Agenda item

Please introduce yourself and outline your role and responsibilities.

I am the Director of Sport at Castle Community College in Deal, and I have taught there for five years.  I am the assistant principal and also have responsibility for Health and Safety issues. Castle is a specialist sports college and a hub site for the Dover Sports Partnership.  We have advanced status in delivering Extended Services via the MIDES project, working with two local primary schools.  Dover Extended Schools (DES) is a successful framework for Extended Services in the Dover area.

In your view, does the provision of Extended Services help improve educational attainment?  In your experience, are there any other benefits that Extended Services bring about for pupils and for the local community?

There has been no specific research on this, but Extended Services engages and motivates pupils and keeps them in school, as they are interested in coming to school to take part in their favourite sport.  50% of Castle’s pupils have Special Educational Needs, and some of them would be out of school if it weren’t for Extended Services.  We also host Adult Education on site and at the Treetops nursery.  The school is open for use by the community from 8am to 10pm.

Extended Services benefits the local community, reducing crime and disorder and antisocial behaviour. Extended Services also brings employability skills, improves community cohesion by breaking down barriers, and fosters aspirations.

I used to work in a Grammar School, and when we had a sports fixture there we always had a good turnout.  At Castle, we have had to work very hard to increase the level of engagement to anything like that of the Grammar School.

In your view, what are the main economic, legal, social and operational challenges – if any – for the College, when providing Extended Services to the local community?

We are lucky in that the Head Teacher at Castle is pro- Extended Services, so staff have to get on board with it.  We use DES as a framework for Extended Services for the local schools, and every school in the Dover and Deal area now does Extended Services.

Costs are an issue, as we have to pay for extra staff and coaches to run sessions.  Attendance is also a challenge.  We had a new Astroturf facility installed, and built extra changing rooms, but the income generated by hiring these out has covered the cost of the additional caretaker we have had to employ to cover the longer opening hours.

Are there any other specific challenges and how can these be overcome?

Being clear of safeguarding responsibilities is a challenge. We ensure that all third party users provide us with evidence of CRB checks & coaching qualifications of individuals, along with insurance certificates and risk assessments. We also ensure that any coach we use is CRB checked.  We have a Child Protection policy.  We have an Extended Services policy now, which covers these things, but it would help if there was a KCC model policy that we could use in the future as a basis for our own policy and as a check that we have all the necessary safeguards in place. 

If simplified safeguarding literature were made available to schools, setting out dos and don’ts in accessible language, would this help?

Yes, this would help to take away the anxiety that many people have around safeguarding.

In your view, which groups of Kent residents benefit most from the provision of Extended Services?  Are there any particular groups of Kent residents who, in your view, find it more difficult to access Extended Services and if so, why?

I think we need to narrow the gap between those who benefit and those who don’t. Extended Services benefits mostly the middle class people who tend to access it the most.  I think we should angle it at the most vulnerable groups in society and make access easier for them.

What other clubs or activities does this group go to?

Some/Many of them don’t [seem to] go anywhere, or they might attend things that we are just not aware of.  This could be an issue of funding, although most activities are free and some vulnerable groups would not pay. To engage these groups more, we need to get across the message that Extended Services is worthwhile.  Some parents seem to have to decide whether to spend their money on football or fags!

In your view, how can pupil participation in Extended Services activities be increased?

We would need to be able to remove the barriers – costs, transport, parental involvement and support. We would need to emphasis the benefits of Extended Services to young people and raise their aspirations.  We ask pupils want they want to do and take account of this.  We also have to make the activities attractive. We offer, or have offered, judo, archery and fencing clubs.

In what ways, if any, might the reduction of Government funding for Extended Services in future years affect the Extended Services that Castle Community College provides?

James Brown, the Extended Services Manager (ESM) for Dover, has developed a model of Extended Services delivery [copy given to Select Committee] and, using this, Castle has moved its Extended Services provision through the stages of ‘emerged’ to ‘established’ to ‘advanced’ status.  You have to have the school’s senior management team on board to make Extended Services work.  Funding has been available for 6 or 7 years, but what is needed is lifetime funding.

The restructuring of CFE and funding shortage are realities, but what can KCC do to overcome these?

You need to have a strategic lead.  You can’t rely on schools to support each other; you need an external body to support them.

In your opinion, in which ways can Kent County Council, together with schools and other providers of Extended Services, ensure the sustainability of Extended Services into the future?

Funding is the crux of it, and the framework, and you need to make schools accountable. 

In your view, in which ways, if any, can collaboration between Kent County Council, schools and external partners, such as those in the voluntary and private sectors, be made more effective when providing Extended Services?

