The My Personal Best for Alternative Provision (PRU) is an innovation project funded through the Department for Education Inclusion 2024-25 grant to develop and support Alternative Provision and Pupil Referral Units settings in developing life skills in their young people.

One of the schools the Youth Sport Trust worked with on this project was Titan St George’s Academy, which is an alternative provision free school which welcomes young people who are at risk of permanent exclusion or have been disengaged from education.

A key benefit of the My Personal Best programme is the flexibility of the delivery recognising that one size does not fit all for all pupils and different delivery formats can be chosen to achieve success.  After completing a central induction for the programme, each school can create their own action plan bespoke to their pupils needs utilising the programme’s resources. The students choose key characteristics they would like to focus on throughout the project and in the case of Titan St. George’s these were:

• Resilience
• Self Belief
• Respect
• Trust
• Concentration
• Decision Making

In conjunction with the school and taking on board the young people’s views, the school decided to create a 6 week sailing programme for 56 students at the school to take part in. The full case study document gives greater detail of the huge impact the programme had, but snapshots from the student blogs captured as part of the project give a great flavour of the impact made:

“When we first went sailing I didn’t like it. There were lots of instructions and listening whilst we set up our boats. As the weeks went on I felt more and more confident even though I kept crashing the boat! In school, I would have been angry and upset, but sailing improved my resilience to things going wrong and I just tried again until I got it right. By the end of the project I felt calmer and learned that I can deal with things going wrong in a better way. I think that teachers saw a better side of me when I was sailing. I showed them the good parts of me and I get on better with the teachers now as they know me more. If I got the chance again I would definitely want to go sailing. I know that I can succeed at something which is something I have not felt before.”

“After a while I felt really confident and was actually showing my peers what to do. This made me feel like a hero. Being able to help others gave me a sense of pride and achievement. I am really proud of the positive example I set to others who found the sailing hard and the staff at the school now look at me differently. Because they were there seeing me succeed, I feel that I belong and have a place in the school.”

Students from Titan St George’s Academy have benefitted hugely from the experience of sailing showcasing positive impact in both their behaviour and attendance at school. Those who would give up and display disrespect towards themselves and others in school showed determination, calmness and trust towards each other. You can read the full conclusion and next steps in the full case study document.

You can find out more about Inclusion 2024/25 and My Personal Best  and with resources designed for both primary and secondary schools on the relevant sections of our website.

If you’re interested in finding out more about our Alternative Provision work, please contact our team on [email protected]. You can also visit our SEND inclusion webpage.