The myth of community value: the enacted curriculum function in schools in rural communities in Spain

Using meta-ethnographic synthesis, the present article asks if schools in rural areas fulfil an educational function in the interests of rural community sustainability. It identifies some positive features and causal mechanisms, but also some conditions that seem to be destructive towards this function. They appear to be due to decentralisation, school choice and market accountability (i.e. commodification) encouraging school leaders and teachers to select and teach content to enhance the performance of individual pupils on official examinations, and by this to attract and satisfy new school consumers, even if this may work against not in the interests of local populations and rural community sustainability. The research thus questions the common understanding expressed in research about schools in rural areas as institutions that form a ‘social glue’ in their communities. Market accountability undermines this. Despite different possible logic-of-action towards competitive pressures, and despite working in schools with very different positions on local education markets, the logical and predominant teaching response is for content selection and delivery to enhance individual performances and meet consumer ambitions for a school system that operates through the exchange of capital and can enable an escape from local communities.