The Hastings Opportunity Area (HOP) has made funding of £150k available to schools and community providers to deliver a range of summer enrichment and blended learning activities, particularly focused on those children and young people who have missed out on learning during the period of school closure due to Covid.

Schools and community providers were asked to submit proposals for funding to deliver enrichment and summer schools programmes, that included opportunities to learn core literacy and maths skills and that were particularly focused on year five, year ten pupils or vulnerable pupils who would benefit from a programme of support over the summer. 

Funding was also made available for schools to access additional Information Technology, laptops and learning platforms, to support children to access programmes of blended learning. 

HOP says it received a number of high quality proposals from schools and community providers from across the town and has been able to fund a number of these programmes which include: 

For secondary schools:

• Ark Alexandra.  Funding will enable a programme of intensive small group teaching to address specific knowledge gaps for year ten students, alongside funding to continue home visits and one to one support for vulnerable pupils who attend the school.
• The St Leonards Academy. The school will deliver an ‘Eggtooth summer school’. This programme will work with 60 pupil premium year six students. Eggtooth practitioners will be supported by English and Maths teachers so that learning recovery can be delivered alongside sessions to reduce anxiety around transition and making new relationships. English and Maths intensive on-line learning sessions, focused on year ten pupils will also be delivered for St Leonards Academy and Hastings Academy pupils and at St Leonards English and Maths tutoring for Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 pupils will be delivered and a Summer School for pupils with SEND which will include additional tutoring.
• Saxon Mount school will be delivering enrichment activities for pupils attending the school in September.  
• New Horizons will be offering a range of enrichment activities including sports, art, music, drama and forest/beach activities, individual support and small group work including maths and English recovery sessions. 

Primary schools across Hastings will be delivering the following activities:

• West St Leonards, in conjunction with the Education Futures Trust will be delivering two weeks of forest school activities for children.
• Sandown has received funding to deliver one to one emotional well-being support for pupils who would benefit from this, delivered by Eggtooth.
• Torfield will deliver a programme of summer based enrichment activities for pupils.
• St Pauls has received funding to deliver a three week bespoke learning programme to include Maths and English activities as well as focussed foundation subjects. Some elements of the programme will be delivered outside, including a forest school element to the programme.
• Christ Church will be providing a three-week daily English and Maths booster sessions alongside delivering a Forest School and other therapeutic activities for vulnerable children;
• St Leonards CE Primary Academy in conjunction with EFT will provide a summer school to vulnerable children who will struggle to transition back into school after the summer. This will include sports with an additional focus on improving emotional and mental well-being.

HOP has also funded a number of community providers, to deliver programmes of enrichment and summer based activities for children and young people. These include: 

• Theatre Rotto will be delivering highly creative activity sessions for pupils attending the Baird school; pupils will be introduced to shadow and rod puppetry through craft, literacy, music, staging and performance skills using the work of Charles Dickens. 
• Forest School activities to engage vulnerable children and young people over the Summer period will be delivered by In2Play and Education Futures Trust.
• Creative arts activities will delivered in a number of schools by Culture Shift. 
• Sporting and Martial Arts activities – a number of courses will be delivered for young people working in partnership with local schools. Young people who schools have identified as being vulnerable will be referred, by schools, to the activities delivered by Gracie Barra, Albion in the Community and Hastings Kickboxing Academy. 
• Activity Sessions supporting Mental health and emotional wellbeing will be delivered by Bee CIC and Believe in You teens for young people from the Hastings Academy.

In addition, funding has been made available to a number of schools (primary and secondary) to buy IT equipment so that children and young people who require this, can access programmes of blended learning. Nine schools will receive funding: The Baird Academy; St Pauls; All Saints; Christ Church, St Leonards CoE and Sacred Heart as well as two secondary schools; The St Leonard’s Academy, The Hastings Academy and one special school – New Horizons.

Use the ‘Submit Your Story’ tab at the top of the page to send us your stories and pictures about what you are getting up to this summer.