Education has two equal and complementary purposes: (1) the formation of autonomous and responsible persons, and (2) the formation of a productive, rational and socially just society.

On the side of the individual, the aim of education is to help in the development of persons with the knowledge, values and practical capabilities that will enable them to achieve personal self-expression, self-realization and self-determination.

On the side of society, the aim of education is to assist in the development of a society that is productive and rational, and that achieves justice for all. A productive society is one that has the means to produce what its members need to survive and thrive; a rational society is one that values truth, honesty, and moral goodness; and a socially just society is one that progressively redresses the injustices of oppression (the institutional constraint on self-development) and domination (the constraint on self-determination).

At the level of the school, these complementary purposes of education are pursued through complementary sets of principles and practices. They are not pursued separately, in isolation from one another, but through activities that focus simultaneously on young people and on the wider community and society of which they are a part. A school adopting this stereoscopic view of its purposes stands opposed to values of atomistic individualism which treat the knowledge, values and capabilities of each individual in isolation from the wider community, society and culture which give meaning and value to individual lives. It recognizes that, if it aims only to produce capable individuals, it may ignore things necessary to produce whole persons able to participate fully in the life of their community.

In addition to producing competent individuals, a school adopting this view therefore aims to produce people able to participate actively and constructively in the civil life of their society, able to participate productively in its economic life, and able to participate reflectively and critically in the formation and transformation of its culture.

If a school focuses solely on individuals, it cannot produce a socially just community or society. To build a socially just society, it must build real relationships between real people — relationships of a particular kind. The kinds of relationships characteristic of a socially just community are ones that foster self-expression, self-realization and self-determination for each individual and for all. These are the opposite of the kinds of relationships that constitute injustice — relationships disfigured by domination and oppression.

In Australia today, a number of schools are grappling with the notion of education for community development as a purpose that complements education for personal development. Some are exploring this notion through the innovation of ‘full service schooling’. These full service schools are dedicated to education for social justice. They aim to create and foster relationships that are inclusive, engaging and enabling.

Against principles and practices that exclude people, these schools aim to create relationships that include people in valued social groups. They seek ways to recognize and respect difference, and to celebrate difference as a source of strength and vitality in the community.

Against principles and practices that alienate and isolate people from one another, they aim to create relationships that engage people in valued and worthwhile activities. They seek ways to make learning and living engaging and worthwhile for young people and their communities.

Against principles and practices that disable people, or that enable some at the expense of others, they aim to create relationships that are enabling personally for each and collectively for all. They seek ways to show that, by using their own knowledge, values and efforts, young people and communities can have increased power over their own lives.

They aim to be inclusive and engaging in order to be enabling. They aim to enable people to develop the means for personal and collective self-expression, self-realization and self-determination.

In the view of those advocating full service schooling, these ideals are not to be thought of as abstract or utopian. People in these full service schools expect to see these kinds of relationships realized — made real — not only in the life and practices of the school but also in the wider community beyond the school gates. They judge their success by the extent to which they are inclusive, engaging and enabling for individuals and groups within the school, and in the wider community beyond the school. And, in particular, they aim to be inclusive, engaging and enabling in the way they conduct the relationship between the school and the community.

The full service school pays attention to the needs of disadvantaged and excluded students, but not only to these young people. Many schools aim or claim to attend to the special needs of marginalized students. The full service school is one that aims and claims to create conditions that allow each and all — to a greater extent than is now possible — to make and remake the conditions of their own lives. That is, the full service school sets out to help students, families and communities to overcome the conditions and that trap some people in disabling circumstances, and that sustain their disadvantage and exclusion. But it does not focus only on those with special needs, or on students at risk. It aims to create inclusive, engaging and enabling conditions for all.

It aims to welcome families, the community and a variety of other agencies, service providers and professionals into the school to help build these kinds of relationships in the community as a whole.

It also aims to reach out to young people who have dropped out of school, building bridges back into the school for those who want to return.

The full service looks for evidence that it is achieving its aims. It is committed to researching its own practice, to discover the extent to which it is achieving its aims not only inside the school, but also in the wider community and in the relationship between the school and the community.

