Why Angling Is Saving Kids Failed by Education
Scribehound Article
Andy Ford 17 Sep 2025
Reproduced with his permission
Many young people are failing in our 'one size fits all' state school system. Kids with special educational needs don't fit into it either. Is teaching them to fish the answer? 'Angling Mentors' is an initiative offering a potential solution.
I’m aware a lot of you reading this and realising I’ve trawled out another article about fishing will spin past it and go about your day. This one is a little bit different though – and I’d ask for your patience to read on a little further. This is a story about how the modern education system may be failing thousands of children and how using fishing as a counter to that can actually save their lives.
Ask anyone who’s picked up a fishing rod what impact the sport has had on them and you’ll quickly learn that very little of it’s got to do with actually catching any fish.
Lakedown Fishery with a brewery on site. What's not to like?
Rock Legend...
This is a thought that’s in my head as I drive to Sussex, to a fishery owned by the rock legend Roger Daltrey, for a fishing day with a very big difference. I’ve been asked to attend as a guest of a new organisation called Angling Mentors. I’m about to spend a day learning just how important angling really is to the world.
To put it in context, the thing is, without fishing I’d probably be nowhere. I wouldn’t be writing here for a start (which some may see as a bonus….) I wouldn’t be making TV programmes, and I wouldn’t have met some of the people who’ve become my closest friends. Among them, a little Welsh bloke called Steve Meo, who I first encountered casting flies for mullet on a Sussex beach a few years ago. Steve is a very funny fella, who happens to be one of the guests of honour at the event.
If you insert ‘shooting’, ‘hunting’ or ‘horse riding’, or any number of other things linked to the countryside and rural life in the place of angling in the above sentence, you’ll find people with a similar story to tell. Like-minded people tend to bond and form powerful alliances.
And so to Daltrey’s Lakedown Fishery. It’s a paradise. Not only does in contain several well stocked and beautiful trout lakes, it also houses the Lakedown Brewery, producer of some of the finest ales ever to grace a beer glass. It’s going to be a hot day, and a cold one will be very welcome later. There’s a lot to look forward to – but not before some very serious stuff gets explored.
Steve Meo gets involved at Lakedown Fishery
Full disclosure before we get going. There are about 30 young people aged under 18 in attendance. There are a dozen very able and experienced fly anglers acting as coaches, people from the fly fishing company Orvis and a selection of parents, teachers and educators along for the ride. Lots of flies are hitting the water at very regular intervals all day. While, rather strangely, not a single fish will be hooked or landed over the course of many hours angling. Even though no-one caught a thing, everyone in attendance will consider what transpires here as a massive success.
Strong foundations...
The foundation of that success is this. Just as Steve and I bonded as mates straight away when we first met a few years back, others will get that from their Lakedown experience. We have a shared, daft sense of humour, a respect for hard work, family and friends. All has become common ground, but the first thing was fishing. It’s what forged a friendship for us, just like it’s done for many others.
“Many men go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after”, Henry David Thoreau.
That quote from the American poet and naturalist Henry David Thoreau is something Steve and I have chatted around many times before. I wonder how many of the young people who are casting flies at shadows today will discover it’s the truth.
Steve is a professional actor with a family and, like all actors, has had to deal with the pressures of an extraordinary existence in the entertainment industry. The highs are massive. The lows are crushing. Stability in it is hard to find so he gets that from elsewhere. He’s been at the top of his game for many years, appearing in TV shows like ‘Gavin and Stacey’. He played the villain Rufus Donahue in Coronation Street, was in the original cast of ‘Les Miserables’ for the RSC and was in ‘Fawlty Towers’ in the West End.
Fishing helps to keep him sane when things are spinning and make no sense.
“I really need it. I need it as a source of relaxation. You know, I don't want to get too hippy, but it’s almost like it’s transcendental. It requires such a clarity of focus and a point of concentration that you do forget about everything else. You find yourself de-stressing. Your shoulders drop, your heart rate drops, your blood temperature, your blood pressure goes down,” he said.
“One of the things I love about fishing is that it brings you to these places, and you'd never come here otherwise. You find yourselves in places to fish that you had no business in otherwise. And that's that's brilliant. You see things that you'd have never seen if you were sat at home, doom scrolling or worrying about, where's that email? Should I send this? Should I do that? Should I be here doing that? You know, it's you get here and it all just disappears,” he added.
His role with Angling Mentors is as a patron and the day at Lakedown been arranged by Shane Davies, founder of an organisation we both find ourselves in awe of. Shane is the kind of schoolteacher we all wish we’d had as young people.
Shane Davies is the kind of teacher we all wish we'd had at school.
He works in a non-mainstream school. He’s made it his mission in life to try and teach the children who’ve been failed by mainstream education. He’s more likely to take a group of pupils into the woods and teach them how to whittle a stick than he is to teach them algebra. He can teach people trigonometry without them even realising they are doing maths.
