What's an 'Educational Action Zone'?

[desperatehousewife]

Can't find a description anywhere - driving me nuts. Lots of Ofsted reports mention EAZs but don't tell me what that is.

Anyone....???

From the dfes website

Education Action Zones are built around groups of schools which are determined to raise educational standards in some of our most challenging areas. There are usually around 15 to 25 schools in each zone.
The aims of EAZs are:

to create new partnerships involving business, parents, local authorities, schools
and their communities

to raise standards

to generate innovation from which the whole educational system can learn

Because they set themselves demanding targets for improvement, each zone receives around £1million in additional funds each year.

up to £750,000 comes from the Department for Education and Skills the remainder is raised by the zone from private sector partners
Zones are run by an Action Forum of local partners and managed by a project director.

From the dfes website

Education Action Zones are built around groups of schools which are determined to raise educational standards in some of our most challenging areas. There are usually around 15 to 25 schools in each zone.
The aims of EAZs are:

to create new partnerships involving business, parents, local authorities, schools
and their communities

to raise standards

to generate innovation from which the whole educational system can learn

Because they set themselves demanding targets for improvement, each zone receives around £1million in additional funds each year.

up to £750,000 comes from the Department for Education and Skills the remainder is raised by the zone from private sector partners
Zones are run by an Action Forum of local partners and managed by a project director.

fantastic puddle - thanks a million.

They had one (well, the workers obviously! Not that big a building!) in the office next to mine whilst i was at HomeStart. they worked really well and made some excellent progress within the deprived location we were in, but they pulled out- I believe they are a timed initiative? Maybe it was another reason, our HomeStart nearly went bankrupt just after and everyone bar the boss lost their jobs too- might have been funding? Anyway, it was a shame as all the kids felt really let down.

just trying to work out if a primary school has a EAZ if this is a good thing or a worry in terms of which school I choose for my DS!

Can see what a good thing it is for the school, but does it mean school is in real trouble and school is in area of large social deprivation?

We are in an EAZ and it's fab ... loads of extra money sloshing round for all sorts of initiatives. If the Head is on the ball, they can get quite a bit of extra finance for the school, and it does make a difference.

It certainly doesn't mean the school is in real trouble - 3 of the primary schools in our town have had "excellent" from Ofsted, they are superb schools.

Being in an area with some fairly extreme levels of deprivation hasn't been a negative for us as far as primary schools are concerned.