Advocates of out-of-school interventions, either through public, associative or community-based programmes, argue that schools are dealing with issues that actually originate outside the classroom. They cite research showing that achievement gaps across various ethnic or socio-economic groups are formed before children ever enter school, and that one-third to one-half of the performance gap can be explained by family-environment indicators (Fryer and Levitt, 2004, 2006). These debates cannot be easily closed, which is why, in what follows, the whole range of interventions for which there is evidence of positive social impacts is presented. Schools can provide a comprehensive environment that improves cognitive skills, advances knowledge-formation and also influences ‘life skills’ and personality traits of those at-risk of dropping out.