Extended projects worried over cash

Extended schools that are not pathfinders are struggling to survive
on inadequate funds.

Jo Shuter, head teacher at Quintin Kynaston, a non-pathfinder
extended school in St John’s Wood in London, said that the
£97,000 her school receives each year to provide extended
services “doesn’t scratch the surface”.

Speaking at a conference last week, Shuter said that without an
increase in funding, the school’s youth club, which is staffed by
teachers and sixth formers trained on-site, would be forced to
close.

“We are also trying to provide an after school club for our
[feeder] primary school but we are not given enough money to do
it,” she said.

She added that, although she was aware that there were other
government funds that her school might access such as regeneration
funding, she did not have time to look into them. “I’m not a
fundraiser, I’m a head teacher,” she said.

However, recent research shows that pathfinder extended schools
need new funding models to make them sustainable. An evaluation of
25 projects by Newcastle, Manchester and Brighton Universities
finds that the Department for Education and Skills’ grant of
£200,000 for each pathfinder had to be topped up with money
from elsewhere.

“The pursuit of funding was regarded as an unwelcome distraction
from the real business of developing extended schools and some
projects felt they were having to ‘jump through hoops’ to sustain
good work,” it concludes.

– Evaluation of the Extended Schools Pathfinder Projects
from www.dfes.gov.uk/research/