Teach Secondary Issue 14.8

TEAM SPIRIT Nick Perchard explains how a learning programme funded by the Premier League uses students’ love of football as a means to get them re-engaged with the routines and demands of school Nick Perchard is director of community at the Premier League, responsible for the Premier League’s community-based outreach work and its accompanying strategies, policies and partnerships. How did the Premier League Inspires programme first come about? Premier League Inspires (PLI) is one of the national programmes we fund via the Premier League charitable fund. It started in 2019, building off of two programmes we’d been running prior to that – Premier League Enterprise (a programme aimed at developing entrepreneurship among secondary school students) and Premier LeagueWorks (an employability programme for young people). The feedback we’d received from doing those was that there were growing issues among certain groups of young people who were struggling to engage at secondary school. Partly with regards to their behaviour, but also in relation to mental health challenges they were experiencing. We wanted to develop a new programme that was more targeted and focused on disengaged young people who, due to multiple risk factors, were being prevented from reaching their full potential. In practice, that included individuals at risk of exclusion or suspension, those with attendance concerns and looked after children. Our aimwas to effectively engage in youth work within schools, for students struggling to remain within a traditional classroom environment. We wanted to use active learning to try and develop these students’ personal and social skills, wellbeing and ability to build relationships, Of course, six months after we started, COVID hit and everything changed. Have those aims of the programme changed or evolved over the years? Coming out of COVID, we found that the cohorts attending the schools that wanted us to work with had changed considerably. As your readers will be aware, the scale of the mental health challenge amongst young people increased dramatically, withmany now struggling to be present within school at all. What does a typical Premier League Inspires session look like? PLI aims to add value to schools’ existing capacity by organising weekly activities for small groups (typically six to seven young people) or on a one-to-one basis. Premier League club charities will reach out to schools, identify young people who might benefit from the programme, assess their needs and then build a package around that. There’s a whole host of different activities that participants get involved in, including qualifications they can aim for in areas such as refereeing and sports leadership. We also set a national challenge each season, where young people are tasked with working in small groups to help tackle a specific issue. These challenges might involve addressing mental health needs within their local community, tackling discrimination or a whole host of other causes. Ultimately, it’s about using the power of the Premier League, our football clubs and football in general to engage young people in education. How can we use active learning to get young people working as a team, communicating more effectively and solving problems? Because as an employer, we know that those are the kind of skills and attributes we want to see from young people entering the workplace. We’ll try to establish a framework with the schools we’re working with to make sure that the young people’s interests are being encouraged. The programme’s main strength, inmy view, is how it enables our club staff to form relationships with young people that are “Howcanwe useactive learning to get youngpeopleworkingas a team, communicatingmore effectively and solvingproblems?” 44 teachwire.net/secondary