Many issues relevant to extra-curricular activities are covered in the Extended services section of the library.
The Learning Exchange Library
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The Pupil Premium
Pupil Premium: what you need to know This links you to the Department for Education website which lists information about the Pupil Premium and how it is allocated, advice on using it and accounting for its use, and information about deprivation
EXTRA-CURRICULAR ACTIVITIES: ‘I don’t see after-school programmes as complementary to what goes on in schools, but at the heart of what schools should become. They offer a way of forging new possibilities for schools. They’re not there to compensate but in their best examples, they’re manifestations of different ways of thinking. They’re ways of making schools hubs rather than ghettos.’ - Sir Ken Robinson, 2005
Making extra-curricular activities 'the heart of what our schools could become'...
Some may recall when Sir Ken Robinson was appointed by the government in 1997 to head a commission on creativity in education. In 2005, Extra Time magazine (a publication that gathered, analysed and disseminated extra-curricular good practice) interviewed Sir Ken about the role of creativity in extra-curricular learning situations. What he said then remains inspiring today, and is a view with which the Learning Exchange identifies. Here is the article, if you would like to read it.
The heart of what we could become.
The Learning Exchange has had a long association with developing good practice in extra-curricular activities. Education Extra, a small, feisty lobbying charity and ancestor of ContinYou and the Learning Exchange helped to embed the provision of extra-curricular activities into school improvement strategies and helped schools and activity providers develop good practice.
Making extra-curricular activities 'the heart of what our schools could be' does, however, depend on building more good practice in how they are run and on monitoring and evaluating how they affect young people.
Gathering more quantitative and qualitative evidence of their impact on learning will encourage educators to keep linking these activities to curriculum-time learning and across whole-school development plans.
We hope the links and material in the Extra-curricular section of the library are helpful to you, that you find ideas and creative solutions and approaches to the challenges in this work.