Bradford Study Support Network (BSSN) was established in 1994 to help raise the levels of achievement in Bradford through both supported study and innovative, creative community education initiatives. BSSN works in after-school provision, community centres, youth projects, and Bradford Central Library. Community centres should provide safe-spaces, as well as resources and other elements conducive to effective learning, in which supported learning can be conducted. BSSN supports and coordinates tutors and provision; placing peer-mentors in designated centres to provide learning services; and targets young people resident in disadvantaged neighbourhoods across the City.
BSSN is a voluntary sector organisation dedicated to offering young people and returnees-to-learn opportunities for interactive learning on all levels: educational, social and cultural awareness. BSSN tutors work in creative, dynamic and practical ways, offering support to both those who are struggling, and those who wish to enrich their learning. Provision is tailored to individuals' needs in an informal environment. BSSN aims to help raise local levels of academic achievement and promote positive experiences for those disaffected form learning.
How we differ from other similar projects is that BSSN almost exclusively employs undergraduate and post-graduate students, as student-tutors, peer-mentors and potential role-models to work with young people who are often disaffected from mainstream education. BSSN aims to provide paid and invaluable work experience for peer-mentors that is challenging and often of relevance to their future employment opportunities. In turn, the remuneration provided by BSSN is often helpful for those students and peer-mentors in need of additional finances. Peer-mentors are able to negotiate flexible working hours that are dovetailed into their academic, additional working and social timetable.
On average BSSN employs 25+ Student-tutors and peer-mentors, at any one time through-out the academic year. 85% of these are active. The organisation works in 25 centres each week across the City. The actual profile of centres and tutors may change within an academic year. In most centres we have more than one session running which we coordinate, supervise, monitor and facilitate.
The majority of the young people who participate in BSSN community education initiatives lack confidence, due to barriers which include a lack of language skills, cultural understanding, displacement, health problems, absences from school due to ill-health, and the multiple factors of social exclusion, which can lead to young people disassociated from the social, educational and political milieu of society.
