My interest in the role of school newsletters in the school community began when our eldest son transferred from the local rural high school to a large metropolitan high school for his senior secondary schooling. Before this change of schools I had not questioned the ways in which newsletters were used in schools. However, the newsletters for this new school community appeared to allocate parents a different position in the project of the education of our child, one that varied quite considerably from the role to which I had become accustomed and which had seemed natural.

Here I am concentrating on newsletters from schools to students' parents, but there are other forms of interaction, but there are other ways in which partnerships between schools and parents are enacted. These include parents working as volunteers in the school. There are also roles for some parents as members of governing or school councils, committees and tasks groups that exist in many schools. There are also strong links for some schools with their wider community, in particular for rural schools that incorporate important community infrastructure, or where the school is the centre of efforts to revitalise the community and ensure its future. Newsletters are a public expression of the partnerships that schools are building with their parent community, and thus are an opportunity to look at one aspect of the relationship. This paper represents work that is still in progress.

The change of schools had been necessitated by our son's desire to continue studying music at senior school level, and our belief that studying music in face-to-face class with peers of his own year level was the only practical option. Our son moved from a secondary school serving a rural community that largely perceived the school as less than successful, and entered a school in leafy eastern suburbs of Adelaide, a school that is very successful academically (although we were not aware of this at the time). We were for the first time to experience education outside our local community, as both my husband and I, and indeed our fathers too, had received their education in the local community our son was transferring from. Soon after the new school year began my impression was that as parents my husband and I had entered into a quite different partnership between school and parents as structured by the school's newsletter.

A while later I read a paper that expressed similar impressions about contrasts between different schools and their newsletters. There was another parent who had been amazed at the ways schools can differently position parents. At the time I was in the early stages of my doctoral studies investigating educational disadvantage for rural secondary students. It prompted much thought about ways in which educational roles can be shared with parents can be perceived.

In my doctoral research (Bartholomaeus 2000) I identified that some sources of the disadvantage experienced by rural students have origins in the discourses that exist about the students. Many of these students were viewed negatively in relation to their approach to schooling, lower levels of achievement, poor behaviour, and lack of academic ability, for example. These negative discourses existed amongst teachers, parents, the community and some students, and influenced the interactions between students and teachers. More often than would be preferred, the pedagogies used involved a transmission model where information was presented by the teacher, and hopefully was integrated into their understandings by the students. I also identified a poorer level of metaknowledge amongst students, in particular knowledge of how to manage their learning and ways to work to achieve their aspirations. Another concern was about the constrained options that were available to rural students.

The ways in which schools position parents, or the partnerships that are established with parents, seem particularly important in an environment where there is more emphasis on local management, and where public schools are competing with private schools. Some parents are choosing private schools for the role they are allowed there in the education of their children. Williams (1987) suggests that whole school systems can be a key force in producing class difference in education. She explains:

I suggest in this era of increased local management of schools there are important implications for the partnerships and relationships that are fostered between schools and their communities. This is so whether the school serves a local community, a specific population that is widely dispersed, or students with particular interests and abilities.

Local school management has existed for varying periods of time in school systems. In New Zealand local management has been a reality for well over a decade. In Victoria local school management was extensively reviewed in 2000, while a similar review in South Australia has only recently been released (Cox, 2002).

The investigation of local school management in Victoria, led by Connors (Connors, 2000) stated:

There was also a comment about the role of the school as a social institution and as a part of the community fabric that impacts on young people:

This is recognition of the importance of having productive relationships between schools and their communities.

Local management is supposed to be about enhancing student-learning outcomes. However Seddon suggests that the focus for local school management has changed the discussion and the majority of the energy for change appears to be focused on financial aspects of schools, rather than on learning:

While this may be the reality of the situation, schools must also still work for the benefit of their students.

A review of local management in public education has recently been released in South Australia. This document, compiled by (Retired) Associate Professor Ian Cox has the title Community Management of Learning Centres (Minister for Education and Children's Services 2002) (Cox, 2002), includes a substantial proportion devoted to financial matters (about 40 pages from a total of 229 pages) also puts the position that self-management of schools is about student achievement.

