The expansion of all-day provision, particularly since the early 2000s, has been linked to the idea of giving children and young people more individual support and reducing educational inequalities. Extensive research has shown that this does not work automatically but requires high quality provision.
Research on all-day schools in Germany has existed for 20 years now, so much is known about the effects and conditions of good all-day provisions. Many all-day schools and other institutions such as after-school care centres have developed concepts that offer children and young people excellent conditions for growing up. Many experiences and ideas have also been gathered in the administration on how best to support the development of all-day education. However, these perspectives have not been aligned sufficiently over the past 20 years.
Research Projects on All-Day Schools
The Federal Ministry of Education and Research has funded more than 20 projects specifically on all-day schools. A comprehensive and long-term project was the “Study on the Development of All-Day Schools” (StEG). Thanks to this study, much is now known about the effects of all-day schooling. The StEG research results have been published in booklets for practitioners, administrators and politicians. There are many publications in books and journals. They provide a solid knowledge base for thinking about “what makes a good all-day school”.
»Central question: How can research, administration and practice align to develop knowledge for action for a good all-day school?«
There is a lot of research along with a lot of good all-day schools and examples of effective administrative structures.
Six Fields of Action as Key Levers for Quality Development
Research in recent years has shown that six key areas of action are important for the quality development of all-day education programmes. Programmes that are clearly focused on goals and competences and with sound implementation have great potential to support children and young people in the best possible way. It is particularly advantageous if these programmes remain attractive in a longer term and promote positive social relationships. The management and cooperation of educational staff should ensure that these aspects are implemented in education.
- Managing all-day education: How does management work in a complex network of institutions and people?
- Cooperation: How can the educational work be coordinated in a team involving different specialists and institutions?
- Overarching concept: What are the prerequisites for a well-developed design and linking of the different all-day educational offers?
- Service design: How can concepts be developed that are based on clear objectives and achieve the desired effects of the respective services?
- Programme implementation: What are the criteria for good organisation and management of services?
- Social relationships: How can positive interactions between all those involved in all-day provision be promoted?
Results show that there is a lot of untapped potential that could enrich the development of all-day education. In the past, people from research, practice and administration have tended to meet separately, for example at specialist conferences. It has not been possible to discuss these fields of action in depth, to link perspectives and to learn from each other in the long term to a satisfactory extent because of the lack of a larger-scale and longer-term exchange. The question arose as to how the wealth of knowledge on all-day education from research, practice and administration could be aligned in a constructive way. How can this be achieved and what is important? Dialogue is the key.
Many Paths Will Lead to the Goal – Ours Was Dialogue
There are various strategies for transferring knowledge into practice, for example good science communication or scientists' consulting activities. However, our aim was not simply to transfer scientific knowledge into practice, but to combine the different knowledge resources from research, practice and administration. Over the years, all those involved have accumulated valuable knowledge that now needs to be shared. The Federal Ministry of Education and Research shares this view and has supported our project from the outset. It has collaborated with us right from the concept development phase of the project. We were thus able to create effective participation formats that comprehensively incorporated the perspectives of the administration at the federal, state and local levels.
According to the vision, the guidelines should not be produced with just a few representatives from research, practice and administration. Instead, many people should be able to participate in the process in order to gather as many perspectives as possible. This led to the idea of dialogue forums. The aim was to develop a useful framework for designing good all-day provisions that could be used by practitioners and administrators alike – ideally the format would be so compact that it could fit into your pocket and adhered to upon request.