Positive Steps Oldham – Kickstarting education for excluded youth Back to success stories

Futurebuilders invested £275,014 in Positive Steps Oldham to aid the development of its motor vehicle and educational service – Kickstart – for excluded young people or those at risk of exclusion from mainstream education provision.

About Kickstart

Kickstart exists as an educational arm of Positive Steps Oldham. It is a scheme that targets 14-16year olds who are not successfully engaging in mainstream school activities in the Manchester area.

“We provide alternatives to a regular curriculum” explains Kickstart Director, Adrian Ball. “We do this through the provision of highly practical activities based in our workshops which include welding, motorbike mechanics and motorcar mechanics. This is a simple model in terms of rather than [teenagers] being stuck in classrooms doing things that they’re not enjoying and probably then disrupting other students, they are doing courses which are hopefully closer to their learning style.”


The Kickstart workshop in Oldham

Kickstart runs its programmes from three sites in neighbouring local authority areas in greater Manchester – Tameside, Oldham and Rochdale, the latter of which was funded through Futurebuilders.  Adrian explains that Kickstart “now effectively has one side of greater Manchester sewn up between all of our sites”.

How Futurebuilders helped

Futurebuilders invested £275,014 in Kickstart via its parent organisation Positive Steps Oldham.
 
The majority of this investment comprised a £149,828 loan to provide working capital for business development and expansion management for the new Rochdale site and to purchase a new minibus.

The remainder of the investment consisted of a £52,900 revenue grant and a £42,120 capital grant to fund set up/relocation costs; and a £30166 capacity building grant to improve IT and Quality Assurance systems and undertake a review of full cost recovery methodology.

Adrian describes the benefits of a Futurebuilders investment for Kickstart:

“We’re now delivering our services in a third local authority area and we wouldn’t be here without Futurebuilders. There’s a whole new source of contracts in the area that we have gained and established. The new site is working very well indeed.”


Kickstart Director Adrian Ball

“Our Rochdale site is our most efficient and cost effective site – the new site enabled us to start from scratch with our model of delivery and staffing structure. We were able to pilot ways of working here which are now impacting on our other sites and the effect is really positive”.

Futurebuilders investment helps expand the capacity to secure contracts

With advice and support from Futurebuilders, Kickstart have implemented an extremely proficient commercial model, whereby contracts are purchased per student – effectively selling on a unit basis to schools and other youth organisations.

“If schools have a young person that is causing difficulty they will buy a place from Kickstart. We proceed on a case-by-case basis – for example a school will contract us to provide three months of learning for student X”.

Kickstart now gain 90% of its income from individual contracts, thus making it more attractive to commissioners in terms of being almost completely financially independent. Adrian asserts that “being set up with a highly efficient commercial model makes the pursuit of funding and investments more achievable”.

Ensuring long term stability through Futurebuilders

Future plans for Kickstart include setting up more projects that are on school sites – it currently has two on-premises projects which are proving highly successful. 

“Where schools have got students that are causing acute concern, they are quite happy for that student to leave the school site and come to us.  Whereas if they’ve got students that are not as extreme, but still causing some concerns, they would prefer for the student to still be attending school, but with more of a practical component” explains Adrian. “These projects are developed in response to different types of demand and I’m really excited about this model because it is achieving results and is much cheaper for us to deliver”.

Kickstart’s services are now frequently purchased by pupil referral units, schools, Connexions and youth offending teams. The journey doesn’t stop here though, declares Adrian:  “We do what we do, and we think we’re really good at it, so our goal is to make Kickstart financially viable on its own, building on the great success we’ve had through the commercial model.”



Kickstart also plans to secure an income stream from letting out its premises at night which would effectively make it financially independent and subsequently help engender long-term sustainability.

Adrian concludes: “We’ve been successful in the journey that we’ve made and we’re still on that journey and I think we’ve made an awful lot of progress and have developed sufficient capabilities and structures in economically difficult times.”

What next?

Are you an organisation like Positive Steps Oldham who need investment to help you successfully bid for, and win public sector contracts? Then find out which of our products is right for you and check if you could be eligible for a Futurebuilders investment.