Thinking outside the box
Dundee City Council and Includem:
Raising Attainment Project
Back in 2016 Dundee City Council had one of the highest school exclusion rates in Scotland. The practice, at that time, was to send excluded pupils from their schools to a central unit in Dundee. Evidence suggested that exclusion from school was a strongly correlated indicator for later involvement with the criminal justice system.
The charity Includem had developed an early intervention model where the school had an "Inclusion Unit" based in the school to which pupils could be referred instead of being excluded. This unit was staffed by Includem youth workers and not by teachers. The young people received help within the school day but also importantly outside of school. They also got support in the evenings and even during holidays. Importantly the workers developed relationships with the families in their homes as well.
The Social Bridging Finance model was used to trial the Inclusion Units in three schools. The two year trial was funded by the Robertson Trust and the National Lottery. The contract committed Dundee City Council to roll out the model and sustain for a further three years if the pre-agreed outcomes were met.
The outcomes achieved were so significant that they reduced schools exclusions rate to one of the lowest in Scotland. This allowed Dundee City Council to close the central unit and redeploy staff to the Inclusion Units in all the schools in Dundee. SBF allowed the council to take a risk on the new service and gave it time for the savings generated to be redeployed in the new Inclusion Units. Paul Clancy the Director of Education and young peoples services talks about their experience with this and a second SBF project in a video interview included in Research.
Glasgow City Council and MCR Pathways:
Mentoring Project for Care Experienced YP
Over a period of five years the charity MCR Pathways developed a mentoring programme in six schools in the north east of Glasgow. The programme worked in school with young people in the care system and provided a carefully matched adult volunteer who met with them once a week. The impact of this "one good adult" was highly significant and transformed the educational attainment of the young people. MCR approached the Robertson Trust highlighting a close working relationship with Glasgow City Council. The Council wanted to roll the model out further but didn't have the finance to do an extended trial.
The Robertson Trust, along with The Life Changes Trust and the STV Children's Appeal together funded £1M for a three year trial to build the MCR model from 6 to 12 schools in Glasgow. Using the Social Bridging Model, the funders were able to get Glasgow City Council to sign a contract which said that if MCR delivered the desired educational outcomes in the 12 schools by the end of three years, GCC would then roll the model to all of its 29 schools and sustain the funding for a further five years.
Eighteen months into the trial period, Maureen McKenna the Executive Director of Education at GCC, asked that the trial be stopped, not because it wasn't working but because the model was working so well she felt it would remiss of her not to roll to the other schools. She also agreed that she would not sustain for just five years but would change her systems and embed the model as business as usual for educational provision in Glasgow.
She said of the model, "The Social Bridging Finance model has worked exceptionally well for us in Glasgow. We wanted to transform the way we provided support for young people. We needed support to move from where we were to where we wanted to be. This model has allowed us to create a new approach which is now business as usual”. She speaks about the model in more detail on the video in Research
Not only has MCR now expanded out to 29 schools in Glasgow, the Education Secretary at the Scottish Government, John Swinney, has taken the model and is funding the roll out with MCR across 300 schools in Scotland.