Community Trust Education programmes Raise Attainment

The second year of our hugely popular Homework Club project has now come to an end and we would like to thank Dundee Partnership for their generous funding via the Coldside Regeneration Forum.     

In 2017/2018 we managed to: 

• Work with every Primary 4 boy and girl in the Coldside area
• Engage four local schools in a programme of eight weeks (64 hours) of activity at Tannadice
• Contribute to an improvement in numeracy, literacy and communication skills
• Provide equality of opportunity to local children
• Increase the number of hours of physical activity boys and girls receive

The Homework Club project uses the environment of the football club to teach numeracy, literacy and communication skills through scenarios such as:  Running the ticket office/shop, taking part in a board meeting and writing a match report – among other tasks.  The project has been very well received by the class teachers, to the extent that the schools are keen to continue working with us in 2018/2019. 

The success of the project has also allowed us to engage with a further three schools using the Pupil Equity Fund which in itself is a strong indicator of the value of this work.  Overall we have supported over 200 boys and girls in education programmes this year.  We also managed to map the project against at least 21 outcomes and experiences within the SQA Curriculum for Excellence. 

Jamie Kirk, Head of Operations, had this to say about the project: “contributing to increasing attainment in local schools is a key part of what we do and I’m delighted with the progression of this area of our work in 2017/2018.  We already have some exciting plans for next academic year and can’t wait to get going again in the new academic year.”

There have been some fantastic quotes of support received from teachers and pupils too:

“These sessions were enjoyed by all the children and there was a high level of engagement.  I was particularly pleased to see this from a number of children who are normally difficult to engage for different reasons.  All the children were enthusiastic and eager to share their learning and concentrated on tasks at hand.” (Class Teacher) 

“Thank you for letting us go to Tannadice.  My favourite part was being the chair person and I liked scoring goals at football.  I love going to Tannadice, I never want it to end it is so much fun.” (Homework Club Participant) 

Outcomes:

Our results really do speak for themselves: 

• 86% improvement in numeracy
• 83% improvement in literacy
• 80% improvement in confidence
• 91% found the course enjoyable

We are already looking forward to working with our Partner Schools in 2018/2019 and the planning has started already.  Watch this space for more exciting work in Education from Dundee United Community Trust.  If you’d like your school to be involved in our education programme in 2018/2019 please get in touch via enquiries@dundeeunitedct.co.uk.