plymstock school
Project:
To build a new artificial grass pitch and refurbishment changing rooms (South West)
Grant amount
£350,921
project summary
In February 2008, Plymstock School, a Specialist Sports College on the east side of Plymouth in Devon benefitted from the offer of a £279,400 large facilities grant from the Football Foundation to enable the construction of a new full-size floodlit all-weather third generation artificial grass pitch (3G AGP) and associated minor enhancements to the changing rooms, all to support the delivery of a long‑term community football development programme. The 3G AGP was first available for use in January 2009 and was officially opened in February 2009 by the then manager of Plymouth Argyle FC, Paul Sturrock.
The new 3G AGP complements a comprehensive range of existing sports facilities at the School that includes grass football pitches (one full size and three mini-soccer), a grass rugby pitch, seven netball courts (three floodlit), 10 tennis courts (four floodlit), a cricket square, a six lane 300m athletics track, three jump areas, a gymnasium, a dance studio, a five badminton court sports hall with additional markings for basketball, volleyball, and netball and another brand new five badminton court sports hall with additional markings for Futsal, volleyball, netball and cricket.
The Foundation’s offer also included an additional £71,521 of funding to support the employment of Christopher French, a Football Development Officer (FDO), over a five year period.
Chris is now well into his second year of employment of what was initially a temporary contract. Chris has been singularly instrumental in successfully establishing a comprehensive range of football development activities at the School that have been crucially made accessible to all members of the community regardless of any aspect of their personal circumstances, e.g. disability, race, religion, colour, gender, background, ability or financial circumstances.
Chris has been so successful that the football facilities are now operating at a high percentage of capacity, which has in part been achieved through the development of very strong positive relationships with a plethora of credible partners, which is often the single most important factor required for synergistic community football development outcomes to successfully derive from the long‑term investment that the Football Foundation makes in funded projects.
Plymstock School’s Business Manager, Julia Crookston, credits the tremendous success of the new 3G AGP over a comparatively short space of time almost exclusively to Chris’ hard work and dedication, which the School have recently rewarded him with a permanent contract. The County Development Manager of Devon FA, Lee Rider, additionally comments that “Chris is a tremendous asset and an invaluable addition to the County’s Football Development Team in support of our delivery of the FA’s National Game Strategy”.
One of the particularly successful activities is a free weekly ‘turn up and play’ session that runs 6pm-8pm on Friday evenings and was set up in January 2009 in conjunction with the local police through funding from the Plymouth Camera Safety Partnership and support from youth workers at Morley Youth Centre. Over two hundred 11-17 years olds have benefited from these ‘turn up and play’ sessions, which have been influential in reducing crime and anti-social behaviour within the local community and has been the stimulus for the creation of a new 5-a-side league for 14-18 year olds.
Last year, the ‘turn up and play’ session provided the basis for a tournament involving over 260 children to coincide with Kick It Out’s One Game, One Community Week of Action, which celebrates diversity and inclusion and is one of the most prominent equality and community engagement initiatives in the country.
The strong links that Chris has established with Devon & Cornwall Constabulary’s Diverse Communities Team has more recently helped the School to host a football festival as part of the launch of Refugee Week and the start of the FIFA World Cup 2010 Finals in South Africa, which involved many teams being entered from the BME communities of Plymouth. The event was opened by the new Lord Mayor of Plymouth, was attended by the Plymouth 2018 World Cup Bid team and involved partnership working with the Police, the Fire Service, Plymouth City Council and many other support agencies.
Plymstock School have formed very strong links with two local Charter Standard Community Clubs, Morley Rangers FC and Plymstock Colts FC and the School is also the training venue of a number of other local football Clubs, e.g. Ivybridge Town FC, Chaddlewood Miners FC and Plymouth Parkway FC.
Morley Rangers now use the whole of Plymstock School sports facilities for both training and matches within the Devon Junior Minor League and the adult Plymouth & District League. Head Coach, Marc Davis, of Morley Rangers highlights that “the 3G AGP has displaced activity off of grass pitches at the School, which has significantly improved the quality of the grass pitches and helped to significantly reduce the number of matches lost to inclement weather”.
Plymstock School has introduced a Girls Development Centre alongside the Plymouth Argyle FC Girls Centre of Excellence. Plymstock School also hosts Plymouth Argyle FC’s Youth Development Team. Plymstock School has even hosted West Ham United FC’s U18 squad prior to their third round FA Youth Cup tie with Plymouth Argyle FC’s U18s.
The Plymouth Mini-Soccer Centre hosted at the School serves as a link between local football Clubs and Plymstock School’s feeder primary schools, e.g. Pomplett Primary School, Dunstone Primary School, Elburton Primary School. In addition, a combination of the regular delivery of both coached curriculum football and extra-curricular After-School Clubs within these Primary Schools has resulted in a marked improvement in the quality of players entering Plymstock School from their feeder primaries.
Over the past two years, Plymstock School’s very successful Young Leadership Programme has enabled over 100 students to gain the Junior Football Organisers award that has enabled the young leaders to provide a high standard of support to the regular football tournaments, festivals and events that are run at the School. In addition, sixth form students have also benefited from bursaries that have enabled the students to become fully qualified Level 1 and Level 2 coaches, which they have used to run representative teams for Plymstock.
Other events undertaken at the School also include regular FA Tesco Skills Programme events attended by over 100 children and FA coach education courses e.g. Level 1, Level 2, Age-Appropriate, FA Youth Award Modules, Junior Football Organisers, Basic Referee, etc. and also FA Charter Standard In-Service events. Also, the comparatively new Futsal-compliant sports hall also enables the School to now host Futsal tournaments, leagues and matches.
3G AGPs are notoriously under-utilised during the summer months when sport lovers opt to use their preferred surface of grass. Chris has addressed this issue by halving the cost of hire of the 3G AGP during summer months that has resulted in a significant increase of usage of the 3G AGP during the summer.
Mark Taylor, Head of Physical Education at Plymstock School, has highlighted that “the 3G AGP has increased the standard of PE being delivered at the School and has been a revelation in terms of adding to our curriculum”. Mark adds that “over the past year very few lessons have been disrupted due to weather and students have benefited greatly from having a surface that is, not only a perfect surface for football, but also ideal for a variety of other sporting activities. Having such a universal facility has greatly assisted weaker students and has also improved lesson quality by enabling the teaching of more complex skills to the more capable students”. The School’s Business Manager, Julia Crookston, adds that “the strength of the new 3G AGP as an asset is demonstrated in it playing an influential role in attracting new students to the School”.
Whilst the Foundation’s large facilities grant scheme undoubtedly enables the provision of new and improved football facilities; the empowerment of individuals, the development of greater opportunities and the building of stronger communities can only result from the energy and drive of committed individuals and the synergy of strong cohesive partnerships that, as an model of best practice, there are few better examples of than what Chris has achieved at Plymstock School.
