The Augustenborgsskolan school is in many ways a product of its time. When the school was built in 1956, it was both a natural and obvious part of the Augustenborg neighbourhood unit. The school was to be part of the all-en-compassing community amenities that the area offered. The fact that the building that today houses the school’s health team was once the area’s dentist clinic, shows how integrated it was in the community. The idea that school is one part of the amenities that should be available in a district or in a residential area is as relevant today as it was then, even though the school’s social role and function has changed.
The school choice reform that was implemented in 1992 impacted Augustenborgsskolan and the surrounding area, as the number of students at the school who actually live in the district is believed to have decreased.
The following year, the school’s popular music classes were started, attracting students from other areas of Malmö. The influx increased the proportion of stu-dents who passed their courses and could go on to upper secondary school.
The school also built a good reputation among many teaching students during the late 1990s and early 2000s, drawing them to apply for internships. However, today things look different as the school’s reputation has deteriorated.
From 2018, the school catchment areas will be totally erased in the City of Malmö. It is difficult to say what impact that will have on Augustenborg. The school today faces completely different competition and economic forces than in the past; its attractiveness is based entirely on its reputation, a reputation that may not be linked to reality. Like Augustenborg itself, the school gets mixed reviews. Here, eye-catching headlines of an area in crisis mix with arti-cles about Sweden’s best teachers (Joakim Björkman was named teacher of the year by Lilla Aktuellt in 2017 after being nominated by the students in class 4A) and students whose good memories of the school are tinged with loyalty and nostalgia.
Over the years, several good investments have been made at Augusten-borgsskolan, focused on physical conditions. In the Bo01 era, the school’s eco building was constructed and the Eco-city’s famous stormwater system runs through the schoolyard. The school also participated in the initiative Gröna
Andreas Berg is a teacher and worked at Augustenborgsskolan between 2014 and 2016
skolgårdar (green school grounds) and in Storstadsprojektet (the metropolis project). In the eastern parts of the Augustenborgsparken park, a sports area was built directly next to the school. But it is not only sports, play and water that has linked the school into its local community. Over the years, there have been countless collaborations between municipal housing company MKB and other actors in the housing area - projects with the opportunity to create pride in Augustenborg and a sense of responsibility for the area. For instance, students have committed to keeping the neighbourhood’s recycling houses clean and tidy, in exchange for MKB sponsorship of their class fund.
As an outsider, it is perhaps natural to ask why the school is not always intimately connected with the Eco-city, its sustainable character and the devel-opment that takes place there. When asking those questions, it is important to remember that the school is not required to do so, either by its constitution or in the approach to schooling within the City of Malmö. In a 2017 conversation with Malmö’s commissioner for schools Anders Rubin, he pointed out that the then political leadership has decided not to “point with their whole hand” in which direction individual schools should prioritise. This means that unless a headmaster decides the school should interact with its local community, or individual teachers themselves choose to create or take part in such a collabo-ration, it will not happen.
Augustenborgsskolan school was a natural part of the Eco-city Augustenborg from the very beginning. The whole area would work well as a large outdoor classroom for the school, but to establish ties between students and their immediate environment requires a concerted effort from many actors.
Image by Sanna Dolck
Parts of the Swedish Curriculum for the compulsory school (Lgr 11) make this type of collaboration possible and link to the goals and visions that are present in the ideas behind the Eco-city. In the curriculum one goal is that each student “has an insight into the local community, its organisations, cul-tural life and associations”, and that for students “an environmental perspective provides opportunities not only to take responsibility for the environment in areas where they themselves can exercise direct influence, but also to form a personal position with respect to overarching and global environmental issues.” It also states that “teaching should illuminate how the functions of society and our ways of living and working can best be adapted to create sustainable development.” In many of the subject plans for compulsory school, there are goals and key content that build on these basic ideas.
However, there are probably not many schools in Malmö where the local environment is so easy to bring into a classroom. It is particularly obvious in so-cial and natural sciences. Both history and the future come alive in Augusten-borg, as the area itself is a cross-section of Sweden’s 20th century history and a model for future solutions. In social sciences, students can trace the industrial history of old Malmö and the development of the welfare state. In the natural sciences they can, for instance, explore the green roofs, the Botanical Roof Gar-den, the stormwater system and Greenhouse, using them as starting points for wide-ranging discussions. And why not use the literature that has been written about the area and the cultural institutions in Augustenborg when teaching language and aesthetic subjects?
