Agenda and minutes

Please introduce yourself and outline the responsibilities that your post involves.

I am the Artistic Director of the PALS Theatre in Gravesend. My main responsibilities are to create and develop creative workshops for schools, nurseries and youth clubs – any education establishment, in fact - to design workshops and undertake various admin work.

What is PALS Theatre?  Please outline the services that PALS Theatre offers, and how these services are delivered.

PAL stands for ‘Positive Attitude to Life’.  It was established in 2007 to encourage young people to think positively.  We deliver breakfast, lunch and after-school activities, and deliver a Positive Life course and emotional literacy training in schools.  We run PALS Youth Arts Club with Marling Cross Library in Gravesend, which allows young people to work towards a national qualification level 1 or 2, which is equivalent to an A Level.  We also run the PALS Academy, which offers LAMDA qualifications, and we enter competitions.  PALS always encourages young people to develop their own concepts and ideas, so everything that PALS does is original as it has been developed by the young people involved.

What type of working relationship exists between PALS Theatre and Kent County Council?  How would you like to see this relationship develop into the future?  In which ways – if any – can collaboration and partnership working between all organisations involved in providing Extended Services in the County be improved?

We have worked in partnership with KCC and the Extended Services team and this has provided a very helpful link to schools and kept us up to date with latest policy.  Emma Jenkins is our contact and she has been very keen to help.  In terms of collaboration for the future, the main issue is the lack of funding to allow us to develop more access to schools.  Extended Services providers still need more access to frontline services at schools.  I am writing letters to all schools to invite them to work with us as an established KCC partner.

I am interested in your use of drama and theatre to engage emotional literacy and address behaviour.  Have you had any contact with local Academies?

I have worked with Leigh Tech in Dartford, as they asked PALS to develop a course for them.  They have been receptive to our innovative work, but in many other cases it has proved difficult to make contact with the right people.

In your experience, what are the main benefits resulting from the provision of Extended Services? When marketing your services, do you include case studies to show the benefit of what you do?

I can give you snapshots of the sort of feedback that Head Teachers have said our work encourages children to do well beyond the classroom; that our services have brought a child out of her shell and given her vital confidence; that children from vulnerable groups have particularly benefitted; and that they hope our work will continue so that future children can enjoy  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24.

Please introduce yourself and describe the roles and responsibilities that your current post involves, and an outline of the structure and remit of the Arts Development Unit.

I am the Head of the Kent Arts Development Unit. Our direct engagement with Extended Services is minimal, but there is a direct overlap between what we deliver and the provision of Extended Services.  KCC has always had some form of ADU, but the current Unit now has quite a different format. I have been here for two and a half years, and when I arrived I reviewed the structure and made dramatic changes.  

One of the challenges we had to address was how to provide best value for money.  The KCC used to provide arts services directly, mainly by staff running galleries, but this is a very expensive way of delivering arts activity in the county.  There were 26 officers in the team, and there are now 11.  These are arranged in two groups of specialist officers; arts and regeneration officers, who are split geographically to serve the county, and arts form officers.  We still provided some direct services, eg the visual arts officer runs the John Downton exhibition that you see at Sessions House, but the team’s main role now is to provide a strategic service across the county, to strengthen arts provision. 

The danger with arts is that we often take it for granted that there will be specialists to provide arts activity.  People working in the arts need to be a blend of two things; experts in their field (ie great artists) and good at communicating that skill to others.  The job isn’t as easy as many people think.  We need to find people who are both creative and good at communicating, for instance, with disaffected young people.  I see the role of the team as to generate opportunities, ‘feed the engine room’, to supply people to deliver arts services and encourage the emerging young artists for tomorrow.

Could your team become involved in Extended Services in school in any way?

Yes, the John Downton Award is already marketed to all schools in Kent, and this year we will pay particular attention to schools in areas where there was low take up last year.  We aim to get a new range of young artists taking part each year.  We also run the Kent Youth Theatre Festival, which is in its second year.  Many youth theatres are independently run but about one-third are attached to schools or an after-school activity.

In your view, what are the benefits resulting from the Unit’s involvement in Extended Services?  How would you measure success?

We have a performance management framework to judge our delivery against our annual operating plan and there are two ways of measuring success which are most relevant to Extended Services; leverage of money and levels of participation. 

The KADU’s budget is £1.1million per year (plus another £1million specifically for the Turner Contemporary), of which a considerable proportion is  ...  view the full minutes text for item 25.

Please introduce yourself and outline the duties and responsibilities that your post involves.

I am the National Director of QiSS, based in the Faculty of Education at Canterbury Christ Church University.  QiSS is one of the National Study Support Partners and has a contract with the former DCSF, now DfE, to work with all Local Authorities across the UK to support the quality for Extended Services and Study Support provision. I am the Programme Director of the MA in Critical Friendship. QiSS academics are responsible for the PG Certificate in Critical Friendship which allows those who successfully complete the accreditation chair QiSS and QES recognition meetings. I am also the course director for The Certificate in Supporting Children and Young People, which can be taken at MA and undergraduate level.  I am part of the Knowledge Transfer Board at the University and I am currently part of the team supporting the evaluation for Kent Community Youth Pilot.  I wrote the original model for, and set up, the Kent HE Compact, which I am now researching as part of my PhD.  The aim of this is to widen participation and outcomes for Kent students whose aim to progress on to HE study

What is Quality in Study Support (QiSS), and what are Quality in Extended Services (QES) recognition schemes?  How are these schemes organised and run?

There are two recognition schemes – The Quality Development Framework (QDF) and the DfE Extended Learning Opportunities, which replaces the older Study Support Code of Practice. Both of these documents are used by KCC to ensure the quality of their provision across the county. .  The Frameworks and supporting information packs of materials and documents are sent to the schools who want to assure the quality of their Extended Services or/and Study Support provision. Schools and other organisations who successfully meet the recognition criteria are awarded the kite mark at one of three levels (emerged, established or advanced).  The applicant completes the pack and provides a folio of evidence, which is judged by a panel of peer scrutineers and a chair who is a National Critical Friend.

The QDF relates to the whole of a school’s Extended Services provision; the core offer, plus the value for money that they deliver, plus the partnership working, and the whole scope of activity is judged to help identify the quality of the service and provision.  QiSS provides training on how to use these framework documents so the very best of provision can be achieved.  QiSS supports and pulls all these threads together so that the services become embedded as part of a school or clusters culture.

The Select Committee has previously been told that the Dover Extended Services (DES) model had achieved accreditation.

Yes, Dover has achieved the advanced level accreditation, along with several other schools in Kent.  We keep a database which lists all schools who have achieved a quality mark, which we run as part of the contract with the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26.