Using positive relationships to engage the disengaged: An educational psychologist-initiated project involving professional sports input to a Pupil Referral Unit

Increasingly large numbers of students who experience emotional, social and behavioural difficulties are subject to exclusion from mainstream schools and consequently receive their education in pupil referral units (PRUs). Common perceptions of PRUs are that they are places where high levels of conflict and relatively few constructive relationships occur. In the regular educational psychologist input to an inner city secondary PRU, ideas from a range of psychological models and theories including humanist psychology, personal construct psychology, solution-focused brief therapy and systemic theory were used to highlight some exceptions to these social difficulties. More constructive social interaction and reduced levels of conflict were observed when students engaged in sports activities together and, therefore, the professional coaching input of a local premiership football club’s (XFC’s) ‘Sport in the Community’ programme (SiC) was negotiated and an initial eight-week evaluation project constructed. This paper considers the importance of relationships within the rationale, planning, implementation and evaluation of the project which developed. One of the central aims of this project was to utilise and support the development of more positive relationships between the pupils, the PRU staff and the professional sports coaches in order to engage the pupils more constructively in their educational experience and to support their social and emotional development and their learning in general. The consistently positive feedback from the students, PRU staff and coaches, which emphasised the importance of the relational aspects of the project is considered in relation to further possible interventions and research undertaken by applied psychologists working in education.