Message of the Month – August
The start of the academic year remains an exciting time when we return to work with renewed energy and a fresh focus. This year our focus is informed by the recent news that the central funding for PfS will not continue beyond the end of March 2011. This requires us all to focus our energies on sustainability.
Playing for Success centres are exciting learning environments which offer high quality learning experiences and a recent evaluation study in which a number of centres participated provides evidence that PfS makes a significant impact on pupil achievement. This is a strong selling point and we hope your own local evaluation will add weight to the case. There has never been a more important time to demonstrate the contribution your centre makes to improving the literacy and numeracy skills of pupils attending your centre.
Recent visits by associates to a number of centres have reaffirmed our conviction that PfS centre staff have tremendous entrepreneurial skills. It is heartening to hear of the many innovative ideas continuing the excellent work in PfS centres and the optimism and passion involved in developing these ideas into action.
We are in the process of gathering data to help us to inform us of the situation nationally – which centres have strong plans for sustainability, which have a slight shortfall in funding and which have already been given a clear message that local authority funding will not be available beyond March 2011.
RHA is planning a series of sustainability workshops in September. The dates are listed below. Your CF will be in touch with you to arrange an additional visit to discuss plans for your centre. We will also be sharing ideas via the MDA and the PfS website.Meetings with partners are also underway and we are exploring a range of possible options to support centres.
We wish you well in developing your plans for sustainability and we want to reassure you that we at RHA are also working hard to secure your future.
Very best wishes
Marian Wood