Extended Schools, CASS / General

All action plans will be approved by the Extended Schools co-ordinator and the Project Board.  The deadline for returning the action plans is 30 November 2006.  These will subsequently be signed off by 5 January 2007. Any school that submits an action plan up to 31 March 2007 will be required to submit a new action plan for the next financial year together with the relevant budget deployment form.

 

The financial plans will be approved by the LMS Unit only after the action plan has been approved by the Extended Schools co-ordinator and the Project Board.  The priority for the LMS unit is to ensure the planned expenditure on the financial pro-forma is realistic and the action plan affordable.  In addition each school will receive at least one monitoring visit per year.

What are the penalties for not delivering the Extended Schools programme?
The Board or DE may withdraw or suspend a school from participation in the programme where there is evidence of:

 

 

Schools should report how their extended school monies were used to meet the high level outcomes of the programme.

 

Where there is a cluster arrangement in place to involve 3 or more funded schools then each school will be entitled to receive an additional 15% funding based on their original allocation. This can be managed in 2 ways: 1. One school can elect to hold the budget on behalf of the other schools in the cluster.  2. Each school will receive their additional 15% and schools will make invoicing arrangements. Financial expenditure should be closely monitored by all schools and any variations notified in advance to the Extended Schools co ordinator and the LMS unit.

 

The funding will be allocated to the school(s) once the cluster action plan has been approved.  

 

An Extended Schools team has been set up to support schools. Contact details for the team together with copies of a blank action plan, budget deployment form and financial monitoring tool can be found on the NEELB web site: www.neelb.org.uk/schools.

 

NEELB will provide support and guidance in terms of action plan development. The delivery, implementation and monitoring and evaluation of Extended Services and activities will be the responsibility of the school. The NEELB will have a responsibility for monitoring outputs and outcomes of the agreed action plans. The Dept for Education will carry out inspection visits. Financial monitoring will be the responsibility of the school, with expenditure managed through the school LMS budget. Any overspend will be recouped from the school LMS budget.

 

The Regional Training Unit will provide support through an Extended Schools Toolkit, which gives examples of monitoring systems for collating outputs and outcomes. A financial monitoring tool has also been provided to assist in tracking your expenditure. This can be found on the web site: www.neelb.org.uk/schools.

 

Contact Nigel Freeburn who will advise and support the schools to make applications for external funding. Be advised of the potential timeframe for any successful bids, so forward planning will be important. It may also be possible to pool resources and operate as a cluster, securing an additional 15% DE funding to allow for an enhanced service to be provided.

 

These partnerships will be operated at different levels and may extend from offering referrals, advice and guidance, participation in a steering committee, funding or inkind service support. It is anticipated that such partnerships will allow for increased communication, co operation, shared and best practice service solutions. Partnerships are thought to include pupils, parents, community, statutory and voluntary stakeholders, who will join together with the school acting as the hub of the community.

 

As part of any partnership, baseline, it is important that a schools extended services do not displace any existing activity taking place at local level.

 

The CASS ICT Department strongly advise schools to purchase managed service computers as this will also include a full technical support service.