Surviving the demons...
Having suffered at the hands of his own demons as a young man, he found angling helped him to find calm. He’s not the first to use it as a tool to try and engage young people who have fallen through the cracks elsewhere. It’s a proven formula which has been tried and tested by the likes of Charles Jardine with ‘Fishing for Schools’.
What Shane and others like him have realised is that fishing is also capable of switching young people on in a way very little else can.
These days, we’re used to hearing about children and adults who have behavioural problems caused by ADHD, autism and the like. These aren’t ‘new’ problems of course – the experts believe they’ve always been around, but perhaps we’ve just learned how better to define, discover and understand them.
If we have, it’s because of people like Shane. He works at a school which teaches those who may have been forced out of mainstream education by a multitude of issues. Almost none are of their own making. Shane describes them as young people who have had ‘social, emotional and behavioural diagnoses’.
Here at Lakedown, there’s a group of kids having a go at learning to cast flies, then work out how use their new found skills to try and catch a Lakedown trout. Steve is helping them along the way, spending as much time speaking to parents as the kids. They’re all loving it.
I discover very quickly this sample is merely an indicator to the symptoms of a much bigger problem in the modern education system. Children who are ‘different’ fit in to the ‘system’ more uncomfortably now than they ever have.
A study published in 2023 by the National Institute for Health Care Research tells us that there’s been a significant rise in ADHD in the last 25 years. By 2018, just before COVID 19 arrived to test us all, there had been a 50% increase in prescriptions for ADHD medication to treat adult men aged 18-25. Many of those young men were the young boys who struggled to find their way at school, who seemed to be the square pegs that the ‘system’ tried to force into round holes. Then COVID arrived in 2020 and the whole thing got worse!
I’m trying to understand this whole concept by aligning it with my own experiences. When I was at school, I hated everything academic except, perhaps, English. Everything else was a struggle and I’m pretty sure I don’t have anything like ADHD. I can only imagine what negative impact a disorder which stops you concentrating on important, complicated stuff can have. You must feel very isolated.
Keeping me on the right path...
What kept me on the right path was a love of sport. Pretty much any sport. I was already an angler by the time I got to go to the local comprehensive. The River Lambourn was the first river I ever fished as a child – and it ran past the end of the school playing field. I often peered at it over the fence during breaktime.
While at school, I also discovered a love of cricket, becoming a member of the school 1st XI. Later, cricket rescued me from oblivion when I made the mistake of leaving my ‘A’ levels half way through because I wanted to go and get a job instead.
When, after eight weeks of misery working in the drawing office of a small engineering firm, I realised my error and asked if I could return to my studies, I was welcomed back with open arms. The school, 1st XI had missed it ’s opening bowler. I was even mentioned in dispatches when I took 5 wickets for 25 runs to help us win a game on my return.
“Nice to see Ford back in the team,” said the head teacher as he gave the cricket report to a packed assembly.
Without sport in my life I have no idea what I’d be.
I’m not sure that would happen now in a state school. Since the UK adopted it’s National Curriculum back in the late 1980’s, things have changed. Shane Davies is of a similar vintage to me.
“When we were at school, it was comprehensive or grammar school, wasn't it? If you went to a comprehensive school, you had a fully equipped forge and working environment in your classroom to do metal work. You had woodwork rooms, you had sewing rooms, you had pottery rooms, you had cooking and all manner of other stuff. And now those rooms have all been cut right back,” said Shane.
Most of my mates at school thrived in the practical stuff. They loved sport. We bonded as teammates while playing football, cricket, rugby and hockey and it helped us when we went back into the classroom to do maths and English.
I think we were what you’d call ‘vocational learners’ now – people who also absorb information by doing practical things, not just reading about them in a book. Being part of a team helps young people to appreciate they’re not alone too. If you’re the only one doing something and it doesn’t go well for you, it’s very easy to become disillusioned and give up. Confidence is destroyed on this road, and potential never grows. If you can see 10 others who are suffering in the same way you are, you feel part of something bigger. It’s tribal. You learn and grow together. This is in my head as I watch casting instructor Paul Bettley helping a group of children to throw loops with a fly rod at Lakedown. All start badly….all of them slowly get better together.
Shane feels the education system we have these days doesn’t take people like us into account. The kids he teaches who have behavioural problems certainly don’t fit the mould which was set by the introduction of a National Curriculum in the UK in 1989.
“Those vocational learners are just not learning. To my mind, it's an absolute travesty, and people like me are trying to reinvent the wheel because we had it in the comprehensive system that existed when we were at school,” added Shane.
Finding solace in fishing...
His solace from his own childhood traumas came when he discovered he loved fishing. Once he made the connection with his role as a teacher, things began to grow.
