Completed Projects

Local Network Fund Mentoring

Croydon Supplementary Education Project (CSEP) has recently been awarded a two (2) year pilot through the Local Network Fund to support the improvement of support mechanisms for young people in Croydon.

Funding for 2006 – 2008 from the Local Network Fund is to enable CSEP to enhance the provision of the PACEMAKERS Mentoring services for BME young people aged (12 – 19) in Croydon.

CSEP has run a mentoring project since 2004 funded through Croydon Council. However the programme continues to develop and CSEP would like to provide support for an additional group of mentees while also conducting some research to measure the benefits of supplementary school education on pupils that are at risk or who have recently been excluded.

The expansion of CSEP’s Mentoring Project to accommodate an additional five (5) Mentees per year who will be new to the programme and are not currently a part of CSEP.

CSEP will use the funding for the provision of additional mentoring sessions, specific workshops, seminars or activities over the two (2) year funding period aimed at young people aged from 5 – 19 years.

CSEP also aims to produce a research document at the end of the project to document how supplementary education can benefit disaffected pupils. The report will outline the areas of best practice currently used by CSEP, and show how some of these practices maybe used by mainstream education to reduce the feeling of isolation and improve the access to greater achievement by pupils at risk of exclusion or who may feel disaffected with main stream education.

The report will track the performance of two sets of mentees over a two year period. One group will be selected from those referred into the mentoring programme that are existing CSEP’s Saturday school attendees, the other group will be from those referred into the mentoring programme from outside of CSEP’s Saturdays school. The aim is to compare and contrast the difference in progression of the two distinct groups.

The report is expected to have relevance to national issues currently being faced by Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) boys (and girls) of school age who are more likely to face exclusion and are at a high risk of not entering into education, employment or training. CSEP will distribute this report to other supplementary schools, voluntary sector organisations, local Councils and to mainstream schools.

The project also links into the prevention of weapons and gang crime Safer Croydon agenda, by providing access to the Informed Choices (I.C.) awareness programme provided by CSEP to give young people information and decision making skills to make informed choices regarding their involvement in illicit activities, or by saying ‘No’ to weapon and gang culture