One of the UK’s first girls’ schools is to reopen in September as the first of a series of youth hubs for young people at risk of falling out of education and into crime.
St Martin-in-the-Fields high school for girls in Tulse Hill, south London, will be reinvented as Oasis St Martin’s Village, offering mentoring and one-to-one therapeutic care for vulnerable young people in danger of being excluded.
The brainchild of Steve Chalke, the founder of the Oasis Charitable Trust, which runs 54 academies and works in deprived neighbourhoods around the country, said he hoped it would provide a blueprint for the government’s “young futures” programme, which promises a nationwide network of youth hubs.
Chalke is already working on four further projects that are in various stages of development, in north London, Salford, Grimsby and Wirral.
“Just like the new government, we believe that the poorest young people should be worthy of the greatest attention,” he said. “We are getting started ahead of the policy detail and funding being worked on and finalised, because that is the best way to inform that process.”
St Martin-in-the-Fields, founded in 1699, announced last year that it would close because of declining pupil numbers.
The prime minister, Keir Starmer, speaking shortly after his election victory, said he was determined to reduce crime by intervening earlier to try to prevent teenagers from getting swept on to the “escalator” to prison. “It’s difficult to do but I’m determined to do it,” he said.
Labour said in its manifesto that it would “intervene earlier to stop young people being drawn into crime, creating a new young futures programme with a network of hubs reaching every community. These hubs will have youth workers, mental health support workers and careers advisers on hand to support young people’s mental health and avoid them being drawn into crime.”
Nicknamed “Sure Start for teenagers”, youth hubs were a key recommendation from the Commission on Young Lives, run by Anne Longfield, the former children’s commissioner for England who now works with Oasis.
Chalke said Oasis St Martin’s Village would work with local schools, parents and families struggling with the effects of the crisis in school attendance, special educational needs, poor mental health, bad behaviour and exclusions.
As well as therapy and mentoring, the hubs will offer enrichment activities including sport, music, agriculture, dance and art, as well as numeracy and literacy.
“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, we must start teaching the way they learn. That way, education becomes a pleasure,” Chalke said. “The school attendance crisis is a systemic problem; it’s not something that can be seen in isolation and solved with a pull of a policy lever here or there. The whole ecosystem of a child’s life matters.
“At Oasis St Martin’s we will therefore work in partnership with families and local community and grassroots groups, as well as the statutory services. We believe that the power of the voluntary sector and local people will add huge value.”
