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Fourth Year Report

South Stevenage Extended School Consortium

End of year report 2008-09

At the end of last year we had as future planning targets, to focus on the remaining schools achieving full core offer as a result during the year the consortium has achieved full core offer in 11 Schools and has a plan in place to ensure full core offer is achieved in all 13 Schools this year. We also identified the need for a targeted approach for identified vulnerable groups such as under achieving students including young carers and looked after children, lone parents and low skilled adults. To this aim we have opened a new young carers after school club based at Barnwell School for children aged 8-13 years and both secondary schools now have successful young carers clubs running in the day.

We have also been successful in our bid for Extended Opportunities funding which provides up to £460 per free school meals or looked after child in the consortium to access out of school hour’s activities to try and engage and encourage them. Low skilled adults have been helped this year by offering a free level 2 maths course which resulted in 8 passes and a wide and varied menu of adult and family learning. Finally the barriers that special schools face in providing the full core offer were to be continually addressed at local and county level. To this aim we have raised the issue at several conferences and made sure this was included in the District Children and young peoples plan which has resulted in a forum being created in the coming year to enable a cohesive drive to ensure these children are not forgotten. Further to this we also have been successful in gaining funding for a fully inclusive high ropes course to be built in Fairlands Valley park.

Revenue funding

2009/10-£167,968
2010/11-£147,818

The funding is to be used for the roles of extended school coordinator, Parent support worker and children and young people’s worker and provide some start up funding for projects the consortium identify as a priority in their plans through a process of needs assessment and which must have a sustainability plan in place.

Shephalbury Meadow Federation were successful in gaining funding to run a grow global after school club which is equivalent to £10,000 funding and St Margaret Clitherow, Roebuck, The Valley and Barnwell School all successfully received creative partnership funding to become enquiry schools and Greenside School became a change school through creative partnerships. The Enquiry Schools programme will enable participating schools to engage in a one-year creative learning programme targeted at a specific group of pupils and teachers. The Change Schools programme will enable schools with significant challenges to engage in an intensive programme, lasting between one and three years, that supports the creative development of the whole school.

The consortium was successful in bidding to be part of the extended opportunities fund pilot which sees funding of £106,000 come into the consortium to help disadvantaged children have the same access to extended opportunities as their peers.

The consortium has also been successful in accessing funding this year of £133,000 from the Local area agreement reward fund and in partnership with Sport Stevenage, Schools Sports partnership & Stevenage Leisure to provide a high ropes course in Fairlands Valley Park with full disabled access and reduced cost to schools.

Parental and Community engagement

This year saw our second partnership day with a focus on parental engagement and was attended by over a 100 members of school staff and partners. The work completed on the day has been compiled and will form the basis of a project plan for the coming year.

This year the success has been the increase of schools offering tasters and courses for parents. The parenting plan has started with 2 successful courses running in the Summer term in Longmeadow and The Valley and will continue next year with courses and individual support offered to parents.

A number of family learning courses have successfully run this year through the consortium, including courses at Peartree juniors, Ashtree, Roebuck, Featherstone Wood and Barnwell School . We have also booked tasters in Peartree Juniors, Peartree Infants, Ashtree, Roebuck and Barnwell School for next years family learning festival.

The adult learning programme has continued to run at Barnwell and this year St Margaret Clitherow also offered a taster during adult learning week.

Dads and kids UTD has gone from strength to strength over the year and due to successfully accessing Sport Stevenage funding is able to continue next year. We currently have 28 dads and 51 kids registered and have offered everything from music sessions to archery!

Claire Marginson our new Parent Support Worker has supported many parents individually over the year and has attended parents evening or had drop in sessions at most schools

Swift and easy access

Emma Skinner, our new Children and Young Peoples Eorker, has supported the CAF process in a number of Schools and nearly all schools have completed at least one CAF during the year. Emma is continuing to access any updates in training around CAF and is a useful contact for schools regarding the CAF process.

