School of hard knocks
The football club giving something back
By the time she was 15, Poppy had established quite a reputation among teachers across Liverpool. So disruptive was she, when she unleashed her full-on banshee alter-ego, that she could singlehandedly bring a large school to a standstill. A whirling dervish of misdirected energy, she was excluded from most of the educational establishments in the city, sent away so that others could get on with learning in peace.
Then, in a last resort, rejected by every school across Merseyside, she was sent to the Everton Free School. There she was given the chance to enrol on a football coaching course. The moment she started laying out cones and preparing sessions on how to counter a tight press, it was, according to the school’s head teacher Richard Cronin, as if a light had been switched on. Suddenly everything changed.
Now, three years on, Poppy is serving an apprenticeship in the Everton Community Coaching department. So good is she at encouraging others, when her apprenticeship finishes she is likely to be given a job helping youngsters develop their footballing skills.
“Every child has something that will engage them, enthuse them, get them out of bed in the morning,” says Cronin. “It’s our job to find that hook.”
At any one time in Merseyside there are up to 600 youngsters permanently excluded from school. Disruptive, disturbed, disillusioned: there are many reasons why they drift out of the system.
Now, thanks to the auspices of one of the area’s Premier League clubs, as many as 150 of them are being given an opportunity to re-connect with education at the Everton Free School.
“These are children who have fallen through the cracks in the pavement,” says Cronin. “We give them a fresh start. When they come here, the slate is wiped clean.”
The school is just round the corner from Goodison Park, in a smart new building filled with light and air. When stepping through the front door it is impossible to miss the connection with the football club down the road. On the walls hang portraits of Everton heroes painted by the pupils, the classrooms are named Labone, Harvey or Ferguson and the children and teachers alike are kitted out in royal blue Everton tracksuits.
“Though obviously we’re not restricted to Everton supporters,” says Cronin. “We have one lad here who lets it be known he wears a Liverpool shirt under his school uniform. He says he doesn’t want anything blue touching his skin.”
Everywhere is the thrum of quiet diligence. Every child who enrols here is given intensive tuition in English and maths. In one classroom, Jake, 15, is doing some work towards his maths GCSE, under the close supervision of a student from Edge Hill University (staff to pupil ratios are as high as one to six).
“I come here because it means I’ve not been written off,” Jake says. “I’ve changed since I come here.” The evidence is in his attendance record: in his last year at conventional school he was going in 25 per cent of the time; this year at Everton it is 96 per cent.
Maths and English are but the start. Elsewhere there is a class being taught Organic Chemistry, another being taught the history of Liverpool, a third are being given a lesson in self-defence by the former national karate champion Harris Jonas.
“I have to admit when I first came here I was frightened of the kids, I thought, ‘Blimey they’ve all been excluded, this is going to be a nightmare’,” says Jonas. “But as soon as I walked through that front door that changed. I could sense the atmosphere was so encouraging.”
Upstairs, in the sixth form block, a group taking sports science BTEC are preparing for a trip to Shanghai on July 1. When they get to China they will spend 10 days coaching schoolchildren in football skills.
“There’s 15 of us going and as far as I know none of us speak Chinese,” says Katie, who travels two hours a day to get here from her home in Speke. “But it’s the international language of football.”
If it seems an unlikely thing for a Premier League club to become involved in full-time education, Denise Barrett-Baxendale, the director of the Everton in the Community programme, suggests it is an entirely logical step that many should follow.
“Our community department has long been engaged with helping local people,” she says. “And what we found was, whatever issues people faced – be they housing, employment, health – at the core of it all was education. We realised if we can intervene at that level, a lot of the issues further down the line won’t arise.”
Taking advantage of the government’s Free School programme introduced in 2012, Everton put their name and resources behind the new school, targeting those who had been rejected by the conventional educational system. Opened in 2013 and borrowing space in Liverpool Community College, it moved into its specially constructed premises two years ago. Most of the funding comes from a £6million Department for Education grant, but the club provide all the back-office facilities, uniforms, even the catering (every child is entitled to free meals). But most of all what it has bequeathed is the Everton badge.
“That’s the lure,” says BarrettBaxendale. “I make no bones about it. That’s what initially gets them through the door. And if they come along because they think they’re going to bump into Phil Jagielka in the corridor, that’s fine by me. As long as they come.”
In truth, there is every chance pupils might bump into the Everton captain: Jagielka is a regular visitor to the school, often turning up unannounced to help in the classroom. As are many of the first team squad: Tom Davies and Ademola Lookman had been round the day before The Sunday Telegraph.
Not that football is the only point of reference. “The first dozen kids we had enrolled here were the roughest, toughest lads,” recalls Cronin. “We thought, best point of connection was football. And one, ‘Don’t like football.’ Turns out he loved boxing, so we got a boxing coach in. Another lad fancied DJing, so we got a DJ in.”
And then there was the boy who unexpectedly found a penchant for horticulture when the pupils made a bunch of hanging baskets for a local care home. Now he has an apprenticeship at the club’s training ground, with a view to becoming a groundsman. “No child should ever be written off,” says Cronin. “And here they know they won’t be.”
‘If they come because they think they are going to bump into Jagielka. That’s fine – as long as they come’