RDC(3) RRSWA4
Rural Development Sub-Committee
Inquiry into Reorganisation of Schools in Rural Wales
Response from ContinYou Cymru
Background to ContinYou Cymru and Community Focused Schools
ContinYou is a UK wide charity concerned with developing and supporting the development of learning opportunities for everyone - children and young people, families and communities. ContinYou Cymru carries out the charity’s work in Wales. As part of that work, we provide a support service to all 22 LEAs in Wales, on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG), to help them to develop community focused schools.
Community focused schools recognise that schools cannot, and should not, work alone in helping children and young people reach their potential. We know that children and young people learn more effectively when they are happy and healthy. A community focused schools approach considers how children and young people’s wider needs can be addressed through working with a range of partners and agencies, parents, families and the wider community. And, through working in this way, bring benefits to their families and communities. The WAG is encouraging all schools, over time, to develop a community focused schools approach.
Whereas the traditional views of community focused schools might have limited them to community use of school premises, the past three years’ experience has helped to show that the approach is about far more than just dual-use of school buildings. In the most effective community focused schools, the approach is built into whole school planning and is not seen as an 'add on’ so that it can make a real difference to children and young people and, through working in this way, to their families and communities.
The aim of community focused schools provision is to improve learning and well-being for children, young people, families and communities through:
Out of school hours learning (oshl):
Providing out of school hours and other learning opportunities outside the formal curriculum for children and young people, adults, families and communities.
Example: a range of out of school learning opportunities and activities for children eg sports, homework, cookery, etc, inter-generational and life long learning
Family and community provision:
Additional services, opportunities or the provision of information.
Example: one stop shop information on local services, childcare provision, children’s information services, drop in health clinic, debt counselling.
Multi-agency working and provision:
Relevant partners are part of the planning, development and delivery of the Community Focused Schools provision, which contributes to the priorities of the Children and Young People’s Plan.
Example: police, social services, health services on school campus, quick and easy access and referral of children and families to other services
Key messages:
Well planned and implemented provision responds to identified needs.
Community focused schools are more than just dual-use of school buildings.
Activities/services do not have to take place on school sites.
It’s not about competing with existing provision
The school can act as a signpost.
Evidence to the Inquiry
Existing and proposed WAG policy and guidance and whether they adequately deal with the wider issues that may be associated with the reorganization of rural schools.
Since 2005, the Welsh Assembly Government has made funding available to all 22 LEAs to develop community focused schools approaches in their areas, and will continue to make this funding available until 2011. An element of this funding to all LEAs is for supporting the development of a community focused schools approach in small and rural schools.
The WAG issued 'Community Focused Schools Circular No: 34/2003’ in 2003 to give advice to schools on developing a community focused schools approach. It does not specifically deal with the issues around school re-organisation and community focused schools but paragraph 3.36 states "Communities vary, but it is likely that community focused school activities and services will be of particular value in rural or disadvantages areas. In these communities the availability of public services is often limited, and there are fewer local businesses or other community facilities. Schools can host essential services on the school premises” (p.12).
The Assembly’s School Effectiveness Framework (2008) reiterates that "education outcomes do not just depend on schools” but are affected by a range of other issues including "poverty, family circumstances, housing and health” (p.3). The Framework acknowledges that community focused schools have a key role to play in contributing to school effectiveness and improvement.
Whether there are any wider social and education issues associated with rural school reorganizations, such as the impact on rural communities, families and children and how this is taken into consideration as part of the decision-making process.
As mentioned above, a community focused schools approach considers how children and young people’s wider needs can be addressed through working with a range of partners and agencies, parents, families and the wider community. And, through working in this way, bring benefits to their families and communities.
We believe that community focused schools, working as part of a network of wider provision, can be a model of delivering a range of services and activities at a local level in rural communities and which can potentially address some of the issues around income poverty, service poverty and participation poverty. These could include:
Providing local opportunities for learning, training and skills development.
