30 January 2007: Yesterday the Schools Minister, Andrew Adonis, announced a new national development centre to support and promote supplementary schools in England, which include many projects funded by SHINE.

The new National Resource Centre (NRC) for Supplementary Education will be jointly funded by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation. It will be managed by ContinYou, an expert in the field of supplementary education that has in the past run several projects funded by SHINE.

The role of the National Resource Centre

The new centre will support the development of more and better supplementary schools. It will work to build a national network of supplementary schools, provide a national quality framework and code of practice, and establish accredited training for school leaders and tutors. The centre will also set up a programme to promote effective partnerships between supplementary and mainstream schools and will campaign and lobby on issues affecting supplementary schools, especially their relations with mainstream schools.

Praise for supplementary schools

In his announcement, Andrew Adonis praised the work of supplementary schools and said they played a huge role in developing the education of children from diverse backgrounds. He said:

“A national survey found that eight out of ten pupils who attended a supplementary school said it helped them with their mainstream school work. Supplementary schools’ activities can bring a tremendous sense of achievement and can boost children’s confidence and motivation both in and out of the classroom.”

SHINE’s experience – solid results

This is certainly SHINE’s experience. Our grant-making programme has long included supplementary schooling through our SHINE on Saturday and Serious Fun on Saturdays project strands, which accelerate, expand and complement mainstream classroom teaching.

Results from SHINE-funded supplementary schools have demonstrated the positive effect they have on participating children:

• At SHINE on Saturday @ Millfields, over 90% of the year 6 students met or exceeded their SATs targets in literacy, maths and science
• At SHINE on Saturday @ Hungerford, 92% of SHINE students in year 6 achieved or exceeded their Key Stage 2 predicted targets (compared with 78% of all year 6 students at the school)
• At Serious Fun on Saturdays @ Dulwich College, 49% of the students started the year at or above the expected level for their age in maths; by the end of the year this had risen to 87%
• At Serious Fun on Saturdays @ St Paul?s Barnes and Latymer Upper Schools, 80% of students achieved scores which were above their teacher predictions

Click here to find out more about our SHINE on Saturday projects.

If you want more information on Serious Fun on Saturdays, click here.