Girls Football Activators

Context, Intent and Target Group

Background Information

This year, a selection of girls Year 8 students from Castle View Enterprise Academy and St Anthony's Girls Catholic Academy came together across various delivery sessions to take part in the Barclays Game On Go Lead Programme. By completing the delivery sessions, the group of 10 girls become girls football activators for their schools. Furthermore, the girls then produced their own action plan to showcase their skills and knowledge they had learned throughout the programme. As a cohort of new girls football activators, they decided to plan, organise and run their own girls primary schools football festival, where they invited primary schools to a central venue to run football coaching drills on the morning and a football tournament on the afternoon. The girls produced their own drills and then were officials and managers for the afternoon tournament. A total of 97 primary school children attended the event and it was truly awe-inspiring to see the girls become role-models to these children as they begin their footballing journey.

What was the aim of work?

The aim was to enhance girls football both in secondary and primary schools. Enabling Year 8 aspiring girls footballers to become football activators by completing the Barclays Game On Go Lead Programme allows them the opportunity to make changes to girls football within the North East region. The newly qualified girls football activators have already grown in confidence in their football delivery, they are looking to make changes within their secondary schools, with talks of changing girls football kits, giving more opportunities to girls and more. In addition, the girls have created links with primary schools from their area where they are putting on sessions for girls starting their footballing journey and becoming role models. This also aids with transition from Y6 - Y7 with links to feeder primary schools.

Which outcome(s) did it focus on?

• 1. To advocate and position the delivery of the CMO daily active minutes for all young people, as a universal offer to maintain and grow school engagement
• 3. To have a clear focus on secondary school engagement and transition points
• 4. To support the personal development of targeted young people through youth engagement and leadership

Which expectation(s) did it meet?

• Using the national tool to complete and deliver a development plan covering the current academic year, updated once each term.
• Using the development plan to show how community connections will be made for young people to continue their participation.
• Using local insight and youth engagement to identify young people and schools that would most benefit from a targeted School Games offer.
• Develop a communication plan to boost the profile of the host site and demonstrates the value of school sport to other schools in the area.
• Planning for and increasing delivery of 60 active minutes for every child.

Community links

• Active Partnerships
• Community sports clubs
• Local authority

Intent

There has always been a stigma around football being a 'boys' sport. With the emergence of the England Lioness' over the last few years and a big drive of girls football, this is something we wanted to focus on. Within my secondary school, we have a prominent group of girls footballers who wanted to implement a change. We came together to co-create an offer that would allow this to happen. After the initial discussion, I spoke to the girls at Castle View about the Barclays Game On Go Lead programme and they were extremely excited and eager to do the programme and become football activators and start to make a change within girls football. This offer was discussed with other secondary schools around Sunderland and St Anthony's Catholic Schools asked if they could join in with us. This allowed more girls to become football activators and now a second school that have their own activators that can effect change. An UNBELIEVABLE festival was organised and run by the girls football activators to nearly 100 primary school girls and something which will now be an annual event, as well as changes made within their own schools.

Target group

• All Young People
• Girls
• Primary Schools
• Secondary Schools
• Targeted Groups of Young People

Aligns to Schools Games Intents of:

• Develop confidence and competence within physical activity/sport skills
• Increase regular participation and motivation
• Improve knowledge and understanding of sport and physical activity
• Build social skills and connections (i.e. sense of belonging)
• Championing physical literacy
• Improve health and wellbeing (i.e. 60 active minutes)
• Engage new/target groups of young people (tackling inequalities)
• Provide inclusive opportunities
• Promote success and achievement
• Supporting transition
• Develop leadership, character, life skills
• Championing youth engagement
• Create positive experiences

Implementation

All girls involved completed the Barclays Game On Go Lead programme delivered by Sunderland SGO Callum Hodgson. They worked through the programme, before completing their own Action Plan, which was to plan, organise and then run their own girls football festival. This happened in June at Castle View Enterprise Academy to 97 primary school girls across a full day. It was such an amazing day to see the hard work and dedication the girls had put in across the year come to fruition and the feedback from all primary schools was extremely positive. 

Impact

The engagement was great from everyone involved - secondary schools of the girls football activators and all of the primary schools of the girls who attended the primary festival. Those impacted were of course the newly qualified girls football activators, the primary girls who are starting their footballing journey with girls footballer role models who are giving them these amazing positive experiences with plenty of opportunities and finally all other girls in secondary school who will benefit from the changes the football activators are looking to implement. This connects fantastically well with the intent as, as a group (myself and the girls footballers/activators) we wanted to create change to allow more positive opportunities and experiences for girls within football and what has happened across this year alone has done that. The continuation of the newly qualified activators and the changes they have made already as well as the next cohort who will compete the programme next year, will see girls football within schools in Sunderland flourish and go from strength to strength,

Challenges

There were challenges with push backs from boys as to why the girls were given preferential treatment and allowed to have their own programme. However, after explanation of the impact and reasoning behind this, everything was quickly squashed. I believe we achieved everything we set out to achieve this year and alongside some snags, this will allow us to improve for next year.

Sustainability

The girls football activators programme is extremely sustainable. We have received amazing feedback from the primary schools regarding the football festival and the opportunities the girls are giving to primary school girls starting their journey. This has built relationships to allow the work to continue going forward. With qualified girls football activators now in place who are affecting change in their school, as well as opportunities for girls to become activators every year, I firmly believe this is now only sustainable, but something which will become a prominent part of the academic year. We have plans in place to bring in clubs/stakeholders ready for next year as well as a videographer who will record the sessions (this was supposed to happen this year, but unfortunately they cancelled last minute)

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