Since January, a selection of our Key Stage 3 pupils from Park Aspire have been taking part in plumbing and electrical sessions with Building Futures Together. We have been working with John and Jack and from the first session, they immediately welcomed the children and made them feel at ease in unfamiliar surroundings. Our pupils have not been able to maintain a placement in their local school either due to social, emotional or behavioural difficulties.

John and Jack are thorough with expectations and demonstrations, to allow the pupils to immediately begin their practical experiences. They are friendly, caring and supportive, giving our pupils the appropriate attention they need, while promoting independence and resilience. They have helped our pupils to develop the knowledge and understanding of working within a practical environment.

They are also able to cascade their knowledge to pupils and staff alike, they are consistently attentive to the needs of the pupils and interact superbly with them. The patience and perseverance the pupils demonstrate is an absolute pleasure to see and the positive experience is made even better by such fantastic instructors. We could not recommend this experience enough to other schools, in particular alternative provisions.

The sessions that ran at Crawshaw Academy were extremely powerful to witness. The demeanour of currently very disengaged students visible changed during a relatively short ninety-minute session. Firstly, as you might expect, the activities being practical and employability-focused quickly gained the interest of the groups.

The sessions were excellent with superb resources allowing for the students to be challenged throughout and were quickly adjusted to accommodate students that were either struggling or forging ahead. Perhaps even more powerful was how the two instructors worked with the students. There were very clear boundaries, obviously from a health and safety perspective, but also with regards to relationship building.

It was a relaxed environment, focussed on employability and the skills, qualities and attitudes required to be successful in these careers were constantly reinforced. One student, who was particularly defensive and detached to start with, visibly changed during the session allowing for me to have my first two-way positive interactions with him and this relationship has continued beyond the sessions. I cannot recommend their work highly enough.

We have been fortunate to work closely with Building Futures Together (BFT) from the moment COVID restrictions have been lifted in March 2021. Initially we were able to send two groups of four learners to BFT’s Pudsey site for a day each of work experience.

BFT’s set up is designed perfectly to work with our learners. We are a secondary school for learners with social, emotional, and mental health disturbance. John and Dave at BFT have an impressive understanding of their subject and the strategies required to engage with our learners. It was a pleasure to watch how they provided structure, work ethic and an empathetic style of delivery that enabled our key stage 4 learners to engage and develop their own confidence, in what is a new subject for them.

The feedback from learners has been extremely positive, several of them have had significant gaps in their educational journey and yet they all have requested further visits to BFT. The two mini projects of electrical wiring and building a radiator had the right number of practical activities with an innovative use of maths and English in a vocational setting. The learners were able to focus, and we could see them gain in confidence as the day progressed. Following the visit learners are now more engaged in lessons and have started to discuss their own futures and how they would like to take part in more vocational activities to help them with their career choices.