Small Heath School, Birmingham: Year 11 leavers

Date: 15th October 2015
Event: Engaging Year 11 Leavers at Small Heath School
Contact: Peter Ford, Head teacher

We were approached by Peter Ford who is Head teacher at Small Heath School in Birmingham. Peter recognised the potential in bubble football as an engagement tool for pupils when seeing one of our videos on line.

Small Heath School had a leavers week coming up in which they wanted to get a high attendance among the year 11 male leavers. Attendance was not compulsory, but very advantageous due to the various learning opportunity workshops they were putting on throughout the day around skills and training towards gaining employment after school.

However helpful the week was due to be for the year 11's, the school realised sitting in a class room to learn about post education pathways as a non-compulsory option was not going to be an easy sell. This is when they realised that having us put on a bubble football session for the pupils as a free incentive to attend school would be a creative idea to increase attendance levels.

The bubble sessions were used throughout the day and sandwiched in between the theory lessons around skills to be gained helping the school leavers. The result was great, as attendance was up on expected numbers, especially amongst boys who were the hardest gender to get in to the school. Our visit was a success based on attendances figures alone. We are hoping to be back at the school in the near future to help where we can.