The full service school aims to play an active and reconstructive role in the life of individuals, and in the life cycle of communities. Schools always play some part in the life cycle in which communities produce, reproduce and transform themselves over the generations. The full service school sees its work not just as a contribution to individual development and the lives of individuals, but also as a contribution to community development.

To do this, the full service school needs the active involvement of its community. It reaches out to include, engage and enable families and the community in the dual task of individual development and community development. In reaching out, it does not assume that schools are the sole or even the primary site through which individuals and communities develop. It recognizes that families and many community groups and agencies have roles to play in both personal and community development. The full service school aims to find its place in these processes alongside families and other groups and agencies. It aims to make the school site hospitable to students, to their families, and to other community groups and agencies that share its commitment to the well being of each individual and the community as a whole.

On the one hand, this means making schools hospitable to tasks of personal and community development that families and community groups set for themselves. The school regards its curriculum, teaching and learning methods, and school organization and culture as presenting opportunities for integrating community development tasks into the life of the school.

On the other hand, it means that the school must be hospitable to other agencies, service providers and professionals. This feature is emphasized in what some describe as the ‘integrated services’ approach to full service schooling (though this is only a partial description of the full service school). The integrated services approach aims to make family, community, health, housing and other services accessible through the school — through the school site, or by coordinated initiatives with other agencies.

A complete approach to full service schooling involves both community development and the integration of services.

A full service school sees its curriculum, its activities of learning and teaching, and its approach to school organization and culture as means towards a dual end: serving the interests of individual students and their families and communities. The curriculum, teaching and school organization are some of the mechanisms by which the school can express its care for both students and the community. But the school also wants to be responsive to the community — to be a site through which the community can express its care for young people. It aims to be a site through which the community can develop its aspirations for collective self-realization and self-determination.

The full service school aims to build a partnership with community groups and agencies in the tasks of developing communities fit for human habitation — communities that demonstrate in practice that they value human life and society.

Both school and community aim to demonstrate this care for one another at the level of the whole life cycle of the community. Together, they aim to make collective self-realization and self-determination more possible for all.

Equally, at the level of the relationships between individuals (whether in the school or the community), both school and community aim to strengthen and support the other, to make self-realization and self-determination more possible for each individual in the community.

People in full service schools recognize that the knowledge and resources of individuals are limited, but that they can be extended and supported through cooperation and collaboration between people and groups. They also recognize that different kinds of experience, education and expertise must be brought together to realize the interconnected goals of individual and community development. They encourage cooperative work by professionals from diverse backgrounds — teachers and social workers, for example. They also encourage cooperation between people with different kinds of responsibilities for students inside and outside the school — parents and other care-givers, teachers, local government officers, and the like.

Full service schools work to overcome the fragmentation that accompanies specialization of services and service provision, by shared acknowledgement that different kinds of services have a combined impact on a student, a family, or a whole community. They aim to coordinate different kinds of service provision so that students, families and communities benefit from their combined efforts, and to avoid working at cross-purposes with one another (at the expense of individual students, or families or the community). Thus, they foster respect for the distinctive strengths and distinctive expertise of people from different professions and agencies, and of people with different kinds of relationships and responsibilities for young people.

Children, young people and adults all too often feel that they live their lives according to scripts written by others, constrained by circumstances beyond their control. Full service schools, working together with communities and with other agencies and service providers, aim to help children and young people become the authors - and critical readers - of the conditions of their own lives and the lives of their communities.

For more than a century, many innovations in schooling have wrestled with this task. Some have approached the goal, and some have failed. Those developing the idea of the full service school share many of the aspirations of earlier generations of progressive and socially critical educators. But the problems they want to address are stubborn, with deep roots in history, tradition, and social, cultural and economic structures that often sustain alienation and injustice even where they aim to ameliorate them. Those who champion the full service school — like other innovators before them — aim to make a difference. This time, however, the innovators do not see the task as one that schools must undertake alone.

From the outset, full service schools are working with people, groups and agencies outside schools to develop inclusive, engaging and enabling ways of working, towards the shared goals of individual and community development.

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The vision statement of the Berry Street School Based Programs Team shows how one community agency sees itself working with schools towards full service schooling: