UK Skills / Case Studies

Training Provider category Award

Wheelbase

A Nottingham charity is reaching out to excluded young people with mechanics courses.

The Wheelbase Motor Project is an independent charity that uses motor vehicle training and motorsport to motivate disaffected young people. The charity first opened its doors in 1992 to youths between 16 and 18 years who had already committed some kind of motor crime. Its target group has now widened to include any young person aged between 14 and 25 years.

Research carried out in 1988 revealed that the typical car crime offender came from a socially deprived inner city, had lost contact with formal education, had no qualifications and was unlikely to have any experience of a job.

Wheelbase's trainees have needs that make it difficult or impossible to take part in mainstream education. In order to break this spiral of deprivation, the charity has to take a different approach.

Wheelbase training courses cover motor vehicles and maintenance, literacy, numeracy and basic skills. They are demand-led, taught in the classrooms by qualified teachers and in the motor vehicle workshop by mechanics. Learners spend one or two school years at Wheelbase in small groups. The courses are delivered in modules. Once they have completed 17 mixed units, learners get their own tool kit in recognition of their effort.

79 percent of participants leave with qualifications. Those that do not have usually abandoned the programme within the first few weeks. The modular nature of the course allows all trainees to learn at their own speed. The charity’s involvement in motor sports is an added attraction for learners. In 2007 the operation moved to a new building, allowing it to double its capacity for learners.

Wheelbase says its work has a positive effect on emotional and behavioral problems, and the trainees seem to agree. “I set fire to my school and chased my teacher with a pair of scissors down the corridor, but since my time at Wheelbase I have changed,” says one. “I have not been in one fight during my stay at Wheelbase. My attitude towards life and education in general has improved enormously.”

Between 2008 and 2009, Wheelbase reported a 98 percent non reoffending rate. In the same period, 80 of its learners have gained OCR qualifications. “My life was a mess,” says another former trainee. “Troubled upbringing, broken home.... attending Wheelbase restored my self-worth and was a vital stepping stone for me – I haven’t broken the law since 1996.”

It costs £8,150 to support a trainee for one year at Wheelbase. According to a 2009 Audit Commission report, an offending youth can cost the tax payer £200,000 by the time they reach 16 and if one in 10 youth offenders were diverted from offending behavior, this would save tax payers £116 million per year.

Caron Cox, of Nottingham Learning Centre's Senior Leadership Team, has been sending people to Wheelbase for the last three years. "My young people have left this provision with accreditation far in excess of their predicted scores recorded in their previous school records, which in itself justifies the course run by these enthusiastic and patient people," she says. "With no exceptions, the young people that I have had pass through the years that have been associated with this provider have indeed seen changes for the better, in their behavior, their knowledge in mechanics, their collection of accredited work, their self worth, their maturity and that they have kept out of trouble in the community."

The Wheelbase Motor Project won a National Training Award in 2005.

ENDS

Entry name: Wheelbase Motor Project; Reinventing the wheel: maximizing the life chances of disengaged young people.
Entry no: 90454
Location: Wheelbase Motor Project, 10 Newark Street, Sneinton, Nottinghamshire NG2 4PP
Region: East Midlands

For further information contact: 
Antonia Lee 020 7429 2825 / Kate Moloughney 020 7429 2827 
antonia.lee@ukskills.org.uk
kate.moloughney@ukskills.org.uk