How to set up a summer school

How to set up a summer school

With the summer holidays fast approaching, SBMs should consider if they would like to set up a summer school for students. Analyse if there’s a need for it in your school or if it would be beneficial for students, parents and staff.

Once you have decided on creating a summer school, it is important to plan out all aspects, from how it works to timings and activities. To help you with this we have created a guide on how to set up a summer school.

Find the purpose for a summer school

Think about why you should set up a summer school and what the purpose of it will be. Is it to help parents who have to work out? Is it to keep children entertained throughout the holidays, giving them new activities to do? Is it because students are interested in a summer school?

Whatever the purpose of doing a summer school is for your school, ensure to identify it so that you can tailor the activities and schedule to suit the main need.

Set aims and objectives

Set clear aims and objectives for your summer school so everyone has a shared understanding what you want your school to achieve. These aims and objectives should also reflect the impact of summer school on personal, social and educational goals. They could include checking progress in lessons, gaining feedback from students if they would find a summer school beneficial, gaining feedback from parents and testing the knowledge of students.

Look into funding

Set a budget for the summer school and see how much money from the school can go into it. Share with your staff once you have the funding locked so they understand what is happening. Think about funding for staff that will help run the summer school too. Let them know what you plan to give them in return for hosting it so that they can make an informed decision if it will be best for them before agreeing.

To help your school’s budget, it is also best to look into additional resources that may be able to make the funding go further. This could include other school funding from the local community, volunteers to help run it, donations from local businesses and in-kind support from the community.

Once all funding is in place and has been decided upon, ensure to factor in school governors. Let them know the breakdown of funding for each area so that they can monitor progress alongside yourself. It is best to loop them into the aims and objectives and how the funding supports them too.

Check staff availability

Check-in with staff to see who would like to help run activities during the summer and entice them with multiple benefits you can offer them. Try to involve a wide range of staff from different areas of your school so students can interact with teachers they may never have met before. It is also great to have this variety of staff so that different activities can be held, and different perspectives can be explored.

Once you have your staff’s availability and enough on board, allow them to help plan activities together. Doing this ensures that your summer school will have a plethora of various fun learning activities that children can participate in. To help your staff you could give them lesson planning resources to inspire their activity ideas.

Plan activities

With your staff, plan exciting educational activities your summer school can provide students. Think through different activities that can achieve the social, personal and educational goals. From sports to music and art, anything where children can work together, gain an interest and learn. For example, you could organise a maths exercise activity where children can mix maths with pe and learn sums whilst being active.

Make sure that the activities are mixed from fun and curricular activities that offers something different to attract students to attend. Place a focus on literacy and numeracy to support students with the loss of learning over the summer.

Ensure the availability of any buildings and equipment, both internally and externally, you may need for activities. This is important for external places you may plan for students to visit, as they can get booked up during the busy summer months. Doing this makes sure your students can carry the planned activities out.

Get parents on board

Promote your summer school to parents to entice them to use your school when they need it. Send out notifications on the school website about it and the schedule of when it will be running. You could also opt for emails and letters as well as a parent assembly to spread the word.

Plan some fun activities that can get parents involved with their children too. Doing this can make students feel at ease as their parents can join them for a little while. Parents also get the opportunity to socialise with other parents during these activities. You could plan family learning sessions or cooking/baking activities for parents to join.

Gather as much help as possible with running the summer school by enticing some parents to volunteer. They could help to run certain activities such as physical ones that are simpler than other curricular learning.

Address student concerns

Ensure that students feel comfortable and excited about participating in your summer school. Address any concerns they may have about attending such as easing children’s minds who are scared of being lonely during summer. Gather your staff together to ask their class any questions or concerns they may have about the summer school. This can be done anonymously through a ballot box. Staff can then report to you in a meeting, and you can go through students concerns together.

Once you have compiled a list of common concerns and questions, address these in an assembly. Provide further support for students through teachers and guidance counsellors to address specific needs and concerns.

Use this guide on how to set up a summer school to start preparing for the summer holidays and starting the summer school. SBMs can also use this guide as a refresh to ensure their summer school carries on running efficiently. It can also help with planning that may have already been started months prior.

It is vital to encourage students to participate by exciting them with fun yet educational activities. It is also useful to highlight the benefits to the students so that they want to be involved. Loop in parents and relevant staff to further enhance the interest and quality of the summer school.

Need some assistance helping your school transition to the next step? Take a read of our ‘help your school transition from primary to secondary school’ blog.