Always on
This project successfully funded on 7th July 2025, you can still support them with a donation.
Student Wheels - ESS Minibus
Langport, Somerset, United Kingdom
Aim: We would love to purchase a minibus which we could use to transport our pupils between home and the classroom.
ESS is an additional learning provider that offers an extensive variety of comprehensive bespoke educational packages, that are delivered in a number of settings including in schools, at home, online and in community venues across a number of locations.
We support young people to value education and develop a work ethic fostering self-worth and self-reliance. Our bespoke provision is tailored to the needs of each individual and provides accredited and non-accredited vocational and academic qualifications. The vocational and academic subjects we teach include: Functional Skills, Employability Qualifications and Work Ready Skills, Independent Living Skills, Positive Communication, Construction, Health & Social Care, Hair, Beauty and Barbering, Languages, Music, Arts and Drama, Humanities, Catering and Sports & Fitness.
There is a variety of support that needs to be provided to ensure that our young people are receiving the best education available. Many young people who are home schooled have missed a huge chunk of their education which has swayed them to feel comfortable in their own environments and this has impacted on the way they react socially and interact with both children and adults around them.
Body Language, eye contact and softer skills may have diminished, and anxiety increased which is a proven barrier to developing these skills. Often such vulnerable young people find it difficult to access a retail or hospitality environment, to order or pay for something, others struggle to negotiate road safety.
Within our bespoke provision, ESS provides back to basics life skills with reassuring support broken down into manageable steps linked to the young person’s ability. This support empowers our young people to access these social environments and build up their confidence to transition effectively into society. Hence, we develop educational packages that give full consideration to a young person's needs, background, circumstances, behaviour, mental and physical health, so each package is personalised and unique. However, all contain one or more elements of the following: Accredited and Non-Accredited Qualifications, Work Experience, Employability Skills and Social, Emotional and Mental Health Services (including life skills).
The public transport network in Somerset is limited and means that it is not suitable for use for many of our young learners as they would have to leave the classroom early to catch the last bus home and as journeys would be over an hour. As a result, many of our pupils are reliant on taxis for travel between home and the classroom. However, as our pupils have SEND, taxi travel can be challenging for them. Several of our pupils for example have autism, and using different cars and drivers can be difficult for them. Other pupils who have sensory conditions may find noisy car radios or beeping of the horn unsettling. We also find that taxis frequently arrive late, or on occasion, do not turn up at all, which means our learners miss out on valuable classroom time and negatively impacts on their learning. One of our leaners has autism and psychosis, and when taxis arrive late, this can cause him to become anxious and dysregulated (unable to control his emotions) which can then impact on his ability to learn. When dysregulation occurs, as a coping mechanism, he will often have to pace outside the classroom in a nearby field until he has calmed his emotions and is ready to enter the classroom and engage with the teacher. Inevitably this means teaching time is lost and our pupil is not starting his day of learning in the optimum way.
We would love to purchase a minibus which we could use to transport our pupils between home and the classroom. Our teachers understand the needs of our learners and know how to best support them with tools and techniques; as a teacher would accompany the pupils in the minibus, they could spot triggers and deal with any difficulties before or as they arose. This would enable a smooth transition into and out of the learning environment enabling our pupils to start their day of learning in an optimum state and ending their day in a positive way. In addition, we would like to have a minibus so we could deliver our educational workshops for parents and young people across a wider geographical area, increasing access. For example, we could take our adult and young people provision into areas of Somerset where access is more limited, such as Porlock and Minehead. We would use the minibus to pick up and drop off participants across nearby villages, enabling access for rural residents where transport links are more limited.
We have managed to secure partial funding from the wonderful Clark Foundation to purchase a minibus, however, if were aren't able to secure an additional £5000 we will lose said funding.