A Hull family business that started as a go kart track has evolved into an education provider for children and young people at risk of falling through the cracks of the school system. The Thompson family will launch The Fast Forward School in September – a new independent special school for young people aged 15 to 19 who have an education, health and care plan (EHCP).
Fast Forward School provides a structured setting for learners, with a focus on vocational learning, personal development and preparation for adulthood. The school helps young people re-engage with education and is due to open its doors on Scott Street in Hull in September. It is the latest step for the Thompson family’s Fast Forward Group, which has spent the past decade helping young people reach vocational qualifications. The group is estimated to have helped nearly 5,000 kids gain vocational qualifications over the last 13 years – and it all happened by accident.
Callum Thompson, 35, and brother Jack Thompson, 30, along with their father Paul, started working with Humberside Police’s neighbourhood policing team in 2013. Callum said: “Over the years the schools and local authorities have trusted us more. They started sending us learners with more complex needs. What we found was, giving alternative provision, you’re only allowed to have them two days a week max. But we’d built such strong relationships with our learners, we wanted to do more. They wouldn’t go school to do maths and English, but they’d do it with us. The only way to do it is to become a school. They don’t really have continuity or a role model, generally, they come from the care system. They’ve been let down all their lives and they really latch onto you when they trust you.”
A proud moment for Callum came earlier this week, when former Fast Forward trainee, Leyton, ended up fitting Callum’s front door. Leyton, who was 13 when he started with Fast Forward, now has a job, a home and young family. He said “he doesn’t think it would have been possible” to achieve without the training and support he received. Callum said: “Leyton was a student from eight years ago. This is a young man who was not in any kind of education. He was in and out with the police, and was going to fall through the gaps. He did some qualifications, and we got him a job. He’s got a mortgage and a little boy, his life has completely changed.”
The partnership with the neighbourhood policing team came about 13 years ago when the family invited local youngsters to use their karting track while engaging with police officers in a bid to reduce anti-social behaviour. But Callum noticed that some young people were more interested in the engineering side of karting, and invited some of them to get involved in the mechanical side of the business.
Callum said: “We had an indoor karting track that we operated and Humberside Police had come to see us one evening – they knew we were from the estate. They said they’d got some young people creating some anti-social behaviour and they wanted to bring them to a youth club where the police can talk to them and stop the anti-social behaviour. We volunteered some space to bring these young people in. They did this for three or four weeks and I noticed a lot of the young people were interested in how we maintained the go karts. I was showing them the workshop – I was the engineer – and I found they had good skills with their hands but academically they were really struggling.”
This led to the then-Police and Crime Commissioner, Matthew Grove, allocating a pot of funding to get more young people involved. Then, schools started noticing a positive impact on some of their pupils. Callum said: “One of the young people went to a local special school. They approached us and said ‘we think it’s fabulous, could you do something for us during the day?’ We ended up closing the karting track during the day to take in more students. We started accrediting them in Level 1 mechanics and started delivering nationally-recognised qualifications. So all of these people who were going to fall out of the education system now were able to get into college.”
Fast forward to 2016, and national karting company Team Sport Indoor Karting set up a track in Hull and were interested in the family’s work. They sent around their Chief Operating Officer to find out what the family did. “He said it was a great way to use your time during the day and asked if we’d be interested in using some of their venues to do it. That was eight years ago and now we are the biggest alternative training provision in the country,” Callum said. There are over 1,000 students currently training with Fast Forward and the extra track provision “gave us an outlet” to provide this training, he added.
But the family did not want to stop at engineering training. The Scott Street school is preparing to open its doors for the first time this coming autumn term. The school provides vocational courses in mechanics, bricklaying, joinery, and hair and beauty. And it was the next natural step for the business, which has received a string of accolades including the Hull and East Yorkshire Growth Award and seen Callum and Jack shortlisted for the Great British Entrepreneur Awards.
The opening of The Fast Forward School is a “new chapter” for the family business. The school will operate alongside its vocational training provision, Fast Forward Training. For information about the school, visit its website. For information about the training arm of the business Fast Forward Training’s website.
Photos provided by Callum Thompson.
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