Secondary school organisation and home-school collaboration: a tale of two systems

Purpose This conceptual paper explores the relationship between school structure, organisation, and home-school collaboration. It argues that the traditional and dominant secondary school model based on same-age organisation acts in ways that constrain home-school collaboration while claiming to value it. The paper proposes an alternative model (vertical tutoring), one that relies on home-school collaboration and developing the capacity to absorb the complexity that collaboration creates Design/methodology/approach Models of home-school collaboration abstracted from the research literature are set within a framework of organisational studies, complexity science, and systemic thinking, revealing incongruities between claimed values and operational practices. The paper contrasts the frailties endemic to same-age organisation with the advantages claimed by schools that have adopted a vertical tutoring (VT) system Findings The choice of organisational structure is a major influence on a school's capacity to develop the home-school collaboration needed to liberate individual and organisational learning. Same-age organisational structure has a reduced capacity for building the collaborative partnerships needed to engage parents in their child's learning process. Multi-age organisation matches capacity with learning demand, enabling agency and liberating management. Research limitations/implications Current approaches to modelling rarely consider same-age operative structure and so are destined to restrict rather than enable home-school collaboration. The adoption of VT by schools broadens the scope of organisational analysis, positing a need for multi-disciplinary research able to link the form of school organisation to individual and organisational learning. Originality/value VT is rarely mentioned in the research literature as an alternative to same-age structuration. This paper addresses this issue and draws upon complexity science, autopoietic theory, and systemic thinking to explain why current models of home-school collaboration are insufficiently situated in organisational practice.