Engagement and extended services
A school's contribution to community cohesion relies on providing reasonable means for children, young people, their friends and families to interact with people from different backgrounds to build positive relations and break down stereotypes and prejudice. 
This includes links with other schools and communities locally, nationally and internationally. The following resources are designed to help schools to make links in all of these dimensions:
- More about Extended Services and Extended services in Northumberland
- The Schools Linking Network or National Gateway, funded by the DCSF to find a school to link with, with the benefits of free CPD and resources
- The Global Gateway run by the British Council to devolve DCSF funding to schools by finding partners internationally
- Swapping cultures, specialist resources and expert support for schools wanting to develop their contribution to community cohesion
- International school projects to promote gender, ethnicity and integration
- Learn about global migration history, share your own experiences and stories of migration, share your opinions and feelings about immigration and integration today, test your attitude towards people of other cultures
Established links may involve a range of the following as community cohesion is promoted effectively:
- partnership arrangements to share good practice and offer pupils the opportunity to meet and learn from other young people from different backgrounds
- links built into existing schemes of work and grounded in the curriculum with pupils working together on a joint project or activity
- shared use of facilities to provide a means for pupils to interact
- working with community representatives, for example through mentoring schemes or bringing community representatives into school to work with pupils
- strong links and multi-agency working between the school and other local agencies, such as the youth support service, the police and social care and health professionals
- engagement with parents through coffee mornings, curriculum evenings, parent and child courses
- provision of extended services and community use of facilities for activities that take place out of school hours, including adult and family learning, information and communications technology, and English classes for speakers of other languages.
Teachernet has developed a useful audit tool for considering previous, current and future activity in this area: Community engagement and extended services audit
Snapshots
The following snapshots demonstrate good practice in the Engagement and Extended Services area in Northumberland schools:
