Extended Services in and around schools
Positive Opportunities Worcestershire (POW) - for more
information visit our POW page.
In June 2005 the government launched its Extended Schools
Prospectus which set out the vision for developing extended
services in and around schools. This document was updated in 2007,
Building on
Experience, updating the government's vision following the huge
amount of learning that has been developed by schools, local
authorities and other partners. Both documents state that all
mainstream and special schools are expected to provide access to a
core offer of extended services by 2010,
to meet the needs of children and young people, their families and
the local community.
Extended Services in and around
schools are a key vehicle for delivering the government's objective
of lifting children out of poverty and improving outcomes for them
and their families. There is now clear evidence that
children's experiences greatly influence their outcomes and life
chances in later life. In particular, educational attainment is a
powerful route out of poverty and disadvantage. Children who do not
achieve well at school are most at risk of being involved in and
becoming the victims of crime, unemployment, living an unhealthy
lifestyle, and continuing on this cycle of disadvantage with their
own children. Within Worcestershire we are committed to narrowing
the gap between the children and young people who achieve their
full potential and those who don't. We believe that every child,
young person and parent should have access to the services they
need to ensure they can reach their full potential.
Worcestershire County Council has been supporting the
development of extended services in and around schools since 2005.
Between 2005 and 2007 the programme was piloted in four areas and
then, in early 2007, work began on engaging with all 237 remaining
schools bringing them together to form Community and School
Clusters.
All schools and the full range of local partners have now
engaged in a structured extended services planning process,
delivered through these Community and School Clusters. The planning
process involves a number of partnership planning workshops where
schools and partners work together to assess what the needs of
children and young people are, identify what resources are
available and to plan together to meet those needs, setting
priorities that will decide how to deploy resources to meet those
needs.
The outcomes of these extended services
planning meetings have been used to inform the development of a
formal three year
strategy for this work: the strategy has recently been approved
by the Children and Young People's Strategic Partnership.
The priorities identified through the planning process have also
been used to draw up 12 action plans for the development of
extended services in and around schools. These plans were
launched in May 2008 and focused on supporting schools to meet the
extended schools 'core offer' and addressing identified aspects of
underachievement.
These plans have now been refreshed ready for the new academic
year. The refreshed plans build on local and national good
practice, partnership working and supporting schools to narrow the
achievement gap. All of these plans will be reviewed and
refreshed on an ongoing basis to ensure we continue to respond and
meet local need.
However, over time these plans will strengthen to ensure all
areas effectively narrow the gap in outcomes for specific groups of
children and young people, and improve the quality of every
child's/young person's learning and achievement journey through
early years settings, schools and colleges.
The 2009-10 Extended Services in and around schools action plans
are now available.
Now available are the Autumn Term
2009 action plan progress reports which aims to provide
schools across the County with an update on extended services
developments both countywide and within their communities. The
reports also highlight the progress made towards achieving the
actions from the above action plans.
Action plans and progress reports are available to view by visiting
our action plan archive page.
Monitoring reports for projects that have taken place are
available by visiting our monitoring
reports page.
