A new study in Britain makes the connection between blighted environments and poor school performance.
"To date, policy-makers and researchers have sought only to establish whether there is a link between pupils' behaviour and a school's building or interior. They have ignored the possible connection between behaviour and a school's wider physical environment, outside its grounds and as far as 10 minutes away. The closest examination was the government-backed Steer report on school discipline, in 2005, which admitted that "the surroundings in which we work and learn have a major impact on our behaviour".
Published today, exclusively in Education Guardian, is a study that, for the first time, seeks to establish whether there are links between a neighbourhood's physical decline and pupil behaviour, truancy, teacher morale and a school's ability to deliver exam results.
One More Broken Window: The Impact of the Physical Environment on Schools was written and researched by Perpetuity Group, a Leicester-based research and consultancy firm, for the Nasuwt teaching union."
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Economic & Planning Systems, Inc.
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research