
Community Apprentice was a youth social action programme in which teams of Year 10 pupils were supported to design and deliver a fundraising campaign for a charity of their choice. Delivered by Envision, the programme aimed to develop pupils’ self-efficacy, social confidence and teamwork skills, with the long-term aim of increasing their participation in social action. The programme took place over 12 weeks and included a full-day cross-school launch event; eleven weekly sessions in school, facilitated by an Envision coach; four mentoring sessions hosted by a partner business; an awareness raising event hosted by the pupils in school, and a final half-day ‘Apprentice-style’ cross-school event, where teams from several schools pitched their fundraising projects to local business leaders.
Since the trial, Envision has significantly redesigned and further codified the programme:
- the programme now explicitly targets less-advantaged young people and those demonstrating low levels of self-confidence.
- young people now design and deliver a social action programme which aims to make a positive change in their school or community.
- the programme now targets four skills (communication, creativity, determination and teamwork) aligned with Skills Builder Partnership’s Universal Framework
- long-term outcomes now include participation in employment or training.
In addition, interference with class time is reduced and training of delivery staff has been strengthened to deliver the new programme and outcomes. The programme is called the Envision programme.
This project was co-funded by EEF, The Careers & Enterprise Company and Bank of America as part of a partnership focusing on careers education.
A different version of Community Apprentice – delivered for post-16 students but with a very similar programme of activities – was previously tested through a randomised controlled trial which showed evidence of significant improvements in skills for pupils who participated in the programme. A growing evidence base suggests a positive causal effect of youth social action programmes on non-cognitive skills and attitudes. This evaluation aimed to gather evidence of whether the programme could also impact academic outcomes, as measured by pupils’ average GCSE scores (Attainment 8), although the programme did not aim to impact academic attainment specifically.
The evaluation findings suggest that the programme is likely to have had a positive impact on pupils’ self-efficacy and social confidence, in line with the programme’s aims. The evaluation looked at whether the programme had an impact on academic outcomes and found that pupils in the Community Apprentice intervention group made no additional progress in their Attainment 8 scores compared to pupils in the control group. These results have a moderately high security rating but a high level of uncertainty. Evidence of whether the programme was more or less effective for pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM) is inconclusive due to the small sample size. Sample size was capped by Envision’s delivery capacity.
This builds on BIT’s previous research that has showed that youth social action can positively affect young people’s skills and attitudes, and can increase their likelihood of political participation in the future.