Neighbourhoods should only have managed changes in service provision. Too often time-limited revenue resources have disrupted existing infrastructure and distracted attention from the underlying issues. In most cases, it is better to use funder to have the space to make changes in the mainstream approaches.
In EC1 NDC, much of the early education funding helped boost teaching capacity in the schools (such as extra teaching assistants or reading recovery). This had beneficial impacts but was hard to sustain, so funding was switched to put more focus on encouraging parental involvement. Schools were given the resources to try out a number of ways to involve parents and the wider community in the schools and their child’s education. The schools then went onto keep the most successful initiatives, at very little cost – for example in one, parents sat down for lunch with their children at school once a term.