Vista Leisure is involved in the model, and they run the leisure centre in Dover.  Through their involvement with DES, they generate income for their company and provide local jobs. They run our afterschool clubs and signpost pupils to their leisure centre, and this all increases young people’s participation in sports and fitness activities.

No funding comes to Castle from this arrangement. I am not against getting commercial providers involved in Extended Services to make it more sustainable, it is just difficult to find the time to develop the links and set it up.

Can you give the Select Committee some examples of good practice or particular success in Extended Services?

There is the ‘Pass the Passion’ campaign, aimed at bringing the Olympic torch through Dover on its way to the 2012 London Olympics. This campaign was organised by young people.  Local schools designed a torch which was taken around 50 schools in the Dover area.  This was a big event with much press coverage, and is a good example of schools working together, motivating and engaging pupils.

Your school has done a lot with Extended Services, you have a very driven Head Teacher and have won a Quality Mark.  Your ESM, James Brown, has done a lot of good work on DES and developing Extended Services beyond schools to engage local communities, but how will Extended Services manage beyond September 2010 when some ESM posts are reduced? Could districts be combined?

Two or three districts could perhaps be combined under one ESM, but it would be essential to keep the DES framework.  You are right that Extended Services is dependent on a Head Teacher being committed to it.

I like the DES model as it is all about engaging students at clubs, and reducing truancy.  But I am concerned that it focuses on engaging students at the expense of engaging communities.  How could the model be progressed to engage communities?

Partnership with Parents could help. You engage parents in adult learning at the school site, and once you have them there, you engage them in topics such as e.safety.  Adults who are not parents of pupils at Castle attend to use the sports facilities.  Often you find that the parents also attended the school years ago.  They remember the school’s old reputation, and breaking down this barrier can be a challenge. To optimise community engagement in activity, it is vital to keep the school premises open for as long as possible in the day.

Some schools are less engaged in Extended Services.  Why do you think this is?

Schools might see an obstacle in the time and commitment it takes to set up and run Extended Services, and in a small or rural school it might not be a priority task for the limited staff available. Maybe the Head Teacher of a school is just not on board with Extended Services, or they feel they have no-one to run it. In a model of ideal Extended Services provision, every school would have an Extended Services rep on the staff to address these barriers.

Could the private sector, and Independent and Private schools, be involved in Extended Services, perhaps as a part of their contribution to the local community as a charity, as many of them are?

Personally, I don’t think they would be.  They might have Extended Services in the form of clubs for their own pupils, but I don’t think they would run activities in which the community could be involved. We have pressed them in the past to let us use their facilities, but they just don’t want us there.

Going back to the choice between spending limited family funds on ‘football or fags’, are you aware of any evidence that families on low incomes do choose to spend money on sports activities?  Does sport have to be provided free to be accessible?

By making sport free, you can devalue it. There is an argument that if parents pay for a service they make more of a commitment to it, whereas if it is free that commitment is not there. If families are paying, you will know that you will get a reliable attendance for your activity and make it worth running.

In terms of adult learning, do you know any strategies to overcome the stigma around parents attending adult literacy classes?

We have academic review days, which are like parents’ evenings, and we have literacy and numeracy sessions there.  A child takes their parent along to see their homework and what they are doing in their classes, and parents have the opportunity to join in and learn with their child.  This does have success, but we find that some parents don’t want to go into the class with their child as there is still some stigma about going back to school.

Coming back to the issue of private schools delivering Extended Services, I know one private primary school near you runs a band and art classes which your pupils could attend.  Private schools are obliged to involve the community to avoid losing their charitable status. You need an open, two-way dialogue between the KCC and the private sector, and some work needs to be done to assess how big a part the private sector could potentially play, ie what facilities they have and what use other schools could get from them. 

Perhaps the approach to link private and KCC schools could be done by a  neutral person.

Would you consider using an external management team to manage your Extended Services provision?

We would definitely consider using an external management team to manage an Extended Services framework like that of DES (Dover Extended Schools).

How far do you think your pupils would be willing to travel to take part in Extended Services activities?

Not very far! Good transport provision would help break down barriers.

Would you like to tell the Select Committee anything else?

There is a local football club which has 600 young members, with parents helping out as volunteers.  This has encouraged some parents to get involved in their local community for the first time. This club is run on a site which is open to the community, and it is clear that those involved feel a strong sense of ownership of the premises and take good care of them.  There is very little vandalism.

Did the introduction of the Freedom Pass have an impact on allowing young people to access Extended Services activities?

We find that, unless an activity - including the transport to get to it - is highly organised for them, many young people just will not attend.  You have to spoon feed them!  They also need to feel individually, personally invited before they will go to an activity.