£550,000 funding to improve life chances for children in Tendring
The cash will be used to tackle inequalities in education
More than £500,000 is to be made available to help level up parts of Tendring by improving the future life chances of schoolchildren.
Essex County Council is set to make £551,000 available to deliver a two to three year programme of activity throughout Tendring to tackle educational inequality.
In 2022 Tendring has below the Essex average scores measuring a good level of development. Tendring has the lowest number of children achieving the expected standard for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 in Essex. Tendring also has the highest absence rate in Essex.
The money will be split across 11 schemes to ‘to provide opportunities for disadvantaged and vulnerable Children and Young People by equipping them with the skills they need to learn for life’.
One Good or Outstanding primary school with an Early Years Foundation Stage is to be funded with £11,000 to become a centre of excellence in speech, language, and communication.
A mixture of 50 teachers, teaching assistants and early years practitioners are to be funded to become communication champions. With £27,000 of funding, 32 teaching assistants are funded to undertake emotional literacy support assistant training from educational psychologists.
Another £79,000 is being spent to connect Tendring schools to ‘enable them to further network, collaborate, share excellent practice’.
Six personal avatar robots costing £21,000 will allow children suffering from long-term absence, partake in the education and vital social aspects of school from home or hospital.
A home school liaison pilot – costing £60,000 – will build links between the school and families and help children return to the school after a period of absence.
And with £50,000 children whose attendance has decreased since the pandemic and also have ASD/ADHD, social and emotional difficulties, anxiety, low self esteem and school refusal have the opportunity to work with a qualified psychologist.
Another £69,000 will pay for a support officer for one year based within the internal Language and communication team. A business administrator costing £24,000 will report into the Tendring Twining Project team.
A £173,000 package will pay for an expert who will work with schools for two years ‘as they implement and embed new teaching approaches to support the Disadvantaged Strategy as well as, collaborate, share excellent practice and offer peer support, for sustainable school improvement’.
A statement as part of a cabinet decision said: “The outcome of this project will contribute to the improvement of children’s life chances and economic contribution they will go on to make.
“Increasing the chances of children achieving a good level of development in the early years and the expected standard at Key Stage 1,2,3 and 4, means they are more likely to achieve well in later education and their working life.
“We hope to see earlier identification of speech language communication needs, a drop in referrals for speech and language therapy, reduction in social emotional and mental health needs identified, greater collaboration of leaders, greater retention and improved well-being of leaders, supported schools to achieve good/outstanding Ofsted grading.”