During the year children’s emotional health was raised as a growingarea of concern and to address this we have engaged Stuart Coulden HG Dip (psych), MHGI, MGHR who will work with Emma and Schools in a variety of ways over the coming year. We aim for this Not to be a prescriptive ‘one size fits all’ service. To this end Stuart and Emma will visit all of the schools within the consortia and discuss what we can add to the good work that is already going on.

Development of ‘Circle Time’ materials that focus on raising emotional intelligence and foster good emotional health.
Offer additional input into Transition – identifying and working with those students likely to be challenged by a move of school.
Help identify those young people who could need targeted help, and we can help them quickly. Once the young person is again in control of their emotions, the work of other professionals will become more effective for the young person, and, just as importantly, to the professional as they will achieve better results, more quickly.
Whilst it would be impractical to train people to be fully operational brief therapists in a short period of time, Stuart can offer short training courses where we can teach staff some very simple techniques that will allow them to offer their young people effective approaches in reducing the emotional arousal within individuals and/or a class that can lead to some of these problems in the first place.
Stuart can also offer support to your staff health programs

Alongside this we also still have the Kaleidoscope project with Relate running for another year with free counseling for parents in South Stevenage.

Wide and varied menu of study support

This year we had 5 Schools accessing the playing for success after school clubs and once again we can see a marked improvement in levels of achievement for these children. In the coming year we have managed to secure further places for Longmeadow , Ashtree, St Margaret Clitherow, Barnwell and Roebuck we will also be piloting a KS2 numeracy programme in Shephalbury Park .

As mentioned earlier we have opened an after school club for Young Carers age 8-13yrs based in Barnwell School and helped create a network of staff who work in Schools with young carers who meet regularly.

During the Summer break we are offering 2 summer schools, a stage school and a multi skills activity club and have again produced Schools Out which allows children and parents to see what is available over the summer in one handy booklet. Alongside this we have also run a transition project in partnership with Stevenage Museum for yr 6 children to work with yr 7 children on a superheroes project.

All schools continued to receive 5 weeks each of basketball and athletics through our joint funding of a schools sports partnership coach which will continue next year and we will also be able to offer The Valley and Greenside specialized coaching with a jointly funded inclusion partnership coach.

During this last year all schools worked on individual projects which were funded by extended schools and these ranged from funding equipment for breakfast clubs to an inclusive after school football club.

Reaching families

In an effort to improve communication and make sure children and their families know all the services and opportunities available to them we have this year launched our new web site www.hertsextendedschools.org.uk/stevenage/

Alongside this all schools in the consortium now have an extended schools noticeboard which is accessible by the whole community. We also continued with our jointly funded and produced leaflets for adult learning week, family learning festival and Schools Out to ensure families are aware of all that is offered locally.

A new initiative being launched next year will be our consortium mini bus which will carry our extended school signage and will be available for all schools to use as they see fit. It may be useful for after school sports fixtures, local trips to the museum or park (the bus can transport 17 so can take a class size in 2 trips) or even to pick up parents for courses etc

Future Planning

The past year has been a busy one and has seen the consortium continue to grow and develop. The expansion of our team has increased our capacity to support and complements our plans to support both parents and children in the consortium achieve their full potential through our parenting and counselling programmes which will develop further in the coming year.

The work we have begun on keeping inclusion high on the district and county agendas is beginning to reap some rewards and this coming year should see more developments in this area. We will have a specialized coach to not only provide delivery but also to help develop future initiatives and we will have the only adapted high ropes course in the country.

The extended opportunities fund will present both challenges and opportunities in the coming year however it does have the potential to reach and engage the vulnerable hard to reach families in our consortium by ensuring these children have the same opportunities as their peers.

The work completed on our partnership day will also provide valuable information to help inform consortium plans placing importance on the partnership between parents and school in obtaining the best outcomes for our children. The coming year holds many opportunities to work and expand on the good work already achieved by our schools and I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for enthusiasm and support over the past year and look forward to working with you all again.

Shelagh Mackey

South Stevenage extended school coordinator