For a month this summer, I became a pirate. Yet, this was no ordinary ship that I had boarded, but the swashbuckling vessel that is the innovative educational organisation, Hackney Pirates. Founded in 2010 and based in Hackney, East London, this growing social enterprise seeks to supplement the school system by working with young people from the local community to develop their literacy skills through creative workshops and homework help.

At Hackney Pirates, they believe that children learn by gainng something tangible from their work, and so the children produce a series of creative products including CDs of spoken poetry, books of their own cartoons and even a music video, all of which are then sold to the general public. By working on these projects with artists, writers and musicians from Hackney, the children engage with professionals, making their work seem even more worthwhile.

Catriona Maclay, the founder of Hackney Pirates and a former undergraduate in social and political sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge, says, “It’s been hugely exciting building the organisation up over the last couple of years. It’s amazing how far we have come in a pretty short time. It’s exciting leading something which is so driven by the momentum of people in the local community – so much of what we have achieved is because what we do strikes a chord with local people, and they want to help make it happen”.

To run the workshops, Hackney Pirates recruit volunteers from London to come in for a few hours each afternoon. They work one-to-one with children who are at the transition between primary and secondary school, a time when those who don’t receive extra support can fall significantly behind. Some children have mild learning difficulties; for others, English is not their first language.

By providing children with such close adult attention and support, their confidence grows, as they make friends and feel better about their creative and academic abilities. I worked with one child who was sometimes volatile, yet with persistent encouragement, he showed real artistic talent and, by the end, acknowledged that he was not “bad at art” as he had always thought.

The unconventional setting of Hackney Pirates, with a ‘pirate den’ and an ‘ideas room’ where children can write and draw on the chalkboard walls, fosters creativity. I worked with children who went from being sulky and disinterested at the beginning of a workshop to being so excited to record their poetry for a CD or to splash a canvas with paint that their bubbling enthusiasm was truly infectious.

Catriona, who was formerly a Teach First teacher at a school in Edmonton, says of the organisation’s ethos, “From my teaching experience I was very frustrated that many children were leaving school without either the basic literacy they needed to succeed in school, or the real-world skills you need for work, like confidence and creativity. At Hackney Pirates we work to develop both children’s attainment in school, but also the essential soft skills that they’re going to need. I think it’s this bridge between academic and out-of-school learning which makes us unique.”

When I conducted evaluative interviews at the end of the three weeks of the summer workshops, several children declared that they loved of Hackney Pirates because it was “nothing like school”, a phrase that should ring alarm bells for our teachers and educational policy makers. The education secretary recently announced a reform to the GCSE system, while Tony Blair once declared “education, education, education” as one of his key agendas in government.

However, successive governments have failed to take into account the needs of many children, who are overlooked by the system in large classrooms with few resources – and, as I was told at Hackney Pirates, “quietly fail”. As teachers are unable to provide enough support for these children, they simply lose interest or feel incapable of succeeding, leading to poor school performance.

In light of the debates surrounding educational reform in Britain, Hackney Pirates is an interesting example of the need to focus attention on an individual child, recognising that there are many different learning styles and diverse temperaments. Above all, the organisation works on the principle that every child has the potential for academic success, that can be fulfilled through more inventive means than our schools can currently offer.

One of my favourite educational practices at Hackney Pirates was their take on grammar: children first enacted the role of ‘Captain Splurge’ who gets his ideas down on paper and doesn’t bother about spelling or punctuation, but simply lets his creative juices flow. Soon after, they transformed into ‘The Refined Admiral’ who takes care over grammar and corrects his work properly.

By making learning seem more engaging, the children often forgot they were working at all. I came to realise that it really is that simple. At the end of the month, I was sad to leave Hackney Pirates, and not just because the children were amazing to work with. It was such a breath of fresh air to see a project that really works in bringing a community together to support young people and shows the power of true educational reform.

The children I spoke to at the end of the summer workshops said that they felt more confident in their spelling, public speaking and art skills. Their parents told me that their children seemed much happier and more self-assured, and in my opinion, that outcome alone is truly a feather in Hackney Pirates’ cap.