Vision, Purpose & Need
Vision: A country where every young person has a trusted adult relationship throughout their secondary school years
Purpose: We use football to inspire vulnerable young people to thrive in school
Need: The young people who are the least likely to thrive in mainstream school
This means we work with young people who, at the start of secondary school, are:
- Predicted by teachers and prior attainment to NOT obtain their GCSEs (KS2 Attainment).
- Growing up in low income households (Ever6 FSM).
- At risk of not finishing school due to behaviour issues (School Behaviour Points).
We know from 2022/23 FBB data that these young people who ARE on FBB have:
- A 1 in 2 chance of getting their GCSEs in mainstream school (43% pass rate / 185 students).
- This means young people who have the benefit of FBB’s programme are up to 9 times more likely to get their GCSEs than young people in our national comparison sets.
FBB exists to ensure young people finish school with social and emotional skills and their GCSE grades.
We work with young people who have the odds stacked against them. We work with all of our young people for four years – beginning at aged 12.
This year we’re working with 3,000 young people each week, at our 50 partner schools, across the West Midlands, London, Essex, Greater Manchester and Merseyside.
Our programme combines a classroom and pitch curriculum with weekly one to one therapeutic mentoring and termly reward trips.
National surveys show that less than 1 in 3 young people say they have an adult at school who they can talk to when they’re struggling.
While many of our young people have dedicated parents and carers, Public Health data shows there are at least 200,000 teenagers in England who don’t have any supportive adults, either in school or at home.
We’re not stopping till we achieve our vision of a country where every young person has a trusted adult relationship.
We have the national partners in place to make this a reality with Marcus Rashford, Gareth Southgate, Rodri, Ian Wright, Nike, EA Sports, JD Sports, the FA, Impetus, Esmee Fairbairn, Gillette, and the Paul Hamlyn Foundation all key supporters of our work. There is a lot of excitement and interest in our organisation at the moment and there is huge potential for growth. However, the role of the Chair will be as much around ensuring we maintain the quality of our delivery and culture as it will be to oversee this national expansion.
Our Mission
FBB supports young people who are disengaged at school and passionate about football, in order to help them finish school with the skills and grades to make a successful transition into adulthood. We do this by providing long-term, intensive support, built around relationships and young people’s passions, in the classroom and beyond. We are an asset-based organisation with a view that all our interventions must build from a young person’s strengths and passions. We expect all students who worked with us to finish our programmes with:
- National level qualifications in English and Maths GCSE.
- Social and emotional skills to develop positive relationships and manage their emotions.
Our FBB Schools programme is a highly impactful programme delivered by expert professionals and built around the evidence of what works for delivering sustained change. Our programme is built on the following four theoretical foundations:
- Attachment Theory.
- Adolescent Neuroscience.
- Developmental Trauma.
- Humanistic Therapy.
We believe real change can only be sustained through an embedded and holistic approach to our young people’s development. We work to become deeply embedded in the lives of our participants and in the communities we are based in. We do this through working with our participants both in their schools and through our community based holiday programmes. This integrated approach is supported through intensive parental and teacher engagement achieved through parents’ evenings, teacher showcases and weekly text and phone updates.
Our Values
- We put young people first, factoring young people’s interests and perspectives into our decisions.
- We care, about ourselves, each other and our environment.
- We learn, nurturing a culture of learning and developing a growth mindset through self-awareness, review and constructive feedback.
Our Impact
We were founded in 2014 and now work with 3,000 young people across our partner schools in the West Midlands, London, Essex, Greater Manchester and Merseyside. Over the past five years we have grown significantly in reputation, scope and influence and we have put firm foundations in place to ensure that we have a sustainable future.
Our aim is to become the UK’s leading provider of specialist support to disengaged Key Stage 3 students. To achieve this, we want to become the best place in the country to work with vulnerable young people.
In the 22/23, our young people achieved the following outcomes:
- Finishing School – 93% of our at-risk students weren’t permanently excluded or managed.
- Academic Attainment – 43% of our at-risk participants achieved a pass grade in their English and Maths GCSEs.
- Developing Skills – 50% of our participants’ improved their Social Emotional Learning (SEL) skills. This bucks the global trend of SEL skills declining between the ages of 11 and 15 (OECD).
The University of Manchester and Pro Bono Economics undertook an independent evaluation of the impact of our programme on the wellbeing of our participants.
Their analysis, using an approach called difference-in-differences estimation, demonstrated that participation in FBB led to a statistically significant improvement in mental wellbeing of at-risk young people, equivalent to about 2.4 points on the SWEMWBS measure (about a 17 percentile-point increase). This compares favourably to the average effects observed for targeted, school-based interventions, and provides robust, preliminary independent evidence of the efficacy of our work. To quantify the difference on wellbeing, our at-risk young people on only a year of FBB see a similar change to wellbeing as an adult who goes from being unemployed to having a job.
The programme delivered more than £5.5 million of wellbeing benefits to society from the 2,401 students who participated.
The typical trusted adult practitioner delivered almost £150,000 of benefits or £109,000 of benefits per school.