Opportunity Enhancement Trust
Core Skills Through Football
Our Core Skills Through Football course is a 200-hour course that is primarily based in the classroom but includes physical activity and match visits. The five 40 hour modules cover communication, numeracy, ICT, working with others and problem solving/leadership skills. It will seek to bridge the gap between education, training and mainstream employability support services and focus on developing core transferable skills, particularly relevant in the workplace. We will record educational progression throughout the course and include regular sporting participation to promote healthy lifestyles. We can deliver ICT, Communication and Numeracy as individual modules.
To facilitate students who lack, or have thus far failed to develop, an effective engagement with their own education, to develop the confidence, skills and knowledge to address this and motivate them to move forward towards employment or re-engagement with education and training.
Football is the medium of engagement but the aims are to use the game as a vehicle to establish/re-establish engagement with wider social requirements in respect of literacy, numeracy and ICT to facilitate students in re-engaging with education or gaining the skills in numeracy, literacy and ICT to make them credible candidates for employment or further education.
We can deliver the course independently or alternatively can provide course materials and training to enable the course/modules to be delivered by the relevant organisation. If OET delivered there would be a £20-30 per hour charge per group depending upon the delivery venue. If delivered by the organisation, discussions would be held with respect to training costs, software licensing and the purchase of course materials.
Improving Literacy through Football
The Improving Literacy Through Football course was put together after OET spent three months in summer 2015 teaching prisoners at HMP/YOI Grampian in Peterhead.
There, prisoners undertook a Core Skills Through Football course featuring modules in communication, numeracy, ICT, problem solving and working with others.
The course was delivered in conjunction with the prison's physical education staff, in addition to their educational staff, through the prison education provider Fife College. That course aimed for an ambitious total of 200 hours of engagement with prisoners. Of eight students who officially started the course, six obtained three modules or more. Of those six, all passed the communication module.
The overarching aim was to engage with prisoners who had shown an interest in sport, primarily football, but who did not frequent the education department.
The courses OET develop are primarily created for those for whom the educational experience has not worked adequately.
The courses are based on the assumption that conventional curricula which use a specific subject (e.g. numeracy) as a starting point, work better for those who have some reasonable level of interest in it, or can reasonably appreciate its relevance to something in which they are interested. OET inverts that process. It uses an area of student interest (e.g. football) as the starting point and demonstrates the applicability of certain subjects (e.g. reading and writing) to it in order to enhance and develop that interest towards effective educational needs.
The project at HMP/YOI was very much a pilot and from the statistics and experience gathered, OET has developed a course designed to be taught to prisoners who have an interest in football, but don't engage with education.
Improving Literacy Through Football is a 10-hour course ideally taught over seven 90-minute sessions. The frequency of these sessions e.g one per week, is up to the facility staging the course.
Outside of working with HMP/YOI Grampian, OET has also taught courses in conjunction with North East Scotland College, as well as football clubs across Scotland including Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Hibernian.