Case study: Kinetic Foundation’s Girls Programme
Overview and Scale
Kinetic Foundation’s Girls Programme uses football to help girls and young women get active, find opportunity and achieve their potential on and off the pitch. While girls’ football has grown in recent years, research from Women in Sport shows that 1.3m girls still disengage from sport as they enter secondary school. Our programme responds at this crucial stage, providing positive role models, clear pathways and sustained support, and has supported more than 1,190 girls since 2022.
Through community camps, after school clubs and the full-time post-16 programme, Kinetic utilises football as an entry point and vehicle to provide girls and young women much broader, sustained support and development beyond the game. For post-16 participants, this includes Kinetic Futures which launched in 2023, which provides a structured focus on personal development, employability and educational support to help students build confidence, raise aspirations and explore pathways into education, training and employment.
Programme Design
Kinetic's post-16 model combines high-quality football with structured educational and personal support, creating a pathway designed to help young women succeed both on and off the pitch.
The programme works with girls aged 16-18 across South London within partner schools from the Harris Federation. As a post-16 football academy, the girls have access to high-quality education whilst pursuing their passion for football, allowing academic and sporting development to sit alongside one another
Our girls also have access to Kinetic Futures, a two-year structured educational and development programme focused on employability and personal skills to support and prepare our graduates in finding their futures outside of the professional game. Through workshops and experiences covering areas such as business of sport, critical thinking and financial literacy, Kinetic students are encouraged to advance their transferable skills, broaden their aspirations and consider a range of future pathways.
Coach model
A distinctive part of Kinetic's delivery model is the role of its coaches, who are embedded within partner schools and support students beyond football.
Every school has a dedicated Kinetic coach who is responsible for the cohort in their school as well as supporting the wider school team with PE and pastoral duties. This allows our coaches to have a full picture and understanding of the young person's education as well as their training on the pitch which creates positive relationships that our Kinetic students truly cherish.
As said by a Kinetic student,
“We’ve got a phrase, ‘on and off the pitch’, and I think that really applies to us. People might see it as only a football thing, but I can promise you guys, it’s more than football… my coach has always been there, he’s only ever wanted the best for me and I’m endlessly grateful for that”
These consistent relationships are built on trust and familiarity so the coaches being present throughout their overall school experience, not just training and matches, is key to developing our young people as much as we can.
For Kinetic, our SLO model is one of the key parts of our programme that we truly believe helps our students develop and grow as a whole person, not just on the pitch. For a young person, having a trusted adult to help them through Sixth Form, football, and wide life, will aid them enormously through their personal development. The impact of our SLOs reach far beyond the game. Our biggest aim as an organisation is to build confidence in both who the young person is now and where they want to go next. This sustained, relationship led approach is one of the features that distinguishes Kinetic's model from a traditional football academy.
Skills and Competencies Developed
At Kinetic, we care about much more than helping our students achieve on the pitch. We want them to grow as a person and graduate from Kinetic with an abundance of opportunities, whether they are football related or not. Our model is designed to develop transferable and invaluable skills that support our young people in education and their future careers. Football provides a practical environment in which these skills are consistently developed, while Kinetic Futures helps our students recognise how they can be applied beyond the pitch.
Key areas of development consist of:
- Communication
- Teamwork
- Leadership
- Resilience
- Discipline
- Critical thinking
- Confidence
- Entrepreneurship
These skills are reinforced through frequent football training, interactions with coaches and SLOs, and structured Kinetic Futures workshops. Participants are encouraged to not only refine these qualities but understand how they are able to transfer them into education, employment and wider life.
The combination of practical learning through football and structured personal and employability development, means Kinetic can help our students build a broader skillset which football alone does not provide.
Employment Pathways and Career Exposure
The Kinetic Futures curriculum gives young women access to a wide range of workshops, practical employability skills training and workplace visits designed to broaden their horizons and open their eyes to potential career pathways.
Ranging from the Business of Sport, where they learn about various career pathways within the world of sport beyond the pitch - with visits to the likes of adidas and Two Circles - to Critical Thinking and Presentation Skills, featuring mock interviews with firms in the city, the programme is designed to address two areas: “if you can’t see it, you can’t be it” and building a network early on.
In addition, in Y13, all students are offered the opportunity to take part in 121 mentoring with corporate professionals across various industries, to support them as they approach exams and encourage them to seek our work experience opportunities.
Measured and Strategic Impact
Our Girls’ Programme is a core part of Kinetic’s strategic vision. It gets more girls playing and learning through football, builds confidence, motivation and belonging - and creates genuine pathways to future opportunity.
We measure shifts in girls' confidence, aspiration, perseverance and wellbeing, and we track progression into employment, further education and training for those exiting our programmes.
Why it Matters
For many young women, football can become far more than a game. This is the place where confidence begins and new ambitions start to feel reachable. What starts on the pitch through participation can influence how a young person sees themselves, opportunities they believe are open to them, and where they choose to go next.
Kinetics' Girls Programme demonstrates the potential of football when it is embedded within a wider youth development model. Young people do not develop in separate parts. Their experience in school, sport, work and everyday life is connected, and the support around them should be too. Kinetic creates conditions for girls to not only take part, but to see more for themselves and feel equipped to pursue it.
The value of the programme is therefore not measured by only what happens on the pitch, but it is also found in the young person who graduates from Kinetic with greater confidence, a clearer sense of direction and the belief that there are opportunities available to her beyond the game.
In the words of Kinetic graduate, Ceren,
“Kinetic has taught me that football is more than the number of players on a pitch. It’s culture and teamwork. It cares about your progress in football and education. I became more confident as a result of my time at Kinetic. This programme has significant benefits both on and off the pitch.”
