The Education Side of Impact

Lyn Wakeford, the Education Coordinator, is working closely with the schools, St. Vincent College and local businesses to seek to broaden the pupils learning in order to raise achievement, aspirations and ambitions.

Every business needs skilled employees, and the links forged between local business and education providers in the Borough are helping to enthuse young people about the world of business, as well as raising awareness and developing the skills needed to enter the workplace. 

The work that the Impact project provides to schools in the area, comes in many forms, with a number of activities set out below:

Leesland Junior School ran a competition with its students to design a calendar. The children, with the help of a local photographer, were asked to take pictures of local landmarks.  The best photos were then chosen to be included in the final calendar which was sold by the children on the local market.  This has run for two years now and iit is likely that this will be embedded into the curriculum for future years.

Brockhurst Junior School have set up a Young Journalists’ Club.  The children interview people from the world of work and then write up their reports for the school newspaper ‘Brocky’s News’.  The newspaper has been printed by a local printer and then sold to gain funds for the school.

Brune Park  have organised a ‘Design a Garden’ Challenge for the year 10 students in which the students were tasked to design a garden.  The children were given advice and support from visiting gardeners and business people and the winning garden was constructed in the school grounds for all to enjoy.
 
Finally pupils at Bay House School were asked to design a website that would help promote the project. They were given a brief, a copy of the project’s logo and two months to complete the task. Working either individually or in teams, the students then applied their own creative thinking and technical expertise. This was then put to the test by a panel of judges at the grand finale at Bayside Cabin on 17th January. One local business, having got involved in the project, not only took time to act as a judge for the website challenge but has also since offered to visit Bay House School and work with IT students. Eleven entries were received for the website challenge from Year 10 and the Sixth Form, with David Linfield (aka Sputnik) being the overall winner.

There is no better way for businesses to prepare the workforce of tomorrow than to meet with the young people whilst they are still in education. These links developed by Impact create the opportunity to give pupils tips and pointers that will help equip them for their future lives. At the end of the day pupils really do appreciate working along side visitors from the business community who often bring a totally different perspective to their learning.