Schools to open evenings and weekends.

[WaterSheep]

Anne Longfield has suggested that schools should open in the evenings and on weekends, in order to help prevent children being preyed on in the streets by gang members.

Apparently this would allow children to access their sports, drama and technology facilities. Wonderful... but what happens if anything goes missing or gets damaged, who is going to replace them?

Oh and just one small point, i'm sure it's an accidental oversight, she hasn't actually stated who will be supervising the children....

X post water
Entirely agree.

OP, you do know that many primary schools host holiday clubs, with great success?

Yes I know this, I run one. We're based in a primary school for ages 4-11 years. We have access to the school hall and the outside areas. Classrooms are off limits, and we provide our own resources. The proposals seem geared towards secondary schools, and talk about using the school facilities.

You can’t make teacher staff it as believe it or not they have families etc! Hope that’s as a joke. We don’t get paid holidays we get paid a salary. That way they can work you until you drop down dead with no set ‘ working hours’.

Given that schools are so underfunded I can’t see how opening all hours will work!

Typical Tory nonsense. 🙄 Why not put funding back into the communities, opening youth centres, funding neighbourhood events, sporting clubs, etc that give youth a feeling of belonging?

I guarantee you that the last place they'd want to spend their free time is at school. The schools are burdened with enough impossible social responsibilities.

When our school occasionally gets hired out for evenings or weekends we often struggle to find the pens, scissors, glue sticks on the following morning! Big impact on teaching that session and its not as though the budgets allow us to have any spares. I'd be demanding lockable cupboards for all that (although I'm not sure where I'd find space for the cupboard) and to keep my files of assessment data, reading records, etc. that need to be kept private from nosy youngsters, parents but normally live on my shelf by my desk when the school is just for us.

But surely, with some tweaks, this can work. Yes, of course it would be better to have dedicated youth clubs built but with what money, where, by whom?

Schools take up a lot of space and are empty a lot of the time. We simply don’t have the luxury anymore not to utilise buildings to their full potential.

Maybe Boris will fund it with his magic money tree that's fast growing into a forest?

If done properly, i.e. enough money provided, it makes perfect sense. There are loads of properties left unused for far too long, whether they are in schools, GP surgeries, libraries, hospitals, etc. Not just the buildings themselves unused, but also the equipment, fittings and fittings within them.

With proper security/supervision, it would be far cheaper to use them for more hours of the day, than have to build new buildings, equip them, etc., for exactly the same purpose.

On a much smaller scale, we did this with our village library once the local council closed it down. We re-opened it as a community led library, but opened up the facilities to local groups and businesses on a rental basis for the times when it was closed as a library. It works brilliantly and brings in enough money to make the whole project viable, i.e. the rental of the facilities pays for the building costs. It was madness in the past when it was council owned as it was only open 2 days per week, so was left empty and unused for the other 5 days.

Youth clubs are not all teched up.

Youth clubs usually have a 3 youth support workers and a qualified youth worker. Each of the three support workers will be doing an activity with groups of yp, one will be cooking, one will be sports and one will be arts and crafts ect. The main youth worker may be doing workshops around sexual health, cyber bullying, the community - i.e informal education.

Discos go on, local artists come in and do graffiti workshops or mural creating, local DJs come in a do sessions, circus skills ect.

This will be what the yp have chosen to do. Young people aren't forced to come to youth clubs like they are school. Young people chose to attend youth clubs and engage and learn. Youth workers don't tell young people off, they explore with them and don't assume that they are always right and the young person isn't.

Relationship based practice with unconditional positive regard works really well. Those young people that hate school, swear and throw chairs at teachers, bully other young people can thrive in a decent youth club.

Some of our most vulnerable may not have a good relationship with school. Why the hell would they want to go back to the same place on a Saturday or in the evening?!

Conversely, with a different group of people and different supervision doing different things, they may actually get a different perspective which may change their relationship with the school during the teaching day.

Many high schools and some primaries are already open evenings and weekends offering these things in Scotland.

They are called 'community use schools'

Full access to sport facilities, libraries, cafes with a wide variety of clubs and classes offered.

It's not rocket science or new and it's a shame if that doesn't already happen in England.

