An Investigation into the Efficacy of two English Extended Secondary Schools

Richard Rose, Andy Smith and Mary Feng Yan

Centre for Special Needs Education and Research University of Northampton, UK

Paper presented at the British Educational Research Association Annual Conference, University of Warwick, 6-9 September 2006

Abstract

The provision of ‘extended schools’ in England forms one part of series of educational and social initiatives which aim to increase social inclusion through addressing concerns over negative indicators such as poor school attendance and exclusions. The Childrens Act (2004) and the “Every Child Matters Agenda” has been implemented as a response to perceived deficiencies in holistic approaches to child support services and follows inquiries into shortcomings across education, health and social services. The legislation places schools at the core of child protection and support services, with an intended increase in inter-agency collaboration and improved communication to ensure that all pupils receive appropriate access to essential services. Extended schools provide additional services, such as holiday clubs, family support workers and counselling services which are available to all pupils and their families and aim to address the needs of the most vulnerable. Across England, an increase in the provision of extended schools indicates a move towards increased inter-professional liaison with a declared intent of improving support for vulnerable young people. Few evaluations of the efficacy of such provision have, as yet, been completed.

This paper reports on an investigation into the efficacy of two extended secondary schools in an English Local Authority. Using a combination of survey methods, observation and documentary analysis the researchers sought the opinions of teachers, pupils, parents and care agencies in assessing the impact of measures instigated to provide increased support and facilities for all pupils, and particularly those perceived to be at risk. The research was conducted over the period of one academic year and was undertaken by both ‘outsider’ researchers from the University of Northampton, and two teachers (one from each school) who were seconded to the project as ‘insider researchers’. School performance indicators were scrutinised to ascertain the influences of specific measures adopted under the extended schools actions and quantitative data was subjected to interrogation alongside the information obtained through interviews and observation. Case studies, which provide exemplars of the impact of the extended school process upon specific individuals were constructed and used to model further developments within the schools.

The researchers report on those measures, which are regarded by service users as having had a positive impact upon school performance in respect of supporting pupils at risk. The paper provides case study materials alongside both qualitative and quantitative data, which indicates the effectiveness of the extended schools process in the two study schools. The research findings are being used to inform further developments within the two schools and also to assist the Local Authority as it seeks to increase its use of extended schools.

Introduction

The concept of full-service schooling whereby the provision of health and welfare services and facilities are located within schools in order to provide a hub of service delivery to a community has been well established in some parts of North America for a considerable period of time (Cahill 1996, Raham 1998). Dryfoos (1994) has described the concept of school-based health and social care centres which bring a range of services together under one roof and thereby ensure a greater community focus both upon and within schools. She suggests that the movement towards a more integrated approach to providing services to both students and families through schools has been highly successful in strengthening community links and has had a positive impact upon attitudes towards schooling. She returned to a discussion of benefits to families in a later study (Dryfoos 1996) in which she provided case studies of schools from several parts of the USA through which she was able to identify the importance of schools recognising and responding to the unique needs of their own communities. She concluded that a model of full service schools was one which was likely to be expanded in the future and increasingly adopted to ensure cohesion of professional services. She also emphasised that this would be achieved only where communication between services and the commitment of professionals to collaboration was strong. The opinions expressed by Dryfoos are partly founded on a recognition that not all schools will be equipped or able to deliver a full service model. This point was further endorsed by Carlson, Paavole and Talley (1995) who advocate that a range of models of service delivery is most likely to be developed in the future, with the influence on full service school development determined according to demographic, social and economic factors. They make a particular observation that the push for health, education and social reform within a combined framework recognises that society is in a state of disequilibrium and is unsure how to adopt cohesive methods of addressing issues of disaffection and disadvantage. If this truly is the case, it is likely that the location of full service schools in the USA and the emerging and increasing numbers of extended schools in England will be focused upon areas where socio-economic need or community unrest is greatest.

In England the Department for Education and Skills (DfES 2005) describes an extended school as one which provides activities and services, often beyond the school day in order to address the needs of its pupils, their families and the wider community.Such schools, it is anticipated, will address critical issues in providing a more collaborative service across agencies from differing disciplines in order to assure that the needs of young people and their families, many of whom perceive themselves as disenfranchised in respect of education and welfare are fully addressed. The Children Act (DfES 2004) building upon Every Child Matters (DfES 2003) stresses the importance of constructing multi-agency teams which are responsive to local community needs and are seen as both accessible and welcoming to families who have previously felt at distance from the services which they offer. Full-service extended schools have been established as a means of providing a hub upon which services can be focused and where additional facilities, such as breakfast clubs, after hours clubs and holiday activities are provided as a means of supporting families in areas of need or deprivation.

