Policy for Schools as Community Hubs: Insights Into a Fragmented Environment

<p dir="ltr">Schools as community hubs are recognised for their significant contri-butions to communities. Yet, these projects must negotiate complex and often frag-mented policy environments that cross government jurisdictions and disciplines to achieve stakeholder support, funding, and operate over the longer-term to deliver benefits to communities. Policy research in this area is scarce. This chapter discusses policy for schools as community hubs through the lenses of Bacchi and Goodwin’s ‘problem representation’ approach and ideas about performative and locally enacted policy. This theoretical framework is applied to Yuille Park Community College, in Victoria, Australia, as an interpretive policy analysis to reveal insights into the policy environment that was negotiated to develop this community-facing school. Now proclaimed as a ‘whole of life’ community centre, Yuille Park relied on the skill and continuity of key actors who—with little formal policy direction—coordi-nated solutions across service provision, urban planning, and facility design to make a difference to a struggling community, generating neighbourhood uplift and helping to overcome entrenched intergenerational challenges.</p>