Community Apprentice

Intervention description

Community Apprentice is an inter-school competition which requires pupils to make a difference in their community. The intervention is loosely based on the TV series, The Apprentice. Pupils work in cross-school teams to develop and run their own projects to see who can make the most money for a local charity chosen by them.

The project lasts for 15 weeks and includes 30 contact hours with a trained coach and a volunteer from a local business. Each local business provides a mentor to offer the teams support and advice.

Three cross-school challenges motivate teams using competition. Pupils earn points for their team by completing personal skills challenges. Every team (of 12 pupils) meets up with their coach once a week, the coach helps them to develop the skills they need to harness their own ideas, solve problems and complete the tasks.

All activities in the intervention are designed to support pupils in developing skills in the following areas: 
- self-efficacy;
- outer, or social, confidence; and
- leadership/employability skills (grit, creativity, teamwork and communication).

Community Apprentice is available for Key Stage 4 and Key Stage 5. 

Evidence Summary

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) are running a project to look at the impact of Community Apprentice. They aim to recruit 30 schools, 13 pupils in Key Stage 4 from each school.  The trial will look at resiliency and self-efficacy. The impact on GCSE Maths and English outcomes at the end of the second year of the project will then be looked at. The project will also measure the impact on self-efficacy, social confidence and team behaviour.

The evaluation report should be available in Summer 2020.

https://educationendowmentfoun...