We started work on the EPP project back in February. This project is commissioned by NCS Trust and The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award to deliver Enrichment Partnerships Pilot for young people in Tameside. In November 2023, NCS and DofE revealed that they had been chosen to oversee a £2.7 million Enrichment Partnerships Pilot (EPP) for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and the Department for Education (DfE). Fourteen organisations, including PIE, have now been commissioned for the pilot, which will give thousands of young people in schools, in Educational Improvement Areas, across the North East, North West and East of England, the chance to participate in high quality enrichment activities, ranging from sports and arts to volunteering and outdoor experiences. Now we are almost 6 months into the project, we wanted to update you on everything we have been doing!
What we have done so far :
So far for the Enrichment Partnership Pilot Programme we have been connecting with enrichment leads and SLT members from schools in Tameside. We have had multiple cluster meetings with staff from schools discussing what schools need to develop their enrichment provision, the barriers they are facing and discussing the aims of this project. In the Spring we collected valuable data and pupils and staff's opinions about enrichment in each school in Tameside by carrying-out focus groups, interviews with staff and sending out questionnaires. In total we had 977 young people in Tameside share their opinion about enrichment in their schools and 61 staff members share their opinion on their schools enrichment provision.
Our findings from the reports:
After collecting all the data we created reports for each school showcasing what pupils rate the schools current enrichment offer, how important they think enrichment is, what they think enrichment is, how is it advertised in their schools, if pupils attend any enrichment activities outside, why they attend activities in school, why pupils do not attend enrichment activities in school and the type of enrichment activities they would like to see in their school in the future. From these reports we found that the most popular reasons as to why pupils attend enrichment activities are that they want to have fun and do something they are interested in. The most popular reasons why pupils do not attend enrichment activities are that they do not want to stay after school and they have to rely on transport (school buses) to get home after school. We also found that there is a common theme in schools of a gap in pupils' knowledge about enrichment in their schools. Even if there are activities going on, they don't always know about them. From these reports we also found that there are key common barriers for staff, when providing their enrichment provision, which is time, staffing, cost/funding and tracking of engagement in enrichment. Schools want to provide their pupils with a wide variety of enrichment opportunities and we want to help them with this!
Our plans for next year:
Currently we are working on connecting with as many local organisations and businesses as possible to create partnerships between schools and local enrichment providers which will create a diverse offer of enrichment opportunities for young people in school and within the community in Tameside. In September we are going to work with schools to support them with the marketing of their enrichment offer helping to improve pupils' understanding of what enrichment is and what is offered in their school and this will hopefully help improve engagement with enrichment in schools. We are also giving all school taster sessions of some of the enrichment programmes that we run here at PIE. Finally, we will be looking to deliver training to schools around applying for additional funding for enrichment, as well as looking at training around the value of enrichment, and how to embed enriching activities such as social action into schools.
Look out for our Launch Event:
On Thursday 12th September we are going to host a Tameside Enrichment Partnership Pilot Programme launch event which will give schools, organisations and businesses the opportunity to network, creating a space for them to create potential partnerships which will develop young people's enrichment experiences in schools and in the community. DofE and NCS representatives will also be attending this event, and we are planning to invite key Tameside council and local VCSE members. Food will also be provided! Watch out for the date, time and venue to be announced for this event - If you would like to ask for more detail about the event and this project please email Ciara - ciara@pieuk.org.
Comments