Last week, The Athletic ran an article on academy aftercare, and in that article, a quote caught my attention.
Indeed, Premier League and EFL academies have been awarded a rating of “outstanding” by Ofsted’
The relationship between education and professional sport is a well-trodden path, and there are a few evidence-based insights you all need to know, so let's examine that evidence.
Let me start at home
I will begin with my research and the Ofsted inspections. In my research, I have noted that since at least 2012, Ofsted has consistently rated the education in academies as outstanding. But let me share with you what the young players said to me when I asked them about that education. In focus group interviews, when given anonymity, here is what they said:
3. You can’t really fail it. It is like retard proof innit?
2. Because they help you, the teachers help you as much as they can to get you at least a pass, don’t they?
1. Yeah, you get your money as well at the end of the day.
5. Even if you fall behind, they just focus on you so they can get you a pass.
(Year 2, Club 12)
Indeed, I visited 21 professional clubs as part of my research, and the pass rate at each club was 100%. Unless you don't turn up, you can't fail it. These high rates of 'success' have continued, and they give an indication of just how worthless these qualifications are. For example, at another club, the players said:
5. Even if we did get the education there’s basically nothing. It’s not worth the paper it’s written on ...
2. In college I would put more effort in if it was a course that you felt ‘Oh this is gonna benefit me’.
5. Challenging, yeah.
2. But you think ‘Oh, if I do alright in this course, I take it out and every employer will be like “Ok, you just got that, but it’s not really anything”’.
Q. Why is that?
5. Because you can’t get an actual A-Level in what we’re doing ... I don’t even know what job it would lead to being honest.
3. I'm sure we’re doing the short course, not like the proper course.
5. My mum didn’t get why I finished so early. She was like ‘you should be finishing when everyone else is finishing’.
7. We go to college one and a half days a week and we finish the course in like 4 months.
(Year 2, Club 3)
Not only is this view widely held across society, but it also has consequences for the players should they try to use their education in the future. I have seen many case studies from my time in higher education of players who, having been released from professional football academies, have turned to higher education as a way of managing that rejection. And the story is the same time and time again. On paper, they stack up to other students as they arrive with distinctions, but the hard reality of what an education in an academy has done for them bites as they fall into the trap of copy and pasting, using AI and copying last year's examples. They have not developed the academic skills needed for higher education. It has to be said that many other students haven't either, but the blog on the wider issues in education will have to wait for another week 😂.
This point was highlighted by the following group who said:
5. (The) teacher (stands) at the front telling us what to say and then telling us to write down something.
7. They will give us the task and they will just leave us for the whole lesson to do the task and that is it.
Q. Leave the class?
5. No, they will just sit down like and they will be there but they won’t actually teach us the lesson. They will just tell us what to write ... We don’t learn it, we just type. We see something and then we write it down. That is it.
All: Laugh.
5. That is what we do; we don’t get taught it.
1. If we were taught it, we would learn it more.
(Year 2, Club 14)
The current situation
I am told that this is not the case in some clubs, indeed, I have written about this topic before and received some objections from people in clubs who invited me down to see what they did. But here is the thing, I speak to people who are in academies or who have been through academies weekly, and I check this. There is still widespread copy and pasting, widespread learned helplessness, and these qualifications still do not educate the players. Outstanding? Not a chance. I think these reports say more about the state of Ofsted than they do about the clubs.
While here it is worth noting that there is a wide variation in educational offers at clubs, which has evolved over the past ten years or so. And of course, the reality is that education is not an easy thing to combine with a life in professional sport or for clubs to administer. There has been an increase in the offer of A-Levels, for example, but this can often come with a penalty of missing some training sessions.
Education and playing
At the heart of this issue is a fundamental misunderstanding of the relationship between education and professional football. So let me be clear on this. Undertaking education alongside your playing career makes you a better player. Let me say that again for clarity.
Undertaking education alongside your playing career makes you a better player.
This has been proven time and time again in studies from some of the world's leading establishments.
It is not a question of whether sport and education can co-exist, but a question of why they shouldn't.
If you want to be a professional player, do some education, and you will reap the benefits. Leadership, resilience, coping, critical thinking, foreign language, or maintaining balanced perspectives all relate to your chosen career, but the benefits go deeper than that. Education has been proven to give perspective on life for athletes, offer escapism and a chance to refresh the mind. Let this piece of data sink in:
Professor David Lavallee’s study (he's at Abertay University), tracking 632 National Rugby League players in Australia, found that those preparing academically while playing were selected more frequently and enjoyed longer professional careers.
So what does this mean for me?
This is where we pick apart how we navigate this. First, do not rely on what Ofsted say about education in academies. You MUST do your research and be prepared that the education on offer in a club will be sub-par. It may not have escaped you that the irony in this is that if clubs dedicated more resources and support to education, they would produce better players, but for now, education is left to one or two underpaid and overworked individuals in most clubs.
Second, have an honest conversation with your child about the positives of education for their career. Honestly, I think this has to be a non-negotiable. But think broadly about what education is. Education can be online courses on AI, it can start with a Google certificate in economics, or a free course on music. They can be learning a language in their spare time and class that as educational. Getting them to buy into this is important.