Although some educators in SA are sceptical about improved learning outcomes being a part of local school management the Cox Report also had this to say:

Here the field has been widened from a task of local management of schools to one that includes community building.

Research reviewing the outcomes of local management in New Zealand yields some interesting conclusions for an education system such as that in South Australia where local management has been in place for a shorter period of time.

Here there is an emphasis on the importance of local effort to improve student-learning outcomes in conjunction with the school. That is, the parents of the students have a vital role to play, a partnership, in the self-governance of local schools. I would suggest that local school management also represents an opportunity for parents to work to have the school acknowledge local aspirations and incorporate these in the schools' strategic directions and decisions on development in the future. That is, parents are increasingly an important voice in the determination of the direction of the local school, as well as supporting the efforts to ensure their children benefit from educational opportunities.

The role of the school newsletters indicates one of the ways in which this relationship is being built and of the relationship as it exists. Here there is communication with the school community - a similar message is delivered to families with in the school community, and it is communication that is in the public realm.

The newsletter is usually a regular form of communication with families, frequently referred to as the school community, although often the wider community is not included in this communication. While I have used the term 'newsletter' it should be pointed out that this is general term. For some communities where there are members with a more limited ability to gain meaning from print texts, some innovative schools may have devised other forms of communication such as community radio, or personal contact in very small communities where there is little physical distance between members of the community. There may also be reduced access to written texts such as newsletters in homes where parents are not literate in English. However, for the school communities where I have collected newsletters most members of the community would be able to access the printed texts of the newsletters. I also used the singular term above. At one school where I taught for a period of time I became aware that there were a number of newsletters compiled by and for different groups in the school. There was a newsletter for the whole school that did not appear to be produced very frequently, nor to a set pattern, but rather when there was sufficient material to warrant another publication. There was also a newsletter from the Greek club, for the significant proportion of students of Greek background, to promote the activities of the Greek club which provides cultural activities for the students, supports the teaching of Greek in the school, and engages in fundraising activities to purchase resources for the formal teaching and extracurricular activities. There was also a newsletter for the rowing club, another important activity as the school has a special focus on rowing. Each of these newsletters seemed to perform the function of developing a sub-community and providing information to participants.

The role of parents in the school is a dual one. Firstly parents have a position of importance in supporting their child's education, through communication with teachers, and by encouraging their child. Secondly, they have a role as members of the community who influence the directions of their child's school. How these roles are fulfilled and the degree to which this may be successful can be partly determined by the positioning of parents in relation to schooling. Bourdieu has suggested that the process of education is one of balance or correspondence between the individual's disposition (habitus) and the expectations and interests of the institution (habit) in particular the dynamics of domination (Giroux, 1983). Students and their parents can be positioned as both agents and as dominated. Studies of how students are positioned in schools include populations that adopt positions of marginality in relation to school, for example the Maori and working class students in Middleton's study of schooling (Middleton 1988, Middleton 1988, Middleton, 1992) and in work by Jones (Jones, 1991).

Thus the newsletters are a means of communication, designed to keep parents informed about important issues, and to advertise particular events predominantly in the school, but also community events that may be of interest to students' families.

As a result of my curiosity about the role of parents that is constructed in newsletters I began to assemble a collection of these documents. These included the newsletters that each of my children brought home from school (for a year that was from three different schools). I also asked friends and relatives to keep for me a few of the school newsletters that came into their homes. While lecturing at Flinders University I asked students if they would collect newsletters when they went out to do their practicum. I also collected newsletter in each of the schools where I was appointed for short term teaching contracts. In this way I accumulated a range of school newsletters that was originally predominantly from a few rural schools, but now covers a diverse range of schools. Schools included are rural, metropolitan, primary, secondary, sub-school, private, public, for whole school communities, for groups with a special interest or communities within schools.

Principally I have focused on the content of the section written by the principal. The content of some newsletters, when they are from large secondary schools cover a large number of topics. This is demonstrated in Table 1, a survey of the content of a newsletter from a neighbouring school to that attended by our sons. The column written by the principal also covered four distinct topics

Some articles reported on student achievements, for example sports results, performing arts news, and the list of students with high academic achievement. Other articles reported on events that involved students including the calendar, MYP projects completed by IB students, and National Mathematics week. The SACE expo and subject selection items were important information, provided with the intention of ensuring that parents understood activities in which students had participated and were shaping future academic work of the students and for year 10 students, their transition from the junior school campus to the senior campus several kilometres away. In a similar way the sections written by principals or other school leaders can position parents in a variety of ways in relation to their student's role.

