Birmingham City FC Fo0tball Development and Education Programme
This project's parent organization is Birmingham City Football Club
It operates in United Kingdom
It uses Football (Soccer)
Entered the Sport Team of the Year
More about Birmingham City FC Fo0tball Development and Education Programme
A key social issue that the project set out to address was the high percentage of NEET young people in the West Midlands area. By working in partnership with Connexions and schools and advertising locally, we identified young people who were at risk of becoming NEET on leaving school or were already NEET. The identified youngsters all had one thing in common, their love of football.
It was through the magnetism of this sport that we were able to attract and engage them and thus enrol them on an appropriate academic programme, The young people train at BCFC’s training ground four mornings a week and are then transported to St Andrew’s Stadium for afternoon lectures. Match day is Wednesday where players have the opportunity to play in the Football Conference Youth Alliance and English Colleges leagues for Birmingham City Football Club. The students also have designated mentoring sessions with their coach and tutors.
There is a dedicated team of staff that work on the programme and all of the coaches are ex professional players. We are able to accommodate 64 young people at the programme, which form four football teams and four academic groups.