ocally denominated community currencies have been in use throughout the world for hundreds of years, complementing v mainstream currencies. In the last 20 years these currencies have been 'designed' to make them more robust and sustainable. The currencies are used to measure the value of transactions between a group of people who agree to exchange goods and/or services not as one-to-one bartering but with this pooled system of credits and debits. Thus, they create a local currency that can only be spent within this group.Perhaps surprisingly, community currencies remain, as yet, largely untried in the school setting. The time to trial such schemes in schools feels ideal, with an emerging citizenship education agenda impacting on curricula around the world; strong evidence-based research showing the importance of parental involvement in school life and the re-visioning of schools as community hubs. The Institute for Public Policy Research, Britain's leading progressive thinktank, is doing just this through an action research project that will pilot two different types of community currency in 12 schools across England. The currency systems are called Time Banks and SchooLets. The long-term aim of the project will be to learn lessons from these pilot schools to produce a resource pack to enable all schools to start their own community currencies independently.As the project progresses, the authors are keen to stimulate a discussion in the education community about the potential of SchooLets and Time Banks. Could this innovative system prove a sustainable and popular means of forging new partnerships with parents, helping to determine the future of learning communities? This paper will, hence, outline the terms of the project and then proceed to highlight the benefits and potential pitfalls for schools.
How does it work?On providing a service, traders earn local currency units issued by other traders.These are then registered as credits in a locally-managed central account. Traders then spend from their account with any other members of the network. All credit and debit balances are interest-free and cannot be transferred to use outside the community. Such currencies can build social capital and enable marginalised and wealthier communities to identify and pool local resources to meet local needs.The two most commonly used systems are Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS) and Time Banks. The main difference is that Time Banks participants are rewarded using a time-based currency for exchanges where an hour is equal to an hour of any person's time, no matter what the service they provide.In contrast, LETS operate as a barter currency, which is fixed by participants and tends to be determined ~&dquo;at RMIT UNIVERSITY on March 15, 2015 mie.sagepub.com Downloaded from
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