Having scanned many of the newsletters in the collection I selected some critical or crucial sections of principals' writing to look at in more detail. While these excerpts are not randomly selected they do represent a range of purposes and positionings of parents.

As a starting point I would like to share several excerpts from newsletters that appeared to offer me quite different positions in my role as a parent.

This text is informative about parenting styles and the characteristics of those styles, and for me is significant as someone is making the effort to inform me about research findings relevant to my parenting role. Using the categories above, I would suggest that this text is an example of welfare, that is, looking at the welfare of parents (and perhaps of students), as a part of the professional section, communication between the principal and parents.

Another text from another issue of a newsletter from the same school again shares a summary of some of the principal's reading:

Again there is a sharing of some academic writing and insights into education that the principal has seen as important. There is also, in the second section of this excerpt an appeal to parents for assistance and a joint ownership of one the priorities of the school, an example of a text concerned with school management. The extra curricular program of this school is expensive and has become increasingly difficult to run, but is maintained as it believed to be beneficial to the students, and it positions this school uniquely among public schools. Thus the second part of this text is similar to the content of writings by many principals. But as a parent I still appreciated the tone and content as it differed from the approach with which I was more familiar where parents are urged to comply with a view held by the school leadership team.

It is the disciplining of parents and of their children which is present in Text 3, shared here as representative of the work I was familiar with, and subjected to previously in school newsletters.

While the first part of this letter is informative, providing information about the International Year, the following two sections are directing parents' behaviour. If parents and their students do not comply they are letting the school down and/or placing people in danger. That is, this text is part of the operational category, with the aim of risk management. The parents are positioned as requiring being in need of disciplining, or of needing strong guidelines on how to fulfil their role as parents appropriately.

Text 4 is also a text that is part of the organisational and technical category with the specific aim of managing risk. This text is the type of message from the school principal to which I was accustomed, one where I had felt that I was being disciplined, and was positioned as one to be subjected to the directives of the school's principal and other leaders. As a parent who often worked I was one of those to whom the texts about appropriate times for a student to leave the school grounds at the end of the day were directed.

Moving from these contrasting texts, I have found a range of other roles being offered via principals' writings in their school newsletters. Another text, this one was not part of a principal's column, but rather was included in a newsletter from a small Christian school, is also very directive, and written for the purpose of student safety. While there is a strong imperative in this passage, there is also a clear indication of the dangers that can exist in schools for some students.

This is a reminder for me of how dangerous life, and schools filled with people who do not necessarily know each other well, can be for some. While this text is also very directive there are signs of discussion and problem solving in partnership with the parents of the student that has gone on in preparation for Easter. Parents and children are being invited (despite the invitation, this text is actually conveying an imperative as there is no alternative offered). Compliance is required from the community to ensure the well being of one student.

Another example of an operational and technical text is from a primary school in the Southern suburbs of Adelaide:

This was the second newsletter for the school year, and appears to be a simplified version of the school development plan, identifying priorities and activities planned for the new school year. The importance of this text is highlighted by the fact that it is signed by the two key school leaders and the leader of school governance body, the chairperson of the school council. Here parents are being given an insight into key planning for the school, and an opportunity to interpret what they observe happening in the school. However, it is also a complex text and while providing an opportunity for knowledge about an aspect of the school would be difficult for some parents to comprehend.

I also have discovered some texts that appear to have been written for the purpose of helping parents to learn more about the educational priorities and pedagogies of their child's school. Text 7 appeared in the newsletter of a large secondary school a few weeks after the events of September 11. This text was not written by the principal, but by a member of the senior staff of the school, and had been positioned in the newsletter ahead of the principal's text. Its positioning indicates the importance that the principal or some members of the leadership team assigned to the text.

Text 7 G G High School 21/9/2001

With my professional interest in secondary students and learning literacy I find this a very interesting text and hope that it was read and reflected on by staff, parents and students. I do not know what lead to its publication, but see it as performing several roles, firstly, assisting and encouraging parents to continue to care sensitively for students who had been unsettled by a horrific world event, and to highlight that reading tasks are not straightforward.

