White Rose Rugby have been funded and have on-going funding from Yorkshire Sport Foundation and North Yorkshire Sport foundation to deliver Change Through Rugby sessions. Throughout the project we have delivered a large amount of sessions to PRU and behavioural groups. Despite the challenge, we find these sessions highly rewarding and a learning point for both participants and our coaches.
Our PRU and behaviour session’s have led to some great individual and group successes and we firmly believe they have had a lasting positive impact for those involved.
We delivered both Boy’s and Girl’s sessions at Dixons Trinity Academy. The majority of the group were from an ethnic minority group and it was the first time all of the participants had the opportunity to play rugby. The sessions ran initially for 6 weeks but have continued due to the success of the project.
The Boy’s group that we delivered too, were a group that misbehaved whilst in the school. The sessions helped the boy’s explore the core values and have now all seen vast improvements with their behaviour. The Boy’s have also began taking part within the White Rose Schools Rugby series and many are now looking for Grass root rugby clubs which they can join.
The Girl’s rugby group has seen some great success within the first few weeks of delivery. This session is a choice within PE for the Girl’s and since starting the sessions the number of participants has grown by 15 and continues to grow.
For many of the Girl’s it is the first time experiencing rugby and in the future we aim to create the opportunity for them to take part within the White Rose Schools Rugby series.
Jacob Rollinson
PE teacher at Dixons Trinity Academy:
“White Rose Rugby have had an immense impact on the opportunities available to our students. Their hard work has enabled an increasingly large number of our students to enjoy additional rugby sessions in a highly motivating, engaging and safe environment.
Our students have enjoyed developing their skills and playing competitively against other schools and as a result and are now hooked. I cannot recommend White Rose Rugby enough and I thank the team for their continued hard work with our young people.”
White Rose Rugby have an excellent partnership with Dixon’s Mcmillan Academy. Over the past two years we have delivered to various groups of different abilities, genders and ethnic backgrounds. A large percentage of the work we have delivered has been through the Change through rugby project, funded by Yorkshire Sport foundation.
Active ‘DEAR‘:
Our latest sessions involve a group of students who spend a large amount of their school life out of curriculum activities due to their behaviour around school.
At the Mcmillan academy, the school run ‘DEAR‘ sessions. The sessions stand for ‘drop everything and read’. It is a session to help develop literacy skills throughout the students. To give the misbehaving students and opportunity to enjoy an aspect of school, get active and learn about the core values as well as rugby, the participants take part in ‘active DEAR‘ sessions with us, whilst the rest of school take part in ‘DEAR‘.
To help promote good behaviour around school, the sessions are behaviour led. For example, a participant can not attend if they have too many behaviour points throughout the week.
Throughout the group we have seen an improvement in behaviour, level of activity and rugby/core values knowledge.The group have began to gain a greater understanding of leadership, teamwork but also coaching. We have created the chance for the students to give coaching a go in a informal and relaxed manor. This helps the students gain more from the sessions.
In the future we would like to see the group to continue improving behaviour through the use of the core values. A large percentage of the group considered looking into grass root clubs, this would be an excellent outcome, if participants began to join their local clubs to continue playing rugby.
We delivered 6 weeks of rugby within the Stephen Longfellow academy and throughout the sessions we saw small success from the group and individuals. The session was ran after school hours, as a choice for the students. Through the weeks we saw the numbers of participants grow and witnessed participants become more active, improve leadership and teamwork skills and gain a greater understanding of the core values.
With the use of the core values we promote everything rugby is all about. We do this through game based scenarios and self assessment for the students, whether that be within games or when coaching/leading elements of a session.
The group at The Stephen Longfellow Group had some experience of playing rugby league before and had varying levels of knowledge around the game. Because of this we created the opportunity for participants to improve behaviour through the use of the core values and created the opportunity for the group to become more active and create stronger friendships within the group.
We also created opportunities for the participants to gain greater knowledge of grass roots rugby and provided options and details of local rugby clubs too themselves.
At Southway PRU we delivered 6 weeks of rugby. The delivery was a part of the Change through Rugby project. Our main aim from the delivery was to create the opportunity for the participants to give rugby a go and become more active. Throughout the 6 weeks we promoted grass root clubs within the area where they could transition too.
PRU and Behavioural sessions are highly rewarding and provide great learning points for our coaches and the participants. At the Southway PRU, the participants were introduced to the core values and how they can impact school life. We created opportunities for the participants to develop and challenge their leadership, teamwork and coaching skills.
All of our sessions were full of game based scenarios, with skill challenges built into them. This type of session, received excellent participation and throughout the sessions, the number of participants grew.
We hope that within the future we can continue to deliver to the Southway PRU and supporting them along their rugby journey.