1 / 13

Terry Murphy Head of Education, CCMS

Terry Murphy Head of Education, CCMS. Overview of Education Initiatives in West Belfast. Education Initiatives in West Belfast. The Initiatives. Extended Schools Integrated Services for Children and Young People Post Primary Area Learning Communities Achieving Belfast

cleary
Download Presentation

Terry Murphy Head of Education, CCMS

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Terry MurphyHead of Education, CCMS Overview of Education Initiatives in West Belfast

  2. Education Initiatives in West Belfast

  3. The Initiatives • Extended Schools • Integrated Services for Children and Young People • Post Primary Area Learning Communities • Achieving Belfast • Full Service Community Network • Literacy and Numeracy Signature Project • WBPB Community Education Initiative Programme • WBPB West Belfast Community Project

  4. Extended Schools • Extending the range of services in the schools with high levels of pupils entitled to free school meals • Two very successful clusters in Greater Falls and Whiterock/Upper Springfield • Additional services are mainly school based with only limited engagement with community organisations • Provides a very good basis for further development as primary ALCs

  5. Integrated Services for Children and Young People • Designed to demonstrate that an integrated services approach to supporting families would be most effective • Covered all of West and Shankill • Was an effective community intervention model • Sustainability would have required cross Departmental commitment • Continuing under a revised management arrangement

  6. Post Primary Area Learning Communities • Post primary partnerships aimed at collaborative curriculum delivery • Anticipated full compliance with Entitlement Framework requirement for 2015 • Has been given additional funding to promote improvements in Literacy and Numeracy outcomes • An effective model of good practice with the potential to broaden its agenda to include an emphasis on school improvement

  7. Achieving Belfast • An initiative to help schools close the achievement gap for primary and post primary pupils • Has provided additional maths and English teachers and BELB support • Strong evidence of improvement and gap closing in most schools • May have been more successful if it had a stronger community engagement dimension from the outset • Currently under review

  8. Full Service Community Network • Established initially to support children and families affected by community issues in Upper Whiterock • Provides a range of support services for schools and families • Works very closely with other community based groupings such as the Extended Schools clusters and others • Has some similarities with ISCYP • Recently evaluated by ETI as being a ‘very good’ initiative • Cost effective and could easily be replicated elsewhere

  9. Literacy and Numeracy Signature Project • A regional initiative providing additional Maths and English teachers to help with improvements at end of KS2 and GCSE • Has provided two years employment for over 200 recently qualified teachers • Is focusing on grade improvement at GCSE especially for those at risk of achieving a ‘D’ rather than a ‘C’ • Will be beneficial but is not a good school improvement strategy • Aimed at achieving the 2015 PfG targets

  10. Community Education Initiative • The latest initiative • Aimed at encouraging schools and community organisations to work together in the interest of raising achievement • Funded through BELB to West Belfast Partnership Board • In very early stages of implementation • Initial focus will be on after school support for pupils

  11. West Belfast Community Project • Funded through DE to West Belfast Partnership Board • Focus on Transition, literacy and numeracy support through provision of: • Easter School • Saturday School • Summer Transition School • Early Years, Primary, Post Primary learning and transition support • Family Learning component

  12. Challenges • Too many strategies adding to the complexity of managing education in schools • Often overlapping in emphasis especially with the recent focus on Literacy and Numeracy • Lack consistency of commitment – mostly 3 year programmes with a limited delivery period • Need to reduce the number of initiatives • Devise a single, coherent, school improvement strategy with an integration of planning across the schools and community providers

  13. More Challenges • Initiatives help but do they contribute to long term community transformation? • Many young people in the West are high achievers – many others are not – only sustained and targeted capacity building support will bring long term community improvement • There is a ‘hearts and minds’ dimension to the work of raising achievement – any new strategy should have this as a key area of emphasis.

More Related