At the heart of the community

A team of Community Education Co-ordinators has been recruited to develop community provision within the area’s primary and secondary schools – with funding support from Burngreave New Deal for Communities.

The development is partly in response to the Education Act of 2002 which brought in wide-ranging changes, including giving the power to schools’ governing bodies to run community services, such as health services, childcare or adult education, working in partnership with other providers as a resource for the whole community. Governing bodies can also provide services or facilities to other schools.

The role of the Community Education Co-ordinators (CECs) will be to further support their schools’ development as community schools – ie schools that not only educate our children but also benefit the parents of those children and the wider local community – by making good use of the resources within schools such as community rooms, sports halls, IT suites and cooking facilities etc, to meet community needs.

CECs will work with and actively support individuals and groups in developing and promoting a range of learning experiences and opportunities to local parents and the wider community. This may range from yoga, keep fit, cooking, sewing, parenting classes, English as an additional language, basic skills courses, numeracy, literacy workshops, and helping your kids in school, to a variety of computer/internet related courses and family and community learning events. The team will also be actively working with other local adult education providers across the area to support and co-ordinate community learning provision across the area.

For further information please contact your local Community Education Co-ordinator.