FEATURE: New sensory room will provide an escape for stressed-out students

The pressures of student life can often be overwhelming, but one college in Hampshire has found a unique way to lower student stress levels and provide an escape from the hustle and bustle. Samantha King reports.

South Downs College in Waterlooville has recently opened a sensory room, designed to help students who suffer from high levels of anxiety or stress – particularly those on the autistic spectrum – find peace and calm in the college environment.

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The breathing dogs in baskets

With blackout blinds, aromatherapy, stress balls, specialist lighting and a range of soft furnishings, the new space provides the perfect escape for when things get a bit too much; while two pretend puppies that seem to breathe are proving especially popular with students.

Darren Darby, the additional learning support manager at the college, said: “We have two pets that look real in little baskets, and they actually breathe so you can see the movement of their chests go up and down. A lot of our students find them very comforting when they go in there.

“We’ve got a whiteboard up at one end of the room so if students want to scribble and draw on there, they can use that. It’s quite well equipped, and has lots of different sensory aspects, so we can cater for whatever an individual student may need.”

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Comfortable seating and lights

Entry to the sensory room is through a special pass, issued by the additional learning support team following a consultation to assess the needs of the student. Passes are only issued to students who will benefit from the use of the room, in order to maintain its status as a safe and calm retreat.

The college, which has a large number of students with additional learning support requirements had recently signed up to the Ambitious About Autism Charter, which supports FE providers in improving their offer to young people with autism and other disabilities. It was this that inspired the idea for the sensory room.

Darby explained: “We’re quite unique in the fact there’s not many colleges that actually have sensory rooms unless they’re a specialist college.

“We signed up to the Autism Charter, so we were looking at a facility that could provide for students on the autistic spectrum, and give them a place that was away from the areas of the college some students may find a bit overwhelming.

It’s just a really calm place that they can go to if they were feeling particularly stressed at any time throughout their day

“We also wanted to extend the space for students who may suffer from high levels of anxiety and stress, and offer them a space that was quiet and peaceful.

It’s just a really calm place that they can go to if they were feeling particularly stressed at any time throughout their day.”

Funded by the college’s additional learning support budget, the new room is situated at the heart of the college and connects to an existing lunch and breakfast room away from the main refectory.

It is hoped the new sensory room will have a positive impact on the health and wellbeing of students, allowing them to recharge away from loud noises and potential stressors that are a natural part of college life.

Darby said: “The project has taken a lot of planning within the ALS team. We’ve had to really analyse and decide on equipment that we think would be cost effective but will also be really beneficial.”

The room was officially opened by Kevin Filby, deputy director of service development at Ambitious About Autism.

 

Featured picture: Kevin Filby from Ambitious About Autism opens the new sensory room

 

Fighting in class encouraged during stage combat workshop with leading stage fight director

For once, fights in the classroom have been actively encouraged, during a day-long stage combat workshop at a college in Lincolnshire.

Students at North Lindsey College were taught the arts of stage safety, victim control techniques and reverse energy in order to create a believable yet perfectly safe fight scene.

The workshop has helped students to prepare for an upcoming production of Macbeth, teaching them the correct techniques when using holds, footing, grip, weight balance and vocals.

The session was delivered by Rob Leonard, a teacher at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and former workshop co-ordinator at the British Academy of Stage and Screen Combat.

Performing arts tutor, Phil Collingwood, said: “To have Rob here is a real coup for North Lindsey College and shows our ongoing commitment to providing the finest dramatic education we can. 

“The students had the time of their lives and we are looking forward to Rob’s return in the New Year – with swords!”

Performing arts student Mollie Slack added: “I didn’t realise it would be as hands on as it was. It will really help me in the future to put the actions in place that we have learned without hurting anyone.”

 

Featured picture: Rob, centre, shows students how to fight safely

 

Green with envy as student takes top spot in Greenkeeper of the Year awards

A student on the newly introduced golf greenkeeping standard apprenticeship has taken second place in the Toro Young Student Greenkeeper of the Year awards.

Vince DeMarzo, a student at Hadlow College in Kent, was judged on his knowledge of greenkeeping tasks, skills, and health and safety, alongside understanding of the job role, from personal development through to industry awareness.

He was up against five other finalists in the inaugural under-20 category, selected from hundreds of entrants across the UK.

Vince, who is currently awaiting level two certification, works at Wildernesse Golf Club as an assistant greenkeeper, and has ambitions to work at a high-profile golf championship course in the future.