Sounds like a lot of unnecessary pearl rattling going on here.

reginafelangee

That's interesting who supervises the activities, and how does it work with school supplies, private information and security of the buildings?

Well, if youth clubs tend to be low tech, I don’t see why it could simply be the use of a Hall, for example.

Bit OP, you are being really fixed mindset about this. We need to think outside the box, instead of always saying to every suggestion, it won’t work, it can’t work, it’s a stupid idea. It sounds like it’s alreayd working in Scotland.

instead of always saying to every suggestion, it won’t work, it can’t work, it’s a stupid idea.

I haven't said any of these things.

I think it could work in some circumstances - though tbh in most schools fitting the description of having the right circumstances are already heavily used in the evenings and weekends.

For example, some schools have separate sports halls, alongside dedicated sports pitches.

Equally, some schools have separate music facilities, or separate halls or separate drama studios. Separate toilet access for all groups without having to go into other parts of the school.

However, the absolutely critical thing is that, in all these cases, the rest of the school can and must remain secure - no access to classrooms, ICT equipment, offices.

Where it really doesn't work - and, in the interests of funding, we have tried to rent out larger parts of the school to various groups - is where classrooms are used, or where there is intended or unintended potential access to 'shared' facilities e.g. computers, even on the way to toilets. The lines of responsibility between different users of the building - and the inevitable 'where are my gluesticks / who has seen the special headphones / who messed up X / 'every member of staff must cover up and lock away every piece of paper with a child's name on it that can be associated with data of any kind' [and oh yes, the times table progress display, intended for class motivation, can become a real issue when the parent helping to run the after school activity sees the position of their child vs X's child]' issues that arise get in the way of the school's serious business of teaching and learning.

We must be very lucky because we still have youth groups in both the town I live in and the town I work in (in secondary school). The youth groups serve a very different purpose to school and the kids really value having their own space, it really wouldn't be the same if it was held in school buildings. For a start, most of our most vulnerable teen-agers just wouldn't go if it was in the school building as they hate school (some of them for good reason). They can decorate and use the youth club space in ways they just wouldn't be able to in schools, and they can talk about whatever they like, without worrying it would get back to school (sometimes it does get back to school of it's something the youth workers think we should know, but it's all done in a very sensitive way).

Our youth clubs are funded by charity, they apply for grants, local businesses donate money/resources/time, they do sponsored events, etc. They do charge per session, but it is a nominal amount and the kids actually get more than their money's worth in snacks/activities, and they "have an arrangement" with families in financial difficulty that in practice means those kids don't pay anything. They have close links with the local food banks as well.

They do sometimes go into school buildings to use sports or other facilities, but only occasionally and with agreement from the school for each occasion. Secondary school buildings are often used for adult evening classes as well, so it may well cause safeguarding issues with all those adults wandering around the site at the same time as youth groups.

It’s a pity youth services have been decimated. Youth clubs served a very valuable purpose.
Sadly, it’s not about the youngsters not having access to a tennis court though. It’s about parents remaining in control of their children, other appropriate adult role models who care about the children and building a less hedonistic, inconsequential and materialistic culture.

The Tory way seems to be cut everything relating to children to the bone (MH,children's centres,youth centres,SS ,benefits etc.) then expect and demand schools to pick up the slack.

Schools can't and shouldn't be everything for everyone.

Brilliant post MsAwesomeDragon.

Community schools in Scotland have suffered massive budget cuts in Scotland incidentally. The programme of events held in them in evenings and weekends are aimed at adults mostly - ie night classes, pottery and learning languages, that kind of thing. It's not a youth club.

Why is it always down to schools and not the actual parents??

Focussing on making parents more responsible would be far better than putting more into schools.

(Clubs in the sports facilities are more aimed at young people, mini football, dancing that type of thing. Run by outside people and properly supervised. Can't think of any for teenagers though)

Mistressiggi I'm sorry to hear that, I was interested in hearing about how it worked in Scotland.

I think it’s criminal that school buildings are only open from 9-3/4. We live in a village, so small school, there’s no breakfast club, very little after school clubs and absolutely nowhere for dc to go before/after school. There’s no public transport so no option for some to get to any sort of activity.

Why can’t money be used to provide clubs/activities for these dc? And no, I don’t think teachers need to be involved- they work hard enough.