Agenda item

Please introduce yourself and outline your role and responsibilities.

I am the Strategic Director of Every Child Matters at Highworth Grammar School, which is largely a girls’ school but now has a mixed sixth form.  As well as the ECM Director, I am also the school’s Child Protection officer, I oversee attendance, the Healthy Schools initiative, Extended Services and I also teach.  At the moment we are looking at where we are up to with Extended Services, what is happening and what we can provide.

 

Please outline the Extended Services that Highworth Grammar Schooloffers, and how these services are structured and delivered.

The school is open from 8.00 am to 6.00 pm, so we are already providing wrap-around care.  Children can attend from 7.30 am and a breakfast service is available from 8.00 to 8.30 am. We do not offer clubs before school but we do have supervised activities.  After school clubs, like ICT, dance and drama, run up to 6.00 pm. A list of clubs available was left with the Select Committee.

 

Highworth is part of the Kent Music School, and we run some music activities with the community.  The Ashford Orchestral Players meet in our school hall once a week, and we host a choir, a wind band, a folk band (which is run by the community) and a barbershop group. All this is in addition to the regular music teaching and activities that we have in the school. 

 

We also have a number of outside users who hire our premises for activities, including the KUMON maths and English service which runs from 4.00 to 6.00 pm twice a week.  Until recently, we had Nepalese adults learning ‘English as a Foreign Language’, but the participation rates dropped and it was discontinued.  Soon we will have ‘Understanding Your Teenager’, run by an external tutor and arranged by our Extended Services Development Manager.  There is a break dancing summer school coming up which will be the culmination of a project to mentor and work with local primary schools to teach them break dancing.  It is hoped that this summer school will attract 60 students aged between 10 and 18.

 

In your view, are there any groups of people in the local community who find it particularly difficult to access Extended Services?  If so, what can be done to help them access these services?

Several local schools specialise in particular subjects; Highworth has music, the North School  has sports and The Towers has business studies, so that tends to shape the audience which is attracted to each.  Some areas of the community would be ‘hard to reach’ due to language barriers, disability, age and geographical location.  We found that the Nepalese community were hard to attract and we did not get as many as we had hoped for the English language classes.  We sent home a letter, written in English, with the pupils, but even if the letter had been translated into Nepalese, they might not have come. Some groups don’t feel they want, or feel able, to come into a school, some are already committed to other clubs and activities which suit them, and others want to do something near where they live rather than travel to Highworth. 

 

Are there operational challenges for the school when providing Extended Services (for example, with regard to transport, the availability of staff to run activities and caretaking duties)?

Yes, operational issues are our biggest challenge, the main ones being transport and staffing.  We have a large catchment area, and take pupils from 43 feeder schools, spread from Maidstone to Rye.  50% of them are bussed in every day and bussed home again at the end of school, so are not at school to access Extended Services. We have two caretakers who work split shifts, and they do not want any extra hours even when offered, so we might need to take on the expense of a third caretaker to cover the unsocial hours, including the weekends, if we were to do more Extended Services.  The whole school site takes two hours to lock up, and if we were running Extended Services we would be limited to accessing only parts of the school. There is no one building which allows us to cut off access to all other parts of the site.  Cleaning is another challenge, as our cleaners would have to be available to clean up after an activity, so the premises could be ready to use for teaching the next day.  Hirers would also expect the premises they were paying for to be cleaned after school use and be ready for their use at the start of their activity.

 

Are there legal challenges when offering Extended Services to the local community?  Would safety for users and security of equipment and premises be an issue for the school if it was opened in the evenings and during holidays?

We have some very expensive musical instruments and equipment, and our insurance covers that equipment in closed periods.  However, if something were lost or damaged in another part of the school while we were open for an activity, this would cause us great problems.  We would have to extend our insurance policy and increase the premiums.  Security of the site itself is also a problem as we have much building work going on in the school holidays, so if the school opened then for Extended Services activities, there is a the additional risk of someone being injured or the building being damaged, either accidentally by an authorised site user, or maliciously by someone taking advantage of the site being open. We have CCTV cameras on site.

 

Some people have told the Select Committee that they feel their school belongs to the community and there is a feeling of ownership by the community.

We have had problems in the past with vandalism, as people cut through a fence on the school grounds to use the Astroturf pitch.  Even when we tried leaving the gate un-padlocked so they could get in to use the pitch, the site was still damaged.

 

Are there economic and social issues for Highworth Grammar School in relation to the funding and sustainability of Extended Services?  Could the provision of additional Extended Services by the school have a negative impact on existing services in the local community? Do you charge for your activities, could you increase what you charge, and what impact might this have on low-income families?

We charge the KUMON hirer a modest fee, which is less than she would have to pay to hire the village hall. The ‘Understanding Your Teenager’ session, to be run by adult education, will not be charged.  For the break dance summer school, we bid for Extended Services money. We didn’t get as much as we hoped, but enough to pay for the tutor and the transport and to allow our facilities to be used free of charge.  We could charge some people for some activities but I don’t know where we would draw the line so that we did not put off people who really wanted to use the facilities but could not afford to pay much.

 

Do you aspire to put on more activities that you do at present?

The Head Teacher feels happy for the school to be used when it is open, and unless members of staff volunteer to take on extra duties he will not pressure them.  However, if more activities could be facilitated by the Extended Services Development Manager he would be happy to charge for them.

