Opening School Facilities Success at Winstanley School

The Winstanley school is set in an area of depravation (5%). After looking at their local community and as a trust deciding that they would like to keep their school open for pupil who need a safe place outside of school hours, they decided to create The Aspire Programme, allowing pupils to attend clubs after school 4 days a week. Over the school year there is 40 different clubs going on from cooking, additional studies to lego and board games.

The school was successfully able to apply for OSF funding to be able to bring physical activity clubs into the programme, which is targeting pupils with additional needs, and low socio-economic. This funding has enabled the school to introduce a fitness suit, nerf, girls football, dance (Disco-cise), swimming and water polo to the programme.

To help encourage pupils who would not normally attend after school clubs the school worked with the pastoral department and changed the way behaviours consequences are given. If a pupil has been placed on an internal exclusion, they must attend 1 Aspire club each night they are in the internal exclusion to try and integrate them back into the school system better. What they have found is that after the pupil build a better relationship with the teacher leading that session and as they enjoy the session they try not to get after school detentions as they wanted to attend after school clubs. Resulting in better behaviour not only in the classroom, but around the school.

One of the main highlights for the school and pupils is that everyone who attends the programme gets a free hot evening meal provided by the school. This allows the school to provide all pupils with 3 hot meals a day if required, paid for by the school.

The Aspire programme sees between 100-150 pupils per night attend sessions and has changed the way pupil view after school activities and in a small number of pupils the way they view school.

The school has been very happy to announce that they The Aspire Programme has now been sponsored by a local company to enable it to continue to grow and reach more pupils for the next 5 years.

Case study courtesy of Active Together.