“We introduced fishing into schools with young people carrying labels such as ADHD and autism, young people that have experienced trauma. We discovered that where they can't focus for any long periods of time on a classroom task, they're able to focus on a fishing task because their mind is quiet.
“We’re just starting to understand the science. Their brains have got so much information going on in them, when they fish, all the other information stops, and only the fishing goes in.
“They're absolutely engaged, fully engaged. They smile when they catch fish. Then it gives someone like me an opportunity to work on some of the things that are not great. So, increasing social skills, discussing issues that that might be impacting the young person. They're all things that happen when we're fishing and when we're learning to fish.”
Once fishing has opened the door, trust is established, confidence grows and, rather amazingly, the unteachable become good students.
Admittedly it’s a hell of a lot easier in a small private school with small class sizes like the one he teaches in. But have a look on the National Curriculum and see where sport now fits in to things. It’s scary stuff, with physical education apparently regarded by those in authority as an academic activity which can be measured by a rubric, not just by goals scored, fish landed or friends made.
Casting coach Paul Bettley in action at Lakedown.
“When taught well, high-quality PE challenges myths, misconceptions and ingrained inequalities that can limit participation for all.” So says a government report into physical education in schools published in 2023.
Maybe this indicates a change is on the way which will give people like Shane the respect they are due.
“Pupils are still twice as likely to be able to swim 25 metres unaided if they are from a high affluence family than from a low affluence one. That is why it is important for high-quality PE to make a positive difference to pupils’ opportunities and experiences and contribute to levelling the playing field for all, regardless of individual starting points,” adds the report. A confirmation that the mainstream has failed thus far to make things even.
If you’re interested, you can read the full report here: (which opens in a new window...)
To make a connection between school sport and some young people who have found important stuff about themselves by using angling isn’t too much of a quantum leap is it? I ask Shane and he agrees it’s not.
Filling the gap...
His Angling Mentors scheme is filling a gap left by the failure of other things, be that education or family issues.
“What the mentors do is they share that knowledge with these young people that are not, perhaps getting that experience at home or in the children's home they live in. Some of these young people live in children's homes or with foster carers. They might not get that experience with their dad or with their uncle or with another member of their family because of some of the issues that they come with. These mentors are amazing. You know, they've done some fantastic work with these kids,” said Shane.
I ask him about how some of these isolated young people feel now that they can see they’ve become part of something much bigger.
“All those blokes that support these young people are all part of a team. What we're doing is turning angling into a team sport, but it's not a team sport. It's a unique sport but actually there is no difference between cricket, golf, football, fishing, they're all sports that help you feel part of something bigger,” he added.
Andrew Flintoff's incredible project (Pic: BBC)
I’ve been watching a TV series on the BBC presented by Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff which has incredible similarities to what Shane’s Angling Mentors has achieved. In it, the former England cricketer and presenter of ‘Top Gear’ takes young people who’ve been excluded from mainstream education and helps them bond together as teammates using cricket. To see disaffected youngsters whose lives appear pretty hopeless finding that hope in a sporting arena reinforces so much of what’s been said here. They could be easily categorised as young people with ‘social, emotional and behavioural diagnoses’.
Freddie’s ‘Field of Dreams’ programme has been mentioned in Parliament as a success story. It’s being supported by local authorities who are trying to find ways to improve facilities for young sports people – perhaps those who in a previous era may have forged the sporting bonds they crave on the sports field of a local comprehensive on a Wednesday afternoon. The wheel may at last be turning back.
The finance of it all is complex, as you’d expect. The school where Shane works, for example, is run by the Outcomes First Group. You can learn more about them here:
https://www.outcomesfirstgroup.co.uk
They are paid to educate by local authorities, with the money coming from the same source as state schools. It begs a question about where the responsibility should lie to fund schooling, but I’m not well enough qualified to have that discussion here.
There are, however, an estimated 9,000 children with autism, and 12,000 kids in the special education system under their remit. There are thousands of others in children’s homes. There are innumerable others suffering in silence in mainstream schools where their needs are not met – the square pegs in round holes as yet unidentified and in need of a vocation. It feels to me like the system has failed them all.
It’s my hope that Shane’s Angling Mentors gets similar recognition to the Freddie Flintoff scheme – because from what I’ve seen the man is performing much needed miracles. He’s already planning to buy a fishery and transform it into a facility where young people can flourish.
Shane’s own ‘Field of Dreams’ lies in a little clearing somewhere that a fishing pond can provide a home to a kingfisher. A group of kids who’ve fallen through the cracks in society might arrive with fishing rods and wonder at it as it flashes blue across the water.
.
Maybe they’ll cast a fly? Or watch a float? Perhaps they’ll realise they’re not alone after all because there are like-minded others around them? Perhaps they’ll realise even though they went to the pond to go fishing, they’re not really there to catch a fish at all