Delivery of the "core offer" of extended schools

Ipos MORI have produced this report for the DCSF which explores delivery of the "core offer" which all schools should be moving towards providing. The core offer comprises:
- A menu of activities, including study support and homework clubs, sport, music, arts and special interest clubs, combined with formal, ‘wraparound’ childcare in primary schools;
- Parenting and family support, including family learning;
- Swift and Easy Access to targeted and specialist services (for example, speech and language therapy, behaviour support);
- (If appropriate) community access to school facilities such as sports grounds, ICT and adult and family learning.

Key points:
- At the time when this research was undertaken, around 8,400 schools in England were delivering the core offer with a further 11,000 working towards this. By April 2008 the number of schools in England delivering the core offer has reached 10,000. Many other schools are delivering parts of the offer.
- The DCSF has pledged to support existing extended schools, and those schools that will start providing access to extended services by 2010, by a significant increase in investment from 2008 to 2011.
- Evaluation work to date has demonstrated how access to extended services through schools can have positive benefits to children, families and local communities, including not only pupil motivation, behaviour, attendance and attainment, but also parents’ own engagement with learning, and supporting a sense of community locally.
- Most schools have used a wide range of information sources and methods to gain an understanding of local needs when planning their extended services.
- Consultation carried out by schools rather than other local agencies plays a key role in this process. Research among parents conducted by the school is the most popular method of gaining information, closely followed by research among pupils conducted by the school.
- Detailed information about other relevant services already available is also used by the vast majority of schools, especially by those delivering services in a cluster.
- Most schools believe that they have been successful in building up a full picture of needs, though it is noted by some schools that they may not be aware of the gaps in their understanding.
- Across the board, there is some acknowledgement that understanding needs is an on-going process, informed either by further research or through engagement with existing service users. - Parental support services and Swift and Easy Access services are the two core areas that many schools believe they are not delivering adequately.
- Schools adopt a wide variety of approaches to monitoring the provision and take-up of the services they deliver, ranging from those that hold no monitoring information whatsoever to those that are rigorous in their collation and analysis of the data.
- The majority of schools at least have details of the services that they offer access to, the number of places that are available and figures in some format on the levels of take-up, though this varies service by service.
- Schools tend to hold most monitoring information on their childcare and activities offer but are less rigorous in their monitoring of parental support services and community access. The usage of Swift and Easy access services tends to be kept on file for individual pupils and only a minority of schools log the number of children they help through the system.
- 98% of schools provide activities for children after school, whilst most of these schools offer these services on-site, around a third offer them off-site. In addition to this, 86% of schools provide some form of childcare after school. Childcare before school is also widely provided. The provision of childcare and activities in the holidays is less common, but these are still provided by around two thirds of schools.
- The number of after-school activities provided by schools in a typical week is wide-ranging, though just over a third of schools provide six to ten different activities. The size of a school determines the number of after school activities provided.
- Schools appear to provide a good variety of activities. Sports activities, ICT clubs, drama clubs, arts, crafts or cookery clubs, music tuition, groups or clubs and academic support are all commonly provided.
- The numbers of children making use of childcare and activities each day varies greatly.