Terry MurphyHead of Education, CCMSOverview of Education Initiatives in

West Belfast

Education Initiatives in West Belfast

The Initiatives

1. Extended Schools2. Integrated Services for Children and Young People 3. Post Primary Area Learning Communities4. Achieving Belfast5. Full Service Community Network6. Literacy and Numeracy Signature Project7. WBPB Community Education Initiative Programme8. WBPB West Belfast Community Project

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.