St Mirren Football Club is delighted to introduce our new 'Goals for Growth' programme in conjunction with Park Mains High School.
Goals for Growth is an exciting collaboration between St Mirren FC and Park Mains High School in Erskine that's aimed at helping first year pupils with the transition from Primary School.
Sessions are led by St Mirren Youth Academy coach Will Ferguson, Park Mains Physical Education and Health & Wellbeing Principal teacher Colin Chambers and PE teacher Niall Stevenson. The pilot programme, which has been underway at the school in Erskine since the 2025/26 term began in August, aims to help develop young people academically as well as in sport.
St Mirren Chief Operating Officer Keith Lasley said: "Goals for Growth is a programme that's been in the planning for a long time.
We're delighted it's kicked off this academic year and it's a partnership like we've set out in the club strategy. It's not just about the on the park, and the results and the performance side of the club, but about our community impact and tying in with local institutions, schools and universities. This is another part of that and it's an exciting part.
"The programme itself is about implementing some of our methodologies from our Academy and then tying that in with the academic programme that Park Mains have to provide a programme that can help as an opportunity for growth for these young people, both as people and in the sporting sense.
"We considered a number of high schools in the Renfrewshire area, but Park Mains fit for a few reasons in terms of its facilities and the enthusiasm of the staff to get it up and running and wanting to be part of it. That was why we felt this was the right place to start it off, but it is a programme that we want to expand.
We want St Mirren's footprint to be felt across the whole of Paisley and Renfrewshire and we feel as if this is a good first step in that strategy."
Colin Chambers, Principal Teacher of Physical Education at Park Mains, said: "Goals for Growth was an idea that we jointly generated a couple of years ago when we got together with St Mirren to devise a programme that would help support some of our young people as they transition into secondary school.
It's really a character development programme. Something that we're really high on in the school at the moment is developing a young person holistically. So it is a football programme, but predominantly it's about developing some of the characteristics that we would like to see in young people in general.
"It ties in with what they're doing at St Mirren Academy in terms of developing those five Cs, the programme that they have there in terms of commitment, control of emotions, confidence, the communication side of things, and all of those aspects that would really develop young people into someone that we would be proud of as they progress through the school."
