Playing For Success (Pfs) is a partnership between the department for Education and Skills, Local Education Authorities and a broad range of sports. Partners include clubs from the FA Premier League and Football Leagues, Rugby League and Union, cricket, basketball, hockey, ice hockey, gymnastics and tennis.

Through Pfs, Study Support Centres have been set up within or near the club's grounds. Using the environment and medium of sport, the centres focus on helping children to raise their attainment in the key skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT. Thousands of children have benefited from their attendance at the centres in terms of improved skills, better self-esteem and more motivation.

Operation of the Pfs programme

The children are collected from school by bus with an escort and transported to the centre. The primary children have a snack before starting work, secondary children have a drink half way through their session. At the end of the session all children are returned to school and are, depending on parental wishes, returned to a responsible adult or allowed to go home unaccompanied.

All primary children, depending on time of year, are escorted to a football match by staff, Secondary children are given a match ticket.

At the end of their programme the primary children attend a Celebration Evening in the Matthew Le Tissier Suite at the club when they receive a medal, certificate and small gift from a first team player. The secondary children have a first team player to visit them in the centre on their last evening and parents are also invited to attend.

Staffing

The centre has a full time centre manager and part time secretarial support. Working exclusively with the children is a team of paid mentors mostly recruited from Higher Educational within the city.

The centre aims to provide a ratio of one adult to four children. Each mentor has responsibility for a group of four children so that they are able to build relationships quickly. Year 10 students from a local secondary school act as peer mentors to the younger children during the autumn term.

Aims of the centre

The centre provides out of school hours learning for Southampton children aged 9 to 14. It aims to improve standards of children's attainment in literacy, numeracy and ICT and improve motivation using the medium of football. The stadium, its staff and facilities are an integral part of the learning programme and are a rich and varied learning resource.

School participation

During 2002-03 the centre ran a full Pfs programme for ten primary and seven secondary schools; this represents attendance by 272 children for 4352 teaching hours. Demand remains high as the work of the Centre has become known and appreciated by schools and there is a long waiting list of schools wanting to send further groups. All schools within Southampton LEA are invited to apply for places on the scheme.

School Liason

Schools appoint a link teacher and the centre manager visits each school to help with the selection of the pupils and to collect data on the children's current attainment.

Curriculum

The centre delivers a different programme to primary and secondary children which is under constant review. The children's performance in tests at the beginning and end of the programme are taken into account when the curriculum is being planned.

The children spend more than half their time at the centre using the computers, either for IT specific purposes or as the vehicle for learning literacy and numeracy. With the exception of the multiplication tables, on which the primary children spend ten minutes a week, all activities are related to football.

For example, they use the stadium's press facilities to write a match report, use football statistics for data-handling activities and undertake mathematical activities based on shooting angles and transfer fees.

Timings

Secondary children attend the centre for one evening a week, 5.30-7.30 for ten weeks.

Primary children attend for two evenings a week from 3.30 - 5.30 for an average of six weeks