Education Initiatives

Overview

Football is a universal attractor to children, young people and adults, and has the power to promote positive messages for the benefit of the community.

Our core themes are Sports Participation, Education,Social Inclusion, Health and Environmental, each of these themes are supported and championed by our umbrella organisation the Football League Trust.

The majority of our work takes place in local schools where we have extensive links which have been developed over many years since our foundation in 1988.

We have the desire and commitment to develop education based initiatives to enhance further our relations with schools for the benefit of our local children and young people.

Education Partnership Launch

Open day at Port Vale - pictured are Union representatives during a Vale Park promotion!

Representatives from Unite the Union and CWU approached Vale in the Community to explore the possibility of developing a computerised Learning Resource Unit within the Community building located on the Hamil Road car park.

Such a facility will complement our existing classroom which houses the Stoke LEA numeracy/literacy strategy Playing for Success.

 Following extensive discussions we are pleased to announce that we have signed a partnership agreement with Unite the Union and CWU to develop adult education programmes at Vale Park.

Our aims and objectives are to develop a resource which is suitable to deliver high quality affordable education to working and non working adults, the need for us all to embrace Lifelong Learning is greater than ever in an increasingly competitive job market.

There is a real need for successful companies to continuously upskill their workforce to compete with other local and national provision, for employees it is an opportunity to become multi skilled and increase their future employment opportunities.

Watch this space for further updates about educational opportunities with Union/Vale!

Supporting local children and young people

Chris Taylor (Vale in the Community Education) conducted extensive consultations with local secondary schools during the latter part of 2008, from the feedback he identified a real need for additional support for young people who were either out of education through non-attendance or underperforming academically.

Chris supported by the Vale in the Community team began to provide mentoring for pupils in school and also for non attenders. Sessions began to take place in the community building on Friday mornings and in schools on other days of the week.

The programme so far has proved to be a considerable success with many of the non-attenders returning to education, we have since been in discussion with local authority representatives and Connexions to further develop a delivery model to provide further real outcomes.

From September 2009 we will begin to role out a programme of work which if successful could run for the foreseeable future, providing real support and benefits to local families,this will be part of the Stoke Challenge programme.

 Playing for Success

This is a highly successful national numeracy/literacy programme which is managed by Stoke LEA, PFS has been delivered from Vale Park for the past twelve years, local Primary and secondary schools are invited to take part having been chosen on a needs basis.

Each participating school visits the centre at Vale Park for eight to ten weeks to study out of school hours, their programme includes match visits to Vale Park and visits from Port Vale first team players,they are often seen working on computers with the children or giving reading support.