In this the school could play a major, or larger, role. If we toy with the idea of an Eco-school in Augustenborg’s Eco-city, most of the points raised in the curriculum could be met fairly simply and concretely. The curriculum also states that the school should be “a social and cultural meeting place” which is only possible if it is allowed to integrate with its surroundings - by, for example, not only making the schoolyard but also the students a part of the stormwa-ter system, by creating an urban culture for the school, by using the physical environment to teach students about Malmö and Sweden’s modern history and development.
In a now inactive school website, one headline reads “Augustenborgsskolan - A school for sustainable development”. This came after the school had de-cided to work towards the National Agency for Education’s award of the same name. In addition to this, there have been and still are teachers at the school who do their best every day to create conditions for the students to gain a greater understanding of and a stronger connection to their immediate area and the opportunities that exist there. These idealists are needed and useful, but they cannot spark major change.
Fortunately, the school leadership realised this a few years ago when the school began a collaboration with MKB and waste company Sysav, which focused on the school’s immediate surroundings and sustainable develop-ment. Head teacher Ulrika Prössler-Eriksson said that the project runs as a theme through grades three, six and eight. The youngest students learn more about Augustenborg based on maps and demographics and consider the connection between health and the environment. They also go on field trips to Greenhouse and the local recycling house to learn more about recycling and waste separation.
The school’s musical focus has also shaped the area’s playground. It was developed in close collaboration with staff at the school.
Image by Marc Malmqvist/City of Malmö
In year six, senior citizens are involved in the collaboration and help teach the students more about Augustenborg’s history. They also get to study envi-ronmental projects such as the green roofs and the famous stormwater system, as well as tracking the water’s route from Augustenborg’s roofs and streets to the treatment plant in Klagshamn. In the final part, the year eight students study home economics and issues related to food waste and recycling and consider future challenges. The project’s purpose and intention are commend-able. However, it is possible to wonder if it provides context to the students who live in the school’s immediate vicinity, while many do not live or spend spare time in Augustenborg. When the student’s home and school are uncon-nected, these efforts risk becoming the same as any other school assignment.
Schools are only one part of a greater story, so it is not possible to simply transfer the responsibility for such development to the school leadership and staff. Instead more investment is needed from both the City of Malmö and external players. The school has a core mission that it will work hard to achieve, while Augustenborgsskolan, like many other schools in socially disadvantaged areas, struggles with faltering grades. If the school is to play an active role in local development, we need more than just a responsive school leadership and committed teachers. Political efforts, targeted resources and concrete man-dates are needed from local school leaders, the National Agency for Education and Parliament to ensure students receive the best possible education in their local environment and in school. At that point, a bridge can be built between the student and their surroundings.
The school in the Eco-city
Augustenborgsskolan school was from the beginning a formal partner in the application for funding for the Eco-city Augustenborg, which ran between 1998 and 2005. One of the initiatives was to renovate the schoolyard and park. The transfor-mation of the schoolyard - from essentially being just asphalt to a green area that is part of the sustainable urban drainage system - happened in a close collaboration between the students and landscape architect. The park is close by with its music playground and place for sports.
An eco building with several classrooms was also installed at the school. The building is completely recyclable and can be dismantled, with a green roof and motion-controlled lighting. Toilet waste is composted. There is also a recycling house for source separation.
The school was also part of the initiative for resource management, which aimed to reduce total resource consumption within the Eco-city Augustenborg: energy, heating and water. However, during the project the school was expanded and more students joined, so it is difficult to assess how well the school reached its targets.
Text: Monika Månsson
My first meeting with Gnistan and its director Safija Imsirovic happened by chance just befo-re Safija was going to defend her master’s thesis, a case study of Gnistan (“Gnistan’s Ecology – a case study in the relationship between the indi-vidual and their environment” Imsirovic, 2017),
at Malmö University. Later that day, I read what she had written about the activities at Gnistan in Augustenborg, and about its significance for the development of young people. It was a safe encla-ve in Augustenborg, a meeting space where child-ren find joy and hope for the future and can learn about sustainability. Safija’s thesis describes an or-ganisation which is based on several dimensions of sustainable development. Adults who grew up with Gnistan speak of its importance during their childhood and adolescence. Many would like to return to Gnistan as interns or employees, or with their own children.
It seemed a perfect place to visit together with teacher students. Since then, I have visited Gni-stan several times with international students on the Teaching for Sustainability course and along-side teacher students and their lecturers in the Nordic SPICA network who participated in the course “Vägar in i samhället i Malmö” (Paths into society in Malmö) in the spring of 2018.
This chapter is based on Gnistan, conversations with Safija Imsirovic, the study visits with teacher students and Nordic colleagues and our reflections after the visits. It also contains extracts from letters sent to Safija Imsirovic after our visits.
"I'm impressed with your ways of working." (Student from Greece)