It's a pleasant weekday afternoon and 13-year-old Josh is stood trowel in hand looking very pleased with himself. He has just laid a row of bricks that would make even the most experienced builder proud. The building he is working on doesn't look much at the moment but, if all goes to plan, by this time next year the metre-high wall he has just completed will form part of the front of a new education centre at Bradford City Farm.
Alternative school
Josh is one of five 11- to 18-year-olds working on the building today, all of whom have been referred to the farm project after either being excluded from school or struggling to fit into mainstream education. Some of the young people have been labelled as difficult to control and considered almost impossible to educate within a classroom environment.
Here, tucked away just two miles from Bradford city centre, they spend part of the school week working on the building and helping out on the farm. The rest of the time they will either be back at school or taking part in training programmes for young people with special needs.
The new centre is being paid for by a 99,500 grant from Bradford City Metropolitan District Council's youth opportunity and youth capital funds.
Paul Craven, managing director of the city farm, says a previous group of young people who attended the farm last year helped to devise the idea of the construction scheme. "Like us, they felt the classrooms on site were not good enough," he says. "Having to teach and get changed in old sheds and Portakabins was not ideal. So we spoke to a builder to establish costs and the young people put together an application."
Taking the lead for the construction of the education centre is Tony Cahill. A local builder with more than 20 years' experience in the trade, Cahill is taking a year off from running his own successful company to work alongside the young people three days a week.
But while he demonstrates every stage of the process carefully to the young people, he's trying to get them to take ownership for the actual building work: "Everything has been done by them so far," he says. "My hope is that they will lay every brick and roof tile and help plaster every wall."
He's also not making any concessions because of their age. If the walls aren't straight or if the mortar is not properly mixed, the young people are made to knock down their work. "They learn quickly that you have to get things right," he says. "Sometimes it's difficult to tell them, but we can't have the building fall down."
Aside from teaching the young people about construction, literacy and numeracy skills are embedded into the programme. "Most of the young people will say they're rubbish at maths and find it boring," says Imran Manzoor, business development manager at the city farm. "But if you show them how to measure a wall or cut something to a certain angle, they'll do it themselves no problems. They don't realise what they're doing is in actual fact maths."
Skills development
And while the young people may not be learning subjects such as English and science, they are being taught lessons that could potentially help them find employment in the future.
Ultimately, however, the aim is to get young people to return to full-time education or training. Central to achieving this is stopping them viewing themselves as "the bad influence", as Craven puts it. "We do this by showing them they can achieve and learn and then replicate this when they return to the school classroom," he says.
For Josh, who says he stopped attending school after he was picked on, the project has given him new confidence. "I like it here, especially the bricklaying," he says. "I want to keep coming as long as I can. Eventually, I want to build a wall for one of my neighbours."
CITY FARM FACTS
- The new education centre is due to be completed in spring 2008
- The centre will include a classroom, changing facilities, a tool room for the farm equipment and a kitchen
- The young people who complete the programme will receive an accredited construction qualification
- About 10 young people are currently involved in building the centre.