He said: “I’d love to work at one of the courses in the Milan area. I’m hopeful, since British greenkeepers are highly sought after in continental Europe. I’d also love to work in Australia or the US, but you need an entirely different knowledge-base, given the diverse climate, pests and diseases or the US.

“Ultimately, my aim is to work on a high-profile championship course that features on TV.”

 

Featured picture: (L-R) Paul Copsey, work-based assessor at Hadlow College, with Vince DeMarzo

 

Fashion students craft bags for hospital patients to disguise medication

Fashion students at Hull College have designed and produced a batch of hats and syringe driver bags to help hospital patients feel less self-conscious about hair loss and carrying their medication.

The hats and bags which were presented to the pathology unit at Castle Hill Hospital will be given out free to patients as part of National Pathology Week, which celebrates the contribution that pathologists make to healthcare in the UK.

Patients undergoing palliative care often carry syringe drivers, which are small portable battery powered machines that administer a continuous dose of painkiller.

Kerry Drury, one of the hospital’s pathology lab social practitioners, said: “Some of our patients are on palliative care and need a syringe driver to carry medication all day. The bags enable them to go about their daily life and still keep their medicine with them without drawing the attention these usually get.

“The hats have been created in a modern and fashionable style which helps the patients undergoing chemotherapy feel less self-conscious.”

The students produced the hats and bags with donated fabrics as part of their induction week at the college, and the project will count towards their industry skills studies module.

Featured picture: Kerry Drury with the hats and bags provided by Hull College Students

 

Congratulations to Exeter College for topping our new FE league table

Exeter College has come out top – with a perfect 16 out of 16 score – in the inaugural FE Week college league table.

Congratulations to Richard Atkins, who as principal led the college to success, and of course to all the staff.

But league tables only have one top spot and with over 200 colleges in the UK, many college leaders will be less pleased.

I can’t pretend that publishing a full league tables using four measures won’t ruffle a few feathers

But the government has for many years collected and published learner and employer satisfaction data.

Now it’s being shared with employers through the new ‘Find apprenticeship training’ site (which we reviewed here) which is designed to “enable comparisons to be made against other colleges”.

Following the Enterprise Act 2016, the government has also improved destination data; readers will be familiar with our apprenticeship volume analysis.

This is my first attempt at a scoring system, and while I’m pleased with the results, colleges should expect refinements for 2017.

We need to rise to the challenge of Brexit

To rise to the challenge of a post-Brexit Britain, we need a clear, accessible skills system, says Graham Hasting-Evans

When you’re up to your neck in alligators it’s difficult to remember your first objective was to drain the swamp – or to put it another way: we need to get a grip following Brexit.

The objective is clear. In the next five years we must boost skills and productivity by 30 per cent. Last month the National Audit Office report ‘Delivering the value through apprenticeship reform’ stated bluntly that the “ONS estimates that Germany, France and the USA are each about a third more productive than the UK”.

Clearly reform is urgently needed.

Creditably the government has been trying to deliver critical changes and has some excellent policy ideas. But it lacks the vision, coherence and focus needed to create the single skills-enhancement strategy the economy requires.

We need clarity from two perspectives: both within the sector and from the outside. To paraphrase David Hughes in his opening speech to the AoC Conference, the future does look bright for the FE sector. However, it still needs to rise to the challenge.

We must commit to a single skills enhancement strategy, underpinned by a single skills-system, which embraces all the various initiatives, while ensuring increased productivity and social mobility, including development for the existing workforce.

The current plan focuses on reformed apprenticeships and new technical education qualifications, but we need to go further. There are two major gaps that still need filling: a plan for upskilling the existing workforce, and clarity of career pathways for those entering the system.

The future does look bright

Regarding the first, boosting productivity is not just about training up new workers. Only two per cent of our workforce is replaced every year – so a large part of increasing productivity must lie in upskilling. Yet with the distorted focus on the apprenticeship levy, professional development as a strategy to improve productivity has been cast aside by the government. This makes no sense. Training new entrants will not alone increase our productivity as a nation; we need a skills-enhancement strategy to improve capabilities at all levels of industry.

It is certainly the case that employers are looking at ways to use the levy pot to upskill existing workers, but they are likely to find that there is currently not a sufficient number, or breadth, of apprenticeship standards at this level to achieve their aim – nor are they in the pipeline.

In truth, it seems ridiculous that we should have to rebrand the idea of professional development as an ‘apprenticeship’ in order for it to be seen as worthy of investment, but that’s for another day.

The vast majority of the new standards are currently aimed at new entrants. If the aim is truly to boost productivity, more higher-level standards and qualifications need to be developed that would allow the levy to be spent on valuable professional development. 

The second gap that needs filling is to establish clear pathways for young people. Improving social mobility increases productivity, but how can people move up the socio-economic ladder, if they can’t even understand which qualifications they need to take? We need to communicate better and in order to do this, we need to package the complexity of the further education offer as a single skills system.

To do this, rather than focusing solely on qualifications, we should focus on destinations. This doesn’t have to mean choosing ultimate career destinations at a young age, but simply directing young people to what could be called a ‘first-base job’.

There may be multiple routes to a first-base job: an academic or technical qualification, an apprenticeship (with or without a technical qualification) and/or work-based training. But whichever route learners take, it’s important they are equipped with both employability skills and the necessary broad knowledge of their sector or discipline so they can adapt as the economy changes.

Which brings us back to the first gap: the skills enhancement strategy. We must recognise that getting a first-base job is not the end, but rather the beginning. People will need to adapt and retrain throughout their working life.

If we get the skills enhancement strategy and underpinning system right, productivity and social mobility will rise – and that has to be a big step towards a successful economy.

 

Graham Hasting-Evans is managing director at NOCN

 

Apprenticeship figures: Are colleges skipping lunch?

There’s nothing wrong with colleges not providing apprenticeships, unless it threatens their future viability, says Ben Verinder

Recent figures on the proportion of apprenticeships delivered by different types of providers appear to paint a miserable picture for colleges. 

Once again their share of the market has fallen; they now deliver fewer than one third of all apprenticeships, despite a warning from minister Nick Boles at last year’s AoC conference that they shouldn’t let independent training providers “nick their lunch”.

The Government’s continuing political and financial commitment to the scheme is clear. These new figures are likely to overestimate the college share, masking as they do the scale of subcontracting. So, should college leaders spend their time at this year’s conference shamefaced and penitent?

Perhaps not.

Firstly, the figures mask a much bigger range between colleges and sectors than between independent providers and colleges. General further education colleges are among the largest providers of apprenticeships in the country. Just under half of all construction, engineering and manufacturing apprentices train at college. The issue of proportion is not universal.

Secondly, should we really be surprised that employer-facing independent providers have been more nimble in responding to an employer-facing policy, even one that’s been around for a while? The heritage, brands, stakeholder expectations, cultures, systems and product ranges delivered by colleges are markedly more diverse and complex than their private sector counterparts. They do a lot more things besides.

It’s not a good idea to let someone nick your lunch if it’s the only square meal you’ll be getting

Thirdly, the suggestion that there is something intrinsically wrong (morally or as a point of governance) in not providing apprenticeships doesn’t make much sense to me. If a college decides that it does not have the capacity or culture to deliver apprenticeships, then shouldn’t we be celebrating, on behalf of students, a decision to eschew poor-quality education?

However, things start to get tricky when we apply a thin-end-of-the-wedge philosophy to the issue. If, because other funding streams are shallow, failure to provide apprenticeships poses a threat to the viability of an institution and its ability to serve a community in the future, then we have a governance problem. It’s not a good idea to let someone nick your lunch if it’s the only square meal you’re getting today.

If dipping out of apprenticeships means that students in a particular area who need and want to access an apprenticeship cannot get one, then we have a supply problem. And if too few colleges nationally are taking up the apprenticeship challenge, then we also have a reputation problem – failuring to positively respond to a Government priority tends to limit a sector’s ability to influence others.

Despite all this, it seems to me that focusing too much on the data here misses the point. It’s not apprenticeship numbers that matter per se, but whether they reflect a broader issue regarding employer engagement in the college sector.

On the one hand, it’s obviously oversimplistic to say that colleges have a problem in this regard. From Boots to Balfour Beatty, Pinewood to PWC, there are big-brand advocates of college provision across the country. In quantitative terms, the average college does business with around 600 employers. Our research among employers on behalf of FE clients regularly shines a light on college excellence.

On the other hand, too often we encounter college/employer relationships that are departmental rather than corporate, and so wither when a well-connected lecturer or head of department moves on. In too many cases we discover business relationship management systems that are used by a small pocket of staff and the broader intelligence and interactions go unrecorded. Too frequently we see college candidate selection, customer service or communication that isn’t up to scratch.

Addressing these issues requires singular focus. The question for some colleges, it seems, is whether their intrinsic complexity makes that focus unattainable without a radical change – one that may not sit at all well with its broader set of stakeholders, in particular its current members of staff. Sometimes lunch is just too expensive.

 

Ben Verinder is managing director of research agency Chalkstream

 

College restaurant’s exclusive dish appears in new cookbook

A special dish created by a college restaurant has made it into a cookbook showcasing the best recipes and stories from Liverpool’s culinary community.

The meal, of duck breast, croquettes, dauphinoise potatoes and star anise jus served with a creamy broccoli purée, is a signature dish at Hugh Baird College’s L20 Restaurant, based on Merseyside.

Developed by students under head chef Anthony Wright and sous chef Barry Langston, the dish will appear in ‘The Liverpool Cook Book’ as an example of fine cuisine taken from across Merseyside and the Wirral.

Also featured in the book are fine dining establishments such as Panoramic 34, as well as restaurants, cafes, delis and pubs.

The college runs the L20 Restaurant as part of its hotel school, which is serviced by students under the supervision of staff.

Hospitality student Grace Clarke, who worked on the dish, said: “We’re all made up to see it in the book.

“We came up with dish after working with Anthony and the team. They taught us what different flavours and textures complemented each other, and they allowed us to try our different ideas.”

Featured picture: (L-R) Sous chef Barry Langston, student Grace Clarke, and head chef Anthony Wright with the Liverpool Cookbook.

 

IPPR’s proposals are not in the public interest

The latest report from the Institute of Public Policy Research (IPPR) recommends abolishing level two apprenticeships for all 16- to 18-year-olds. It proposes forcing all those in this age group who are not taking an academic route to university, to undertake a two-year pre-apprenticeship programme at their local FE college or not-for-profit training provider.

Even before the government’s reforms have been implemented, let alone evaluated, the authors are suggesting, somewhat prematurely, a total change in the way young people enter the world of work. But the report is based on highly selective statistical data without any context.

The failure is not in post-16 vocational education or apprenticeships but in the 11 years of education leading up to this point. Our current school curriculum and examination system are designed to prepare pupils for university. It needs to be changed also to prepare pupils for the world of work with a vocational skills route as opposed to an academic route.

To subject pupils to an additional two-year pre-apprenticeship programme at an FE college would be a disservice to the pupils concerned – not to mention an admission that state education has not properly equipped them for employment.

As judged by Ofsted, FE colleges’ track record for delivering apprenticeships is disappointing, with a few notable exceptions. Indeed, FE colleges are minor players in apprenticeship delivery and were strenuously encouraged to increase it by the previous skills minister Nick Boles. When modern apprenticeships were introduced some 30 years ago, FE colleges, third-sector and private providers all had an equal opportunity to deliver them.

Yet today 76 per cent of all apprenticeships are delivered by private training providers, with the remaining 24 per cent equally split between employers with their own direct contract and FE colleges.

The massive growth in apprenticeship numbers and the astounding increase in success rates from a low 50 per cent to 75 per cent plus today has been achieved mainly by private sector providers. This report choses to ignore this and proposes a monopoly of FE colleges and charities to deliver their ill-conceived pre-apprenticeship programmes. This is more reminiscent of a Stalinist approach than a 21st century solution to producing a skilled workforce.

The statistics this report uses to justify its two-year pre-apprenticeship programme are based on those leaving full-time education with poor results, not those entering apprenticeships. Vocational learning in schools and colleges, through a variety of initiatives, such as TVEI and vocational GNVQs, has produced poor results.

This concept of a two-year pre-apprenticeship programme would be ideal for 14-year-old pupils, for whom a vocational career is the best route and a programme including early work experience – especially for those disillusioned with full-time education – would be a benefit. At 14 it’s a brilliant concept; at 16 an irrelevance.

The authors are suggesting, somewhat prematurely, a total change in the way young people enter the world of work

There will always be a sizeable group of young people at 16 for whom entering employment is the most suitable route, and an apprenticeship the best thing for both the young person and the state. This report’s plan to prevent this is undemocratic and demonstrably not in the public interest.

This government has already introduced the traineeship programme for unemployed young people and the take-up has not been brilliant, partly because the Youth Training Scheme it aimed to replicate paid both trainees and employers, which the current programme fails to do. There are other reasons why traineeships are not successful, such as the fact that in many sectors there are entry-level job vacancies available – in retail, hospitality and catering, for example – so young people would prefer paid work to working for free.

The statistics in this report appear to have been selected and the contents written to support a preconceived outcome for the FE sector – to deliver a two-year pre-apprenticeship programme – without any alternative being considered, or the bigger role of the economy and of employers in the programme being discussed.

 

John Hyde is the chairman of HIT Training