Argyle Community Trust
THE Pilgrim Centre at Plymouth Argyle Football Club is celebrating its tenth anniversary of delivering educational excellence at Home Park.
Established in April 2006 in partnership with Plymouth City Council as a Playing for Success centre, the facility has grown, taught and built relationships amongst hundreds of people throughout Plymouth, and far beyond.
The Playing for Success programme was a government initiative to provide after-school activities for 9-14 year olds and the Pilgrim Centre was amongst 150 centres built to support school literacy and numeracy skills across the country.
Trevor Lowman, one of the teaching coordinators at the centre, said: “The backdrop of the professional football stadium was a motivational tool to make the original programme such a huge success.”
However, recently, European programmes have become one of the main assets of the Pilgrim Centre. In partnership with the Tellus organisation, the teaching facility receives hundreds of European students each year on placements to mainly improve IT and English language skills. Students from Poland earlier this year said: “We fully appreciate these software lessons as it boosts our functional skills, which we can use back home.”
From GCSE retakes to Year 6 Summer Schools, the Pilgrim Centre offers a wide variety of activities for young people throughout Plymouth and the Pilgrim Centre has now established itself as a training centre for all ages and all nationalities. We offer a highly successful Functional Skills programme, boasting an exceptional 100% pass rate in Level 2.
Throughout the ten years at the Pilgrim Centre, they have managed to branch out to virtually every school in Plymouth to develop individual skills.
It is a proud occasion for Centre Manager Alison Lowman, as she added: “Throughout the 10 years, our programmes have been so diverse that no two days have been alike, except in their scope for learning and levels of success. We are privileged to have been able to work with so many resilient and talented people.”
By Annie Lewis