Providing local career opportunities.
Provide community facilities e.g. leisure and sports facilities.
Provide opportunities for accessing services locally e.g. Citizens Advice Bureau drop-in, Credit Union, food co-ops, health advice.
Providing 'things to do’ for children and young people after school hours, during weekends and holidays.
Providing childcare to enable parents to work.
The experience over the last three years, since the grant was made available in 2005, shows that a community focused schools approach can be developed in rural areas, and in small schools, but that there can be a number of challenges.
A growing number of schools, including in rural areas, are working in clusters to deliver community focused schools provision. This can be an efficient way to deliver community focused schools provision because, if well planned, it can avoid duplication of services and activities and enables different schools to 'share’ provision between them. Children, young people, families and communities may not necessarily access provision in their 'home’ school but through another school in that cluster. However, schools in rural areas in particular report that transport is a key issue which can act as a barrier to children and young people accessing out of school hours learning activities as part of a cluster model. We believe that every child and young person should experience a full range of quality out of school hours learning activities as part of their learning and development, complementing learning in the classroom.
Community focused schools development is a key part of every Local Authority’s strategic and operational planning and delivery, and more and more authorities are including community focused schools in this e.g. as part of their Children and Young People’s Plans, Community Plans and Health and Social Care and Well-being Plans.
We believe that school re-organisation should be included as part of each Local Authority’s well planned and coherent approach to delivering community focused schools.
Examples of reorganization in rural Wales to understand the experiences and learn from any innovative approaches.
1. Ysgol Y Dderi, Ceredigion
This primary school of 121 pupils in rural Ceredigion was opened as an area school in 1976 following the closure of six village schools. The school has a long history of working as a community focused school through providing facilities for the community to use and hosting a range of community learning activities. It saw the community focused schools grant as a way to develop this approach further and in particular to employ a community co-ordinator. The co-ordinator carried out an audit in the six villages to identify existing provision and gaps. This resulted in the production of a calendar of events which is now produced four times a year. Informal monitoring suggests that more people, and more new people, are attending various classes and events in all communities. A relationship has developed with a history group - made up of people from the local communities - which is currently researching the Victorians and will produce a booklet which the school can use as it will tie in with its History curriculum. Other plans include developing an organic garden with local people with gardening skills, teaching assistants and children and young people. The co-ordinator has been successful in securing £14,000 from the Assembly’s Local Environment Quality grant to add value to this development.
2. Ceiriog Valley, Wrexham
ContinYou Cymru is currently working with the LEA and with three small primary schools in the rural Ceiriog Valley to develop a community focused schools approach, with an emphasis on joint working between the schools. This work is part of the LEA’s school modernisation developments.
The role of Estyn in reporting on schools and LEAs.
Estyn’s recent report, 'Provision of community-focused services and facilities by schools (May 2008)’, states that "Very few local authorities have linked their CFS strategies to their school re-organisation plans. The great majority of authorities are therefore unable to take advantage of the opportunities that school re-organisation plans can offer, for example by making sure that any new school buildings and facilities are planned to offer the fullest possible range of CFS activity, or by making more effective use of local authority-owned premises, or parts of premises, that become surplus to schools’ requirements. A few local authorities take the view that the current formula for calculating school capacity does note take enough account of the potential for community use of school buildings” (paragraph 38, page 11).
Through our work we do know of some authorities (Ceredigion, Carmarthenshire, Powys and Wrexham but there may be more) which are linking their community focused schools and school re-organisation plans.
Whilst community focused schools provision is not a mandatory part of schools’ inspection, we know that such provision can provide evidence for each of the key questions in the Common Inspection Framework. We have developed, liaising with Estyn, a checklist to do this which can be used by all schools in preparation for an Estyn inspection and as a tool for ongoing self-evaluation ('Making it happen: a checklist for audit and inspection, ContinYou Cymru’, 2007).
ContinYou
Cymru
June 2008
