Transcript No Slide Title

Leading the
Extended Small
School
Extended Schools Pathfinder Evaluation - Sept. 2005
• Emerging understanding of the
task of extended schools:
- An extended school maximises the
curricular learning of its pupils by
promoting their overall development
and by ensuring that the family and
community contexts within which
they live are as supportive of
learning as possible.
Schools may have more influence than
they think
Remove barriers to learning
Eg:
Eliminate
• Remove something harmful
Give the child a good breakfast
Mitigate
• Reduce the effects of
something harmful
Provide opportunities where the
child can experience success
Compensate
• Counteract something harmful
with something beneficial
Provide a safe quiet space after school
for study or simply reflection
Create new learning opportunities
Enhance
• Enhance the effects of
something beneficial
Provide opportunities to experiment
Provide opportunities for parents to learn
with the child
Challenge
•Set more stretching and
broadening expectations
Present able pupils with new social or
academic challenges and life experiences
Community Engagement
• Schools exist in a distinctive
social context, which has a
direct impact on what happens
inside the school.
– How well do you engage with and work
with the community around you?
Headteacher National Standards Sept. 04
• School leadership should commit to working with the
internal and external school community to secure
equity and entitlement.
• Headteachers should work collaboratively at both
strategic and operational levels with parents and
carers and across multiple agencies for the well being
of all children.
• Headteachers share responsibility for leadership of
the wider educational system and should be aware
that school improvement and community
development are interdependent.’
Strengths and Opportunities
• Small schools are very well placed to
develop this approach
– Not so threatening as larger, more complex
organisations
– Seen as a valuable asset in the community
(If you don’t believe it just try closing one!)
– Supporters can see the difference they can
make - visible to others
– Voluntarism is much greater in smaller
communities - social capital
A community leadership perspective?
• A frame of mind ?
• A disposition ?
• An act ?
• A position ?
‘Community leadership mobilises,
connects and energises people. It
allows them to build a common purpose
and vision, take action together, and
make a difference locally’
‘As long as we use very different terms for
explaining good schools and good
communities, we risk talking about how
schools can be improved or transformed as
if this could be done independently of the
community. This is in defiance of the facts
and can generate inflated expectations of
what school leaders can achieve alone’
David Hargreaves 2003
Further online resources
• www.tda.gov.uk/remodelling
• www.continyou.org.uk
• www.teachernet.gov.uk/wholeschool/extendeds
chools
• www.ncsl.org.uk/publications
• www.4children.org.uk
• www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/studysupport
• www.surestart.gov.uk/surestartservices/childca
re/extendedschools
• www.pre-school.org.uk/extendedschools
• www.governornet.co.uk
Every Child Matters
- five outcomes that matter most to children