Collaborative Rights-based Approach to Improving Attendance and Learning Outcomes in School Communities - Edinburgh City Council: How you knew it worked
This section details the progress and impact of the project, including reviewing evidence against measures of success and consideration of next steps. It also reviews the broader impact of the project, in addition to its original aims, and any unintended consequences.
It will take time for the insights from this work to directly influence the attendance of children and young people at school. The consultation process is successfully informing culture, strategy and practice with tangible evidence of progress, including:
-
feedback from young people and parents is informing strategic and partnership planning processes within the City of Edinburgh Council
-
project partners within participating learning communities are working together to respond to what young people and families are saying about the barriers to attendance and engagement
-
the approach is supporting a positive culture of partnership working between youth work and schools
Supporting quotes from stakeholders to demonstrate the value and emerging impact of the project are included below:
'As a rights respecting school, we take Article 12 — the right to a voice - seriously but also realise that some of our most disengaged pupil voices can be more difficult to gather. This work in partnership with youth work teams has highlighted the importance of taking those extra steps to listen to all of our pupils and ensure barriers to their learning are removed.' - Headteacher
'This work has been extremely valuable to [our learning community] as it has captured the voice of some of our most disengaged pupils. It has given us an understanding of what life at school can be like from their perspective and really helped us to form our improvement priorities for the coming session.' - Depute Headteacher
'It is important to us that we hear from young people themselves - what their barriers are to learning - so we can work alongside the school to resolve these in a way that benefits everyone.' - Youth Work Practitioner
'LAYC was pleased to collaborate with its member groups - YouthLink Scotland, and the City of Edinburgh Council - in this enquiry. Youth workers played a key role as trusted adults within local communities, helping to ensure young people’s voices were heard. This was achieved by leveraging existing relationships and employing a youth work approach.' Director, LAYC
'This collaborative enquiry has been an invaluable piece of work to hear from seldom heard voices and gain insight on some of the challenges that young people are facing. It has given us an understanding in how we can build on and improve partnership working within education settings but also as a part of wider council transformational change.' Senior Council Officer
A rich data set has been gathered and shared beyond the three learning communities who participated including:
-
Participating youth workers and school partners
-
Community Planning partners
-
Children’s Services Partnership
-
Community Learning and Development Partnership
-
Edinburgh’s Whole Family Wellbeing programme
Encouragingly, the data gathered through the process is influencing partnership planning beyond the pilot communities in Edinburgh and there is an interest in taking the process into other parts of the city.
Perspectives on barriers to engagement and attendance were gathered from young people, parents/carers, school leaders and youth workers in each learning community. This has been beneficial to explore commonalities and differences to inform future planning and partnership working.
It is hoped that insights from the work will inform decisions around Pupil Equity Funding and Strategic Equity Funding across the city of Edinburgh. It is also anticipated that the pilot learning communities continue to recognise the role that youth work can play in helping young people overcome barriers to learning, engagement and school attendance.
Additionally, the intention is to widen this approach to other learning communities across the city, supported by the evidence of impact and the blueprint for the process.
