Twenty Years of Community Schools in Groningen: A Dutch Case Study

The community schools in Groningen, the capital city of the province in the north-eastern part of the Netherlands, provide an important advanced exemplar because it dovetails with urban development. The authors reflect on the development and impact of community schools over the last 20 years, and they describe in detail the critical features of the original design, its implementation and scale-up in primary education, as well as the characteristics of the redesign and implementation that currently is underway. This two decade journey clearly demonstrates the importance of, collaborative leadership for complex systems change. Examples of systems change priorities include policy support and innovation; powerful, cross-boundary governance structures; regular assessments (so that services match child and family needs); embedded program evaluations (with a priority for implementation fidelity); and active participation of higher education institutes. This journey features the rationale for the new design; the relationships with the city, universities and other stakeholders; and last but not least, planning for sustainability, continuous improvement and accountability. Together these several developmental milestones and systems change achievements are impressive and nominate this approach as an international exemplar.