DC08-370 October 21, 2008
Prime Minister hails BT partnership with Football Foundation
Communicating for Success to deliver inclusive ICT learning across the country
Prime Minister Gordon Brown today hailed the launch of an “exciting and innovative” partnership between BT and the Football Foundation, the UK’s largest sports charity. Communicating for Success (CfS) is an initiative aimed at using the power of football to assist with tackling digital exclusion and improving communication skills in the UK. BT is making an initial first-year investment of £500,000 in the scheme, which will be matched by the Football Foundation.
The Prime Minister said: “The Communicating for Success programme is an exciting and innovative partnership between BT and the Football Foundation, which will utilise the power and reach of football to help encourage more people to learn IT skills. For people of all ages who have not yet had the chance to learn to use computers and the Internet, this initiative will give them the chance to learn those vital skills while they enjoy their love of football and other sports. I look forward to seeing this initiative rolled out across the country, and I applaud BT and the Football Foundation for their commitment to helping thousands of young people and adults equip themselves for the skilled jobs of the future.”
The programme aims to help people of all ages connect with the ‘digital society’ and make learning more accessible through links with football and other sports. Participants will have the opportunity to improve IT literacy skills and raise educational attainment, while also encouraging them to participate in football and sport through playing, training and coaching.
CfS will build on the successful Playing for Success educational programme which sees the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and partners, including the Football Foundation and the Premier League, establish study support centres within sports clubs’ grounds and sporting venues across England. These Centres help young people, mainly aged 10-14, to improve their literacy, numeracy and ICT skills and raise educational attainment.
This new programme will focus activities on ICT learning in combination with playing sport while extending the current usage of the PfS Study Support Centres to a wider audience.
In the first year, the CfS programme will work with a number of PfS Study Support Centres which will form CfS hubs. These are based across the country, including Doncaster, Sheffield, the London Borough of Newham, Ipswich, Manchester, Middlesbrough, Newcastle, Nottingham, Plymouth, Portsmouth and the West Bromwich area of Birmingham. A further project will also be developed in Glasgow.
Each hub will be tasked with improving people’s ICT skills, using football and other sports as the engagement tool. This socially-inclusive approach is well-proven to attract people in a more informal, enjoyable and accessible manner than traditional academic learning. In addition to the teaching staff based at the Centres and coaches from the Clubs’ community schemes, each hub will be supported by local volunteers from BT who can add extra value to the projects by mentoring, coaching and generally supporting activities.
Paul Thorogood, Chief Executive of the Football Foundation, said: “This investment by BT, together with the BT volunteers who will help to deliver the programme, will make a significant and positive impact on many people in areas of greatest need. Practical learning using football and other sports can be a very effective way of helping to close the attainment gap because it can be such great fun. Addressing IT illiteracy while getting active will be hugely beneficial to young people; it will also help those older people who have, for one reason or another, missed out on the IT revolution of the past decade.”
BT’s chief executive, Ian Livingston, said: “BT is delighted to be launching Communicating for Success. We are determined to tackle the scourge of IT illiteracy and help people of all ages and abilities prosper through confidence with communications, computers and the internet.
“The Football Foundation has worked with us to develop Communicating for Success, combining the attraction of our national game and other sports with learning, to help people develop skills in ways they have not experienced before. This partnership is a great complement to our 2012 Olympic sponsorship and we shall bring elements of the two together over the course of the programme to foster learning.”