The development of extended schools has not taken place without some difficulty. Dyson, Millward and Todd (2002) in a study of early pilot projects suggested that there was little consensus when it came to defining the role, purpose and nature of extended schools. They expressed a particular concern that the use of a deficit model in which communities were labelled as disadvantaged may possibly perpetuate a negative view of a school and thereby undermine the very motives for development of a full-service approach. In a later study Cummings, Todd and Dyson (2004) recognised that progress towards an ideal model in which community services were located in a school was invariably slow. They suggest that breaking down of professional barriers and realignment of services requires new thinking and positive measures to move forward from established custom and practice. In their study it was clear that a positive focus upon learning was maintained in the extended schools with the development of breakfast clubs, after school clubs and holiday activities as common features. Co-location of facilities was less easily achieved. The experience of these researchers tends to suggest that whilst there is a developing understanding of the need and purpose of extended schools, there is, as yet, very little evidence of the emergence of distinctive models for their facilitation.

A study conducted by Wilkin et al. (2003) concur with the views of other researchers that there are a variety of approaches towards the development of extended school provision. However, their research reveals some common traits, such as multi-agency collaboration, improved support for families and extension of the traditional school timetable as a feature of most such schools. The challenges of increased inter-agency working have been clearly acknowledged by other researchers (Vulliamy and Webb 2001, Lacey 2001, 2003) who propose that traditional working practices will only be changed if more effective systems of communication are put in place. Differences in working practices are to some extent determined through the varying legislation which has governed the actions of individual agencies and may cause some difficulties in respect of compatibility of procedures when working in a multi-agency environment (Makins 1997).

It is evident that many Local Authorities have moved closer to the development of a more integrated children’s’ service, and that there is a commitment to closer liaison across agencies, it is not yet possible to say how effective extended schools have been in supporting the government agenda of challenging disaffection and disadvantage. The need for further evaluation of projects in this area in order to ascertain the impact of practices and to inform possible future models of development is clear.

The research context

The research reported in this paper was commissioned by a Local Authority located in the English Midlands. The Local Authority had made a commitment to an expansion of its Extended Schools provision and in order to proceed with this development was eager to learn from the experiences of two schools which had been functioning within an Extended Schools Pilot Project for a period of three years. The research team was asked to conduct a one year study into these two schools in order to provide an understanding of their operation and was given the following brief:

•To evaluate the efficacy of the two full-service Extended Schools within a Local Authority Extended Schools Pilot Scheme.

•To construct case studies of interesting and innovative practice for dissemination to other schools within the Local Authority.

•To gauge the perception of the Extended Schools from the perspective of service agencies and service users.

•To provide commentary for the Local Authority with regards to continuation and expansion of the scheme.

The two comprehensive secondary schools upon which the research was focused are situated in areas which include pockets of considerable deprivation and where educational aspiration has traditionally been regarded as low. Both schools provide education to students between the ages of 11 and 16 years and are similar in size, each having approximately 900 students. Within the Extended Schools Pilot projects the schools had established a clear set of aims, these being:

  • To bring services closer to the community
  • To facilitate multi-agency working
  • To establish a community-based approach to schooling
  • To integrate the ExtendedSchool approach into established school systems
  • To develop core work with vulnerable students and at-risk families

and

  • To work with partner agencies to develop non-core work.

The terms core and non-core work are used to distinguish a specific brief within the schools. Core work refers to five priorities for Extended Schools established by the UK government, these being :

  • High quality child care
  • A varied menu of activities
  • Parenting support
  • Swift and easy referral
  • Community access to school facilities

Funding provided for the establishment of the project within the two extended schools was in part utilised to provide within each school a family worker who had a brief to act as a link between the school, services provided by other agencies and the voluntary sector, and students and their families. Funding was similarly used to provide additional school nursing cover and to increase access to a Child and Family Therapy Services (CAFTS) worker in each school. The Local Authority had supported the two schools in planning their development as full-service schools with colleagues from health and social services, sections of the voluntary sector and the police service. These negotiations had resulted in the establishment of clearly defined links and roles and the location of some services, for example a community police officer, within the schools.