Another text that seeks to interpret for parents what happens in schools appeared in the newsletter of a primary school in a middle class suburb. Although I do not see this as a text where parents and teachers are situated as equals, there is a tone informality to compensate.

Text 10 29/4/99

This newsletter item would be encouraging news for parents of government school students, particularly in a climate of criticism of government schools, and of the higher levels of success achieved by students from private schools. This item is performing political work for the school, through promoting the value of public education, important in an era when there are students moving to private schools from the public sector, and a corresponding shift of government funding too. Another set of political work is performed in a text from the newsletter from an elite private girls school, Another College:

Here, community compliance is vital. Since this column appeared it has emerged that this school has been experiencing difficult times. Only a couple of years prior to the appearance of this column another private girls school had closed after a poorly managed merger with a college for boys was abandoned.

The comment by Williams (1987) that the community relations in private schools is quite different appears to be correct from the few examples of newsletters from private schools I have obtained. One prestigious private school for boys has puzzled me. The newsletters for the senior school do not contain a column from the principal or the leader of that part of the school. Instead it consists entirely of notices about coming events, results of sports teams, and reports of events that have occurred. The newsletters from the preparatory school however, have a clear emphasis on community building.

The texts I have shared with you indicate that relationships between schools and parents are diverse. While a range of topics are shared with parents, the tone and the role that school leaders allocate to parents vary. Some texts represent a disciplinary role with parents quite clearly being shown how they need to act to comply with the wishes and directives of the school leaders. In other schools partnerships are established with the principal interpreting material and informing parents about issues that are important to the education of their children. That is, a partnership is established, and work to preserve or enhance that relationship is ongoing. In an era of local school management I argue that much more thinking needs to occur about the relationships that can be established in schools, and the material that needs to be made available to parents to enable them to fulfil their obligations for that partnership and ways to enhance their children's educational experiences also need to be explored.

Bartholomaeus, Pamela A (2000), 'A "No Through Road"? Disadvantage in Rural Education', unpublished PhD thesis, Deakin University, Geelong, Vic.

Connors, Lyndsay (2000), Public Education: The Next Generation, Report of the Ministerial Working Party, Department of Education, Employment and Training, Victoria.

Cox, Ian (2002), 'Community Management of Learning Centres. A Review of the South Australian Model of Local Governance and Management for Schools and Preschools', Prepared for Hon Trish White, MP, Minister for Eduction and Children's Services.

Dow, Alastair (1998), 'Self-Managing Schools: Seven Years on - What have we Learned?'. A Synopsis of the Report, August 1998.

Giroux, Henry A (1983), Theories of reproduction and resistance in the new sociology of education: A critical analysis, Harvard Educational Review, 3(3), pp.257-292.

Jones, Alison (1991), "At School I've Got a Chance" Culture/Privilege: Pacific Island and Pakeha Girls at School. Dunmore Press, Palmerston North, New Zealand.

Middleton, Sue (1988), Researching feminist educational life histories, in Women and Education in Aotearoa, Ed Middleton, Sue, Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, NZ, pp. 127-142.

Middleton, Sue (1988), 'Towards a sociology of women's education in Aotearoa', in Women and Education in Aotearoa, (Ed: Middleton, Sue) Allen & Unwin/Port Nicholson Press, Wellington, NZ, pp. 174-198.

Middleton, Sue (1992), Equity, equality and biculturalism in the restructuring of New Zealand schools: A life-history approach, Harvard Educational Review 62(3), pp. 301-322.

Seddon, Terri (1999), A self-managing teaching profession for the learning society, Unicorn 25(1), pp. 15-29.

Thomson, Pat (1999), Reading the work of school administrators with the help of Bourdieu: getting a 'feel for the game'. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in education and New Zealand Association for Research in Education Joint Conference, Melbourne, November 30th to December 2nd, 1999.

Williams, N Penelope (1987), 'Research on Poverty and Education: Descriptive Research, 1979-1987', Poverty, Education and the Disadvantaged Schools Program Project, Sociology Department, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW.