson, headteacher of Mitchell High School in Stoke on Trent. Debbie has spent the last six years tackling social issues in the school community.

“When I became headteacher here in 2001, there were incredibly low aspirations. Nationally, it’s the 20th most deprived ward. Male mortality was 51 years and female mortality was 53. So there was a much bigger social challenge than 11-16 learners,” she explains.

For Debbie, emotional strength again was the key. “We needed to build some emotional muscle. The only way I could do that was to embed a culture of true partnership working across the community. From day one, we opened the doors to the community and said ‘let’s get together to sort out our issues.’ We needed a complete cultural change.

One major issue for the school was teenage pregnancy. The school has worked hard to include young mothers but the inclusion agenda has had an interesting side-effect in recent years. “We managed to get teenage pregnancies down and teenagers were starting to challenge the aspiration of wanting a baby. However, we built in a lot of customised learning packages to enable young mums to carry on studying. Unfortunately the rates seem to be increasing again as teenagers realise they can have a baby and study. We’ve unpicked the barrier not the desire for teenage girls to want a baby.”

Debbie is now moving onto to her second headship in September 2007. Looking back, she is overwhelmed by the progress that has been made. “The biggest legacy I’ll take away is the growth of individuals. When I look at where people were three years ago, it is just amazing. Our community is vibrant. Now we’ve had an outstanding Ofsted, there are local businesses running from the school and we have about 1,500 adult learners. It was a tough decision but now is the right time for me to move onto a new challenge for my own personal growth.”

It is clear from all three headteachers that emotional intelligence is the key to opening doors on social inclusion. “Getting adults and pupils motivated is always the first step,” says Deborah. “Only once self-esteem has been raised can learning take place."