St Ethelwold’s Church in Wales Primary School is in an area of high deprivation in Flintshire and despite being well positioned in the community for pupils to walk home from the school after attending after school activities, attendance was previously low. The intention was for the AEBSD funding to be spent on four overarching areas to support the creation of a community hub:
- Additional support for vulnerable and disabled pupils to attend
- Staff costs including training
- Session provision providers
- Equipment
As of summer 2022 there were difficulties in securing sports providers to deliver the sessions, the programme has not been implemented in the original timescale. Unfortunately, the school’s circumstances and its categorisation has changed since project outset and is receiving additional support, hence there has been no capacity within the school to continue with the extended monitoring period. However, feedback from the local authority education lead provided an update on progress for the school.
What took place? The provision included multi sports sessions provided through Aura Wales, plus arts activities, Taekwondo, kickboxing, and sessions run by the provider Forces Fitness. The support from Aura Wales staff, was valued. Since the summer, Forces Fitness (FF) provision, arts and kickboxing have continued in many Flintshire schools. The FF provision fits in well with the LA’s role of developing outdoor learning and as part of working with a SSCE grant. (Supporting Service Children in Education Cymru)
What works? One of the enablers has been working as a cluster with support within the LA to make the connections with providers. The schools in the cluster also sharing their own knowledge of providers they already worked with, raising awareness of local provision. This helps schools where there is limited staff capacity to research and identify suitably qualified and quality external provision. The coordinating role was viewed as important:
“Everybody knew what everybody was doing. We had good reliability from the providers, the uptake was really good...Working with some of these providers has opened up quite a lot of opportunities for wider schools as well which has been really good.” (LA representative)
Outcomes
Pupil benefits:
One of the advantages has been that bringing in local external providers raises awareness and introduces a link for pupils about teams/community provision they can join. Pupils can get to know community providers, helping establish that relationship in a familiar space and therefore potentially removing a hurdle to community engagement. A further factor is the introduction of more non-teacher role models, which was incorporated in schools’ plans. External providers took an interest in the pupils and also helped with a gap with a lack of male role models often in primary settings. “There was Forces Fitness, they were seeing artists, sports representatives..” and these introduced different skills, new ideas, someone to look up to and inspire them, contributing to their personal development.
Parents also benefited. “Who doesn’t want to see their children out and doing something constructive?” One family fed back to the lead that it had been a “lifesaver” for them as they had a challenging child who was disruptive at home and it gave them some space. These behaviours did not necessarily replicate themselves with different providers.
The model of timing of the activities worked well and provision could be brought forward in winter months to ensure safe passage back to school. Having the presence of an AEBSD officer at the school could provide a secure place for pupils to have downtime at the end of the school day before organised provision begins slightly later. This also has advantages of providing support for parents who can’t be there and providing somewhere to be when there is a risk of antisocial behaviours and children hanging about in the streets with nothing to do.
Community cohesion:
The local authority education lead commented: “It is definitely good for the community to see the children doing something purposeful and like to see them actively engaged in something. It does give youngsters something to do instead of hanging about. Most of the kids might be out on the streets (otherwise), not necessarily doing anything wrong, but it is visible...”.
The local authority education representative strongly agreed with the following statements:
- The pilot has increased the variety of sport and physical activity offered.
- The pilot has increased the quality of sport and physical activity offered (by teaching the proper rules and strategies of the activities they were doing, which teachers may not have known).
- The pilot has encouraged previously inactive children to become involved in sport and physical activity: “Yes, lots of pupils like doing Taekwondo who don’t really like PE in schools... It has opened up pupils eyes to a different range of activities they can get involved in.”
- Parents of our students have been engaging in the pilot (this included parents arriving before the end of arts sessions to find out more and get involved).
- The pilot has improved the school’s relationship with the wider community.
- The local authority have assisted in the implementation of the pilot.
Challenges:
Provision to the same extent hasn’t been sustainable with the smaller schools with a small staffing provision. AEBSD funding paid school staff extra to be present and open buildings for longer but there is no capacity otherwise. The main challenge cited was funding. Schools did want to continue, but cannot cover provider costs of £40 an hour.
Although there is unlikely to be sustained consistent after school provision without further investment, school staff have been keen to be involved in the delivery of the pilot. One suggestion is to make use of what worked in other ways if funding is not available:
“I think one of the things would be to encourage the schools – if they can’t afford to run it after school at the moment - to still look at bringing in some of those providers in curriculum”. (LA representative)
The LA representative suggested that resources for this might be found via Planning, Preparation and Assessment (PPA) cover. There was also potential in another school where there is a family centre to build on the adult community funding to offer parent and child sessions which could be arts, yoga, healthy cooking, digital upskilling as well as sports.
Further evaluation:
The interviewee suggested that further evaluation might consider further investigation of how after school provision has impacted on learning time – whether new ideas and skills transfer into the school day, and if not, how could it do that?
Enabling factors
- Funding, particularly for small schools to cover provider costs;
- A lead within the local authority and a ‘middle man’ that can coordinate provision across a group of schools, sharing provider expertise both for community provision and incorporating this into curriculum time.
“Just seeing the children there and what they got out of it I think it’s (the AEBSD pilot) worth its weight in gold. It has helped have a positive impact on confidence and a positive outlet for energy.” (LA representative)
