Higher Education & Apprenticeships Evening in collaboration with Warwick Ahead
Go Higher West Yorkshire is delighted to have arranged its first NCOP community event in the Knottingley area. It was well attended and evaluation on the evening showed most people rated the event as excellent. The aim of this event was to work with Warwick ahead, part of Big Local areas across England who are a community led 10 year lottery funded programme to create lasting change with at least £1m. This change includes education & training opportunities.
We did just that … This small community event strengthened links with Warwick Ahead and provided information on Higher Education outside the school environment in the evening to students and their parents. The event was supported by students, parents and higher education outreach staff from De Lacy Academy & University of Huddersfield, University of Leeds, Leeds College of Building & Wakefield College & UTC.
As this was the first community event held on the estate we were unsure whether people would attend but in planning we ensured that the evening was promoted as a friendly informal evening, and with hot food provided it proved to be just that.
Some of the parents and students are now getting to know NCOP staff from previous school activities and as the representative from Wakefield Councils Social Development team wanted feedback from parents regarding their training needs, the parents were delighted that they were included in the evening too. All the feedback forms showed that they would attend similar events and we all felt the evening was a success and encompassed the essence of GHWY.
Laura from Huddersfield University said;
The Warwick event was the kind of evening that reminds you why you do your job. We had some fantastic conversations with both students and parents, and the event felt like a real success.
This has hopefully been the start of further networking with the Warwick Ahead scheme and I am about to introduce the Go Higher Community Grants scheme to them for consideration in developing their project further.
Written by:
Beverley Davis-Clegg
Higher Education Progression Officer
