Opening School Facilities at Discovery Schools Academy Trust

The focus of the case study is sustainability of a programme running across multiple primary schools with Discovery Schools Academy Trust

What activities are you running? And when

Across the 3 OSF funded schools, they run a variety of different activities, including skateboarding, roller skating and laser tag.

Why did you decide to set it up? Did you consult young people or the wider community?

These activities were selected by the pupils using a survey, which came from the trust. During one of the HAF camps the schools run they had acquired a couple of skateboards for pupils to play with before OSF funding was announced. This activity was clearly very popular after the HAF camp, as all OSF projects are running skateboarding or similar activities.

Target Audience

The OSF funding has allowed the individual schools to target their disadvantaged pupils, girls and those with additional needs (SEND).

Parkland school was able to host an open day with another OSF school (not linked to the Trust) to showcase the facilities available at both sites. While also linking the local community into the schools. The success of the open day came down to the activities and stalls offered. Which through the links that had been established over the years with HAF camps they were able to bring in a wide variety of local business and services which support the community. These stalls included, Mental health organisations, the NHS, arts and craft, alternative sporting organisations like roller skating and a Trust wide mind craft competition. In total they had 800 people attend the open day from the local community.

What have been the successes of the project so far?

One of the main successes from the open day was the linking up between different school and trust staff and departments. With Health and safety, Trust leads, and Extended services all linking together to organise and run the event. This event ended up being larger than any school fair they had run in the past and had a wider reach into the community than expected.

Using the OSF funding the Trust has been able to see the value in their Extended services team and have extended this team, in not just additional staff but with additional remit to look at the wider community and not just focus on them being education facilities. The Trust has used the OSF funding within these 3 schools to change their way of thinking and the knock-on effect is that a non-OSF school within the trust is now looking to host an arts and craft fair at the weekend to open their site up to the community.

The OSF funded schools have also build a good relationship with their local community and businesses that are linked to their pupils’ interests. With the school self-funding trips to the local Skate parlour for pupils and using their OSF funding to bring in local coaches into the school to deliver activities. The in-school activities are also well received by both pupils and parents alike.

What have been the challenges? Or what hasn’t gone well? What would you do differently next time?

An unexpected challenge has been around access to the whole school. Due to the nature of schools and information needing to always be on hand, there is the potential for a GDPR issue to arise. Additional general maintenance and improvements can only happen when the school is closed. So having the school open more has provided issues with the estates team. However, these issues are being resolves as they arise and although unexpected have been manageable throughout the process.

Is there anything you have learned as part of the project?

By looking at the wider picture of what does our local community want and need and trying to provide that opportunity. The schools have built better relationships with their local community and are focusing on not only what their pupils want, but their parents and the wider community.

Case study supplied courtesy of Active Together.