Terry Murphy
Head of Education, CCMS
Overview of Education Initiatives in
West Belfast
Education Initiatives in
West Belfast
The Initiatives
1. Extended Schools
2. Integrated Services for Children and Young
People
3. Post Primary Area Learning Communities
4. Achieving Belfast
5. Full Service Community Network
6. Literacy and Numeracy Signature Project
7. WBPB Community Education Initiative
Programme
8. WBPB West Belfast Community Project
Extended Schools
• Extending the range of services in the schools
with high levels of pupils entitled to free school
meals
• Two very successful clusters in Greater Falls and
Whiterock/Upper Springfield
• Additional services are mainly school based with
only limited engagement with community
organisations
• Provides a very good basis for further
development as primary ALCs
Integrated Services for Children and
Young People
• Designed to demonstrate that an integrated
services approach to supporting families would
be most effective
• Covered all of West and Shankill
• Was an effective community intervention model
• Sustainability would have required cross
Departmental commitment
• Continuing under a revised management
arrangement
Post Primary Area Learning
Communities
• Post primary partnerships aimed at collaborative
curriculum delivery
• Anticipated full compliance with Entitlement
Framework requirement for 2015
• Has been given additional funding to promote
improvements in Literacy and Numeracy
outcomes
• An effective model of good practice with the
potential to broaden its agenda to include an
emphasis on school improvement
Achieving Belfast
• An initiative to help schools close the
achievement gap for primary and post primary
pupils
• Has provided additional maths and English
teachers and BELB support
• Strong evidence of improvement and gap closing
in most schools
• May have been more successful if it had a
stronger community engagement dimension from
the outset
• Currently under review
Full Service Community Network
• Established initially to support children and families
affected by community issues in Upper Whiterock
• Provides a range of support services for schools and
families
• Works very closely with other community based
groupings such as the Extended Schools clusters and
others
• Has some similarities with ISCYP
• Recently evaluated by ETI as being a ‘very good’
initiative
• Cost effective and could easily be replicated elsewhere
Literacy and Numeracy Signature
Project
• A regional initiative providing additional Maths
and English teachers to help with improvements
at end of KS2 and GCSE
• Has provided two years employment for over 200
recently qualified teachers
• Is focusing on grade improvement at GCSE
especially for those at risk of achieving a ‘D’
rather than a ‘C’
• Will be beneficial but is not a good school
improvement strategy
• Aimed at achieving the 2015 PfG targets
Community Education Initiative
• The latest initiative
• Aimed at encouraging schools and community
organisations to work together in the interest
of raising achievement
• Funded through BELB to West Belfast
Partnership Board
• In very early stages of implementation
• Initial focus will be on after school support for
pupils
West Belfast Community Project
• Funded through DE to West Belfast
Partnership Board
• Focus on Transition, literacy and numeracy
support through provision of:
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Easter School
Saturday School
Summer Transition School
Early Years, Primary, Post Primary learning and transition support
Family Learning component
Challenges
• Too many strategies adding to the complexity of
managing education in schools
• Often overlapping in emphasis especially with the
recent focus on Literacy and Numeracy
• Lack consistency of commitment – mostly 3 year
programmes with a limited delivery period
• Need to reduce the number of initiatives
• Devise a single, coherent, school improvement
strategy with an integration of planning across
the schools and community providers
More Challenges
• Initiatives help but do they contribute to long
term community transformation?
• Many young people in the West are high
achievers – many others are not – only
sustained and targeted capacity building
support will bring long term community
improvement
• There is a ‘hearts and minds’ dimension to the
work of raising achievement – any new
strategy should have this as a key area of
emphasis.