I have just travelled back from Stratford-upon-Avon. I was chairing a national conference for 'continYou'.

Their 'Schools of the Future: National Conference on Extended Schools and Integrated Services' attracted around 300 colleagues from all over the country for this two day event. What was great was being able to talk to some amazing colleagues, from England, Wales and Northern Ireland and the occasional Scot, about the brilliant work they are doing usually on fixed and short term funding. It is staggering, knowing what we do about the impact of 'out of hours learning', that it is still so marginalised and forgotten when it comes to long term sustainable funding. We all spend so much time chasing pots of money and putting in bids, I often wonder how we continue to make such an incredible difference through these programmes... it is clearly down to these talented and amazing colleagues.

It was a great day with some sonderful people but the real highlight of the day was meeting and being interviewed by Jodie and Sam, two fantastic young people from Ormsby School in Middlesborough. They were there as Radiowaves student reporters making conference podcasts which are available at www.radiowaves.co.uk/continyou. Radiowaves is a wonderful organisation working with us here in Leeds enabling young people to make their own radio programmes. You can find out more at www.radiowaves.co.uk.

'continYou' is a brilliant organisation with a great team producing some amazing resources and projects. If you don't know about 'continYou' you can find out about their work at www.continyou.org.uk
Chris