Reading Stars
Premier League Reading Stars (PLRS) is an educational project which harnesses the motivational power of football to encourage families to enjoy reading.
It targets reluctant readers who have a passion for football. Fulham FC Foundation have run the largest Reading Stars programme of any Premier League Football Club over the past few years engaging seven libraries with approx 100 young people and families involved.
The programme runs for six weeks from February every year and the young people and families engage in reading, a book store visit, stadium tour, author visit and a graduation ceremony with the Club's reading star Mark Schwarzer.
Double Club
Double Clubs run in local schools during curriculum time and out of school hours. The Fulham FC Double Club model is based on the prestige Arsenal FC Double Club and the popularity of playing football is the inspiration behind the Arsenal Double Club.
The aim is to raise literacy and numeracy ability levels, confidence and self-esteem of young people in key stages 2 and 3, by using resources about Fulham and football. These sessions are combined with a parallel programme of football coaching. Last year Double Club engaged over 60 young people in four schools over three terms and saw a raise in literacy scores by 92% of the pupils engaged.
Enterprise
Fulham FC Foundation has recently launched London’s first accredited football business enterprise project, using Fulham FC to inspire and motivate young people about the challenging world of business.
The FFC Enterprise project will use the power of football and the model of a Premier League Football Club to deliver a classroom based programme which aims to develop young peoples understanding of business and enterprise.
As a result of their participation in the programme young people will gain the benefit from understanding a business model leading to improved enterprise skills, educational attainment and raised aspirations.
The young people will engage in a 10 module programme that will see them receive an Entry Level OCR certificate in Business and Enterprise. The programme model emphasises a cross-curricular link to many other subjects including literacy, numeracy and some elements of ICT and this will give support to raising standards in key areas. The programme also has a strong emphasis on citizenship themes such as teamwork, respect for others, responsibility and communication, which in turn have a positive impact on the lifestyle of those involved.
Apprenticeships
Fulham FC Foundation engaged two young apprentices and Two Level 2 Active Leisure apprentices during 2008/2009 academic year.
Apprenticeships are an excellent way of training our future workforce, making our organisations more productive and effective whilst addressing the skills gap in the sports and leisure industry.
For the young people an apprenticeship is an excellent way of gaining qualifications and work place experience.
We are currently working with a variety of partners to expand the apprenticeship programme to more young people and different subject areas.
Diplomas
The Diploma is a new qualification for young people aged 14 to 19 and is designed by employers to meet their needs.
We are currently working with Merton, Lambeth, Kingston and Hammersmith and Fulham Education Business Partnership to mentor diploma students in a variety of subject. We will also support the local schools by offering work experience placements, setting project briefs, providing supervised visits to the workplace and giving talks in schools.
We have recently signed up to become a diploma champion and hope to see many of the young people we are working with go on to volunteer or get paid work with Fulham after their diploma experience.
Work Experience
Over the past few years we have supported many young people with work experience placements at Fulham FC Foundation and could see up to 2 young people a week carrying out work place duties. We have recently reviewed this activity and hope to re-launch our work experience programme later this year.
Mentoring
The role of mentoring within Fulham FC Foundation is to help improve the young people we work with on a number of our projects.
Mentoring is a long standing form of training, learning and development and an increasingly popular tool for supporting personal development. Mentoring within Fulham FC Foundation is particularly used for the volunteers who form part of the Community Champions programme in order for them to meet their own development goals. We hope to expand our mentoring model and engage more mentees from different projects in 2010.
Skills & Learning Centre
The Fulham Football Club Skills and Learning Centre has been open since September 2000 and is an established Playing for Success Centre. Playing for Success (PfS) is a Department for Children, Families and Schools (DCFS) Study Support initiative to create learning opportunities in out-of-school-hours to raise pupil attainment.
Hammersmith and Fulham Local Authority (LA) and Fulham Football Club are working together in partnership with the DCFS and local businesses to provide pupils with opportunities to develop their key skills in literacy, numeracy and ICT.
Since opening, the Centre has worked with approximately 3,600 young people from the southern half of Hammersmith and Fulham.
We provide a 10-week learning programme, which challenges young people through a range of exciting activities and involves the completion of the unique FFC workbook “Skillful”. The learning programme has been designed to compliment the National Curriculum, and the programme aims to motivate young people to learn, increase their confidence and raise their self-esteem, as well as raising academic achievement.
The centre is equipped with state of the art ICT equipment. A fully qualified teacher manages the centre with the support of study support assistants who take on the role as mentors and generally assist within the Centre. An ICT technician is available to oversee all areas of ICT.