Extended educational offers at school are located at the interface between family and school, between private and public. The challenge is to organise such offers as something other than school and family and to create opportunities to support "childhood". The political discourse on the quality of extended educational offers ranges from rudimentary care for children to extended educational programmes.

A lack of policy documents and the diversity of staff in extended education lead to a multitude of educational activities that are barely visible and poorly documented. It is unclear what should be offered to the children in extended education. Interdisciplinary competences such as participative, autonomous or cooperative learning are often mentioned as content.  The well-being of children in extended education is an important factor for academic performance, especially if children spend a lot of time in these premises.

In order to ensure quality in extended education, the EKCO project makes the implicit knowledge of the educational staff about existing practice visible by observing and documenting it. In this way, quality criteria are developed and best practices are made visible, taking into account socio-pedagogical principles such as the children's participation and autonomy.

The target group of the project are children who attend extended education and employees who create activities and thus promote interdisciplinary skills.

This participatory school development project is an international European collaboration with Norway (University of Stavanger), Sweden (Linköping University), Denmark (College of Education, Viborg) and Austria (Johannes Kepler University, Linz), funded by the EU's Erasmus plus programme, in which researchers and practitioners contribute to the quality of extended education in order to promote transversal competences in pupils. The participation of the Swiss partners (ZHAW Social Work and PH Zurich together with an allday school from the Limmattal school district) is financially supported by Movetia.     

The project will run for three years and begin in autumn 2023.