There is evidence in recent Government policy in England of the emergence of a wider role for schools in relation to the neighbourhoods they serve. In particular, the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal in England sets the work of schools within the context of an overarching regeneration strategy. The study reported here, sponsored by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, aimed to explore the ways in which schools were conceptualizing this new role and the contributions they were making to area regeneration. It did so through case studies of nine schools serving two disadvantaged housing estates in the North East of England. In each area, interviews were undertaken with head teachers, teachers, local authority and local education authority officers, councillors, representatives of community organizations, residents, parents and children. Access to school performance data and (some) neighbourhood statistics was negotiated and these were analysed for evidence of school impacts. Schools were found to be engaging in a wide range of community-oriented activity. Although this tended to lack coherence in any one school, it was possible to identify three analytical models of the role of schools in relation to area regeneration-- the "community resourcing," "individual transformation" and "contextual transformation" models. Evidence of impact suggested that each of these models had important small-scale and short-term impacts, but that none of them offered a means of addressing the underlying problems of disadvantaged areas. The paper argues, therefore, that the work of schools needs to be more coherent and better coordinated with other aspects of national and local policy which have a bearing on regeneration. There is also a need for research to test and elaborate the models developed here and to explore impacts more systematically than was possible in this study. This research will require education researchers to collaborate with their colleagues in other applied disciplines.