Supporting The ‘Fishing for Schools’ Initiative

This entry was posted on 12th July, 2017

We’re pleased to announce our support for the Fishing for Schools (FFS) project. This is a fantastic, nationwide project that helps pupils with learning difficulties and those that have often been excluded from school. The project uses fishing as a teaching method to help disaffected pupils with a variety of subjects such as geography, entomology, biology, science, art and even maths. Additionally, it promotes a wide range of skills such as teamwork, improved concentration and behaviour.

The project has been active for 10 years, but this is the first time that the initiative has been put into action in the East of England, initially being launched last summer as part of the regionalisation of the National Fishing for Schools project. Qualified and experienced, Norfolk-based instructors will work in conjunction with schools to deliver a structured series of courses. Teachers have already noticed improved concentration levels and better communication skills from the pupils. FFS instructors have seen pupils make an effort to interact with each other and begin to work as a team when they go fishing. The courses are continuing to develop and cater to the needs of children who have become disaffected from mainstream education.

It is for these reasons that we are extremely proud to be a part of such a great cause. As a Norfolk-based, but nationwide fishing tackle retailer we thought that it was only fitting that we pledge our support to the project. We have equipped pupils with a substantial amount of high-quality fishing gear so that pupils will be able to use both coarse and fly fishing tackle. Included in our donation was a wide-range of different tackle, including: rods, reels, lines, nets and protective glasses.

We weren’t the only ones to support the project though, Thetford-based charity, The Shadwell Trust made a generous donation of £1,300, which enabled FFS to deliver a series of courses to Thetford Academy. The course mainly focused on children who had been excluded from mainstream education because of behavioural issues.

It is our hope that with the fishing tackle we’ve donated combined with the donation from The Shadwell Trust that FFS will be able to make a real difference to children’s lives. These contributions should allow FFS to maintain the standard of teaching that they want to achieve. We also hope that pupils will be encouraged by the donations and that the opportunity to learn with high-quality materials will give them a real sense of worth.

Oliver Harper, Marketing Manager kindly presented the tackle to John Armstrong, Mike Smith and Andrew Matthews of the Eastern Region.

Mike commented: “The tackle will make a huge difference to the pupils and will help us in our teaching. Many thanks to Angling Direct”. Oliver Harper also added: “Angling Direct are very proud to be supporting such a positive charity, one that offers young people the opportunity to learn new skills and uses the joys of fishing to do so. It’s great to know that the fishing tackle donated is directly helping grass roots fishing and hopefully creating future anglers.”