Extended Schools Update

The development of Extended Schools in Rochdale is firmly embedded within the Children, Schools and Families agenda and promotes multi-agency partnership working to address the schools' objectives and to share in helping to meet the wider needs of children, families and communities.

What is it all about?
Some of you may already be familiar with the Extended Schools agenda. It is an exciting vision that links into the Every Child Matters objectives. Schools are key places, located in the heart of communities who have the opportunity to provide a wealth of facilities for children, young people, families and other adults in their local area.

The government is calling for all schools to be providing extended services by 2010 however; they expected half of all primary schools and a third of secondary schools to be doing this by 2008, something we achieved ahead of target here in the Borough of Rochdale.

Research into the development of extended services has indicated a positive impact on pupil attendance and motivation. This in turn leads to a positive impact on achievement. Where schools are achieving high levels of multi-agency working they have reported considerable benefits related to co-ordinating approaches to vulnerable children, young people and their families. This working has also helped to enhance people's access to services.

Extended Services and Activities Hubs
All our schools across the Borough are working in hubs. Working in hubs is in line with evidence based guidance from DfES - schools cannot do this alone and to be truly effective need to work with other schools, agencies and providers in their areas.

The majority of schools across the Borough regularly meet in their hubs to discuss their provision of extended services and activities and how they can work together to develop this provision. They look at how they will work together to provide extended services and activities for their communities. Hubs are focusing on a range of different ways to offer these services. These include:

• Pooling their funding to offer joint sports or arts activities.
• Jointly funding a manager to develop extended services for the whole of their hub.
• Providing joint summer activities for all schools in the hub.
• Funding for the production of information leaflets for parents.
• Jointly funding a children's counsellor.

Our next key areas are around the development of the long term strategy and planning for "post 2010" by promoting and encouraging sustainability. We are in the process of supporting schools to work together in their hubs and ensuring that communications with Children's Centres, the Youth Service and local private, voluntary and community sector providers are opened up in order to maximize provision for local communities. The Every Child Matters agenda calls for agencies to work more closely together, from hospitals to schools, police to the Voluntary Sector, teaming up in new ways to deliver services in an integrated way.