 

Do members of the staff volunteer to run activities?  What if a private company were to run the facilities and lettings for you and share the profits?

We would be happy to try this sort of set-up.

 

Going back to the economic and social issues… Economically, there would be an extra cost for heating and power to keep the site open longer in the winter months, so we would have to charge to cover this. Socially, we are a Grammar school which is attended mainly by pupils from more ‘middle class’ families, and these pupils tend to go to clubs in their home areas as these attract them more.  If we were to extend our Extended Services activities, these other clubs might be forced out of business.

 

Some families might not be committed to learning. What is your tutoring structure, and could this encourage young people to take on study at home?

I am not sure about this.  We would have to do a questionnaire to find out what our pupils do at home, or what clubs they go to when they leave school, so we could identify the gaps.  I will take this idea back with me.

 

In your opinion, how can all these operational, legal, economic and social challenges be resolved?

The building of new premises in two years’ time would give us the opportunity to have a part of the school which can be opened up for activities while the rest of the premises are safely locked up. Parts of the building could be alarmed separately, and hirers could be given a key just to the part they are hiring.   Gower House, which is part of the Kent Music School, works well  now as a stand-alone facility, as the Kent Music School have their own key to the building.  We would need a security guard on site up until about 10.00 pm.  It would help if there were funding available to cover the cost of an extra caretaker to cover evenings and weekends; some users could be charged something for the use of the premises; and a dedicated admin person to organise all the bookings as their main job would also help.  At the moment, I do all this with the help of the school business manager.

 

If the admin and security cold be run by an external company, would that help?

Yes, it would.

 

How could the school raise funds to keep Extended Services going, if government funding were cut back?

I am not sure how we would go about this; perhaps that’s something the Select Committee could tell us!  The Head Teacher has asked me to ask about the following;-

• a model of good practice of Extended Services delivery that we could follow, so we do what other Grammar schools are doing;
• some way of identifying which activities give best value for money; and
• whether or not it is possible to bid for a pot of money for each school.

 

In your opinion, how can Kent County Council, together with schools and other providers of Extended Services, ensure the sustainability of Extended Services into the future?  What would happen if the Extended Services Development Manager role no longer existed?

It would be very difficult, but some things would still happen.  We would still open from 8.00 am to 6.00 pm, have the music activities and the community clubs that we have now, but extra Extended Services activities which happen outside those hours, and are run by external people, would not be so likely to happen.

 

Do you rely on your Extended Services Development Manager to advise you on best practice?

Yes.  For example, she assessed the financial viability of the break dancing summer school and the ‘Understanding Your Teenager’ course and advised us on finding the tutor to run it.

 

As Highworth is a Grammar School, do the Extended Services activities you offer aim to stretch your pupils, in the same way as the academic work of a Grammar School aims to stretch its pupils?

Yes, we offer some free coaching after school hours, so we are encouraging them to stretch themselves.  We ran revision sessions through the Easter holidays, run by teachers but offered free to the pupils.  But we might have to make a small charge for this sort of session in the future to ensure that the students attend.

 

Are there particular elements of Grammar School life which affect the Extended Services that you deliver, eg the selective nature of a Grammar School, and the large catchment area, which requires pupils to travel some distance? Once your pupils have all been bussed home, you have lots of facilities but no pupils on site to use them.  How far is your ability to deliver Extended Services limited by travel patterns?

I can see that there is an argument for our school to deliver Extended Services for pupils who are travelling home to our area from other schools, rather than just for our own pupils.  That’s not something we have considered, so I will take that idea away with me.

 

Some girls who travel here by bus in the morning do stay on after school to play netball or hockey and then have to get home afterwards, and they have to rely on being picked up by parents. But because the school is open until 6.00pm, they are able to wait there safely until their parents arrive. If we were not open until that time, they would not have the option of staying on to do those activities.

 

Thinking about working with partners, have you thought how you could support your pupils to access external activities, or signpost children to other clubs elsewhere?

In a large school like Highworth, there will be many pupils who are not accessing any activities, and many would have problems getting home afterwards if they were to stay on to after-school clubs. We do not know how many of our 1,200 pupils do not take part in any activity outside school, so we would have to do a mapping exercise to find this out.

 

Would you also consider looking into the possibility of liaising with other local schools to use each other’s facilities to deliver Extended Services? It might generate some income for both schools.

Yes.

 

Is there anything else you would like to tell the Select Committee?

Some of our 6^th form students run activities as part of Extended Services.  They put on a summer concert, taking on all the organisation themselves, including many after-school and weekend rehearsals.

 

Do you have a strong School Council?

Yes, very strong, and we are one of the few schools which have student governors, which works very well.

 

Are pupils rewarded for this?  Do they get a certificate or something similar?

No.  Of course, it is a good thing that they can put on their CV but they don’t get a reward as such. The pupils who do this are already motivated to do things, so they don’t really need to be rewarded further.

 

The Select Committee keeps being told that it is difficult to quantify the benefits of Extended Services, and in the report we would like to present some case studies of success, with a student or teacher saying how Extended Services has benefitted them.  Could you help by providing something, perhaps from the students who organised the concert?  That would be a good case study to have.

 

I will ask the relevant members of staff and forward to you.