Methods

An initial questionnaire was given to all staff, teaching and non-teaching in both schools (N = 274). This yielded a return of 110 representing 40% of those distributed. Following categorical indexing of the responses from this questionnaire survey data was interrogated in order to inform the development of interview schedules which were used in semi structured interviews with a purposive sample of key service providers and users (see table 1).

Table1

The sample of interviewees was as follows

Students – N = 14

School staff – N = 26

Parents/carers – N = 14

Professionals from other agencies – N = 16

Head teachers – N = 2

Local Authority Education Officers – N = 1

Total number of interviews conducted = 73

In addition, meetings were held with student representatives from the school councils.

All interviews were conducted by members of the research team at times and in locations agreed with the respondents. Interviewees were provided with the questions prior to the interview. The interviews focused upon gaining personal perspectives from individuals who were involved either in delivery of the service or as a service user. For this reason they were conversational in format with individuals encouraged to recount incidents and experiences and to reflect on the impact which actions taken had upon their lives or professional practices and understanding. This naturalistic approach (Weiss 1994, Elliot 2005) was adopted in order to encourage respondents to provide a narrative of their personal experiences without being unduly led by the interviewer. A consequence of this approach was the variability in length of interview, some conducted with students lasting no more than ten minutes, whilst others with professionals or parents/carers lasted forty five minutes or more. Each individual interviewed provided a unique and personal interpretation of the ways in which the extended school process was operating and impacting upon their own lives. In order to verify the impact of the process upon individual students, interviews with critical persons clustered around the student were conducted in order that verification of interview data could be attained through triangulation across transcripts. In this way, the student became a focus or hub around which a number of other key individuals were clustered in order to construct a holistic case study (Yin 1994). By building up a number of case studies it was possible to conduct a process of analytical generalisation whereby trends and similarities across case studies in respect of practices and experiences could be extrapolated (Ragin 1987). As a study conducted within two schools the researchers were not concerned with generalisation of findings beyond the study sample other than to be able to provide indicators of practice as a basis upon which the Local Authority and other schools could form their own ideas for development. However, there was a concern to establish trustworthiness within the study (Lincoln and Guba 1985) in order that statements made about practices within the schools and their impact upon students, families and professional practices could be made with some legitimacy. The verification of experiences across case studies enabled the researchers to provide the study schools with information about consistency of practice, the experiences of individuals and the impact upon identified needs illuminated by exemplars.

Findings and discussion

Dyson et al (2002) (op.cit) cited a lack of clear definition of Extended Schools as an issue which might impact upon cohesion of service provision. The questionnaire responses from staff in the two schools did reveal some interesting anomalies with regards to this matter. When asked to define the purpose of the ExtendedSchool system, not surprisingly, staff in positions of senior and middle management, including heads of year appeared to have a clarity which enabled them to articulate what they believed the school was offering over and above that which was available in other schools. Similarly, they were confident in defining procedures, such as referral of students and the role of other professional colleagues and could provide examples of how these had worked in relation to specific individuals. Other staff were less assured in their responses with 23% of respondents admitting that they were unsure of the purpose of ExtendedSchools and a further 2.5% offering no response. The reasons for this discrepancy may be many, but interrogation of the data does enable some suggestions to be made. Referral systems in the schools demand that action is taken by heads of year following concerns expressed by form tutors or subject teachers. It is therefore the heads of year who have the most direct contact with the family workers and other professional agencies who may become directly involved in intervention. One might therefore anticipate that the heads of year would be more knowledgeable than other staff. The data does reveal this to be the case and further indicates that teachers relatively new to teaching were less likely to be sure of the functions of an ExtendedSchool. With no previous school teaching experience some of these teachers assumed that the range of services and facilities in place were likely to be the norm for all schools. Whereas it is clear that other schools within the Local Authority in which the two study schools operate do not have such easy and extensive access to these facilities. Amongst the non-teaching staff who responded to the survey whilst aware that the Extended School Pilot was in operation, many such as school administrators had limited understanding as to its focus or intent, though they were generally aware of the facilities, such as homework clubs, which were being provided.