6news: Spring Edition 2017

Spring Edition

Love Birds.

It was during a delightful country walk when Nicola Bradley and her partner Jak (left) got engaged to one another. Meanwhile, we wish to congratulate Denise Hunt who married Karl (right) over the Christmas holiday.

Charity Work.

During November and December performing arts, music and media students donated items for a reverse advent box - where each day different students brought in items for the street life charity.

These were the final boxes of items we gave to this worthy cause.

Dear Knitters, Over Christmas I received the fantastic news that from the sale of the Knitted Christmas Stockings and crocheted icicles, we raised ÂŁ122.75 for Trinity Hospice.

Well done and I hope you keep knitting.

Best wishes, Chrissie

Student Council.

Blackpool Sixth’s Student Council have been busy fundraising and campaigning in the first half of this academic year, raising awareness of health issues and making Christmas special for vulnerable youngsters in the Blackpool area.

The council joined together with the Business & IT and Social Science departments in college, raising £100 for the Rock FM’s Mission Christmas campaign and donating toys as gifts to youngsters.

They have continued their fundraising activities this term with a ‘Give a heart this Valentine’s’ fundraiser for the British Heart Foundation and the NHS. In addition to raising money for the charity, the council also encouraged students to sign up to the NHS organ donor register and raised awareness of its importance.

The student body has been involved in the ‘Learn to Live’ campaign, which encourages students to adopt a healthier lifestyle to help improve their academic effectiveness. The Student Council designed a quiz that took place in the pastoral mentor sessions, to raise awareness of key facts relating to a healthy lifestyle. The council also helped with the trial of 20 students who changed their eating and sleeping patterns for a ten day research project.

They also developed a reflective diary for the students to log their daily changes in behaviour and helped collate and analyse the data from the study (see page 7 for more infomation).

Other future fundraising projects include supporting overseas students who are lacking in access to education and facilities in rural areas across the globe.

The student council will also be meeting with Blackpool Transport to raise student concerns about bus times and customer service.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------If students have issues or fundraising ideas they would like the council to consider, please email: student.council@blackpoolsixth.ac.uk

Flexible Working.

There are a number of staff across college that already benefit from flexible working. Flexible working can help staff in maintaining good health and well-being and help maintain a healthy work/life balance. Requests are made for many reasons such as pre-retirement, childcare and study commitments.

Flexible working requests aren’t just for reducing your hours, you can request changes to your work pattern and request increased hours as well. There are a number of other options that you could consider requesting.

Term time only

Term time only +

Fractional hours

Holiday purchase

Does what it says in the tin! You can request to work only college term time dates.

This is where you can request to work only a fraction of your hours (part time). You could for example request to work 0.8 of your full time equivalent for teaching staff or for example 30 hours for support staff. This can be considered for term-time only and all year staff.

Similar to term time, but you work additional days during college holidays, usually +5 or +10 days.

This option allows you to ‘buy’ additional annual leave days. It is only available to all year staff who have a holiday entitlement. Please note that this would be a contractual change and your salary would be reduced by the equivalent amount of holidays purchased, further this would impact on your pension contributions.

A flexible working request form should be completed and as a guide, requests should be made at least 3 months before you would like the change to come into effect. You will then be invited to a meeting with your line manager, SLT link and a HR representative (you are entitled to bring representation too).

In this meeting you will be able to discuss your request and run through your thoughts on how the request would work and the impact it would have on the college, you would then get a decision in writing within 14 days.

The college considers each request on its own merits and the specific business needs in your area are taken into consideration. Where possible college will agree the request or offer an alternative. Where it is is not possible to approve a request the reasons will be explained.

Holiday purchase can provide you with the opportunity to take additional holidays by having the agreed amount of days pay deducted from your salary over the 12 months. One member of staff states the benefits as follows:

“I have always used the majority of my holiday entitlement in the past for literally going on holiday, either in the UK or abroad. I decided to purchase more holidays to allow me to have more time at home also. Both my children are away at university and so I wanted to be around when they are back. Also my mum is now elderly and is needing increasing support, so having more time has given me added flexibility to spend with her as well. Having purchased more holidays has given me a better work/home balance.”

For more details, or an initial chat about your options, please contact Curtis Jackson in HR.

Cover Pool Quiz.

We are now half-way through the first year of our new cover policy. You will remember that this has been introduced to manage cover across college under the new timetable, but also to foster some more independent learning skills within our students by trusting them to get on with work one their own. See how good your understanding is of this brand new system and how many of these questions you can get right‌.

How many days of teaching have we not had to cover now we are using Google Classroom for the first day of sickness, special leave and trips?

What percentage of staff have done less than 1 session of cover since September?

How many staff who were under-deployed have done enough cover to make up for the sessions they were under?

Which department have done more cover than any other team?

Which department have done less cover than any other team?

Which member of staff has done the most cover to date?

Which member of staff is responsible for coordinating the cover across college?

How much money does college save when we don’t employ external cover for a day?

Which button must you press to ensure that your cover is included in your running total?

What has the feedback been like about the use of Google Classroom from our students?

See answers on page 7

Revision, Revision, Revision.

Your Learning Champions

Since the rebranding of the learning champions group earlier in the year, the journey it has been on is one that has seemingly ended up in one very specific place. Curriculum reform is requiring students to work in a very different way, and revision and memory are at the heart of what they need to do. Consequently, this has been the focus of the group who have been researching ways in which we can support students on their own journeys to understand how they can learn more effectively and be prepared for a new kind of examination.

Each member of the group has contributed to this by reading a book about learning and diluting the best and most effective ideas to share with you via the college newsletter. They also enjoyed a very productive couple of hours sharing what they had discovered at the CPD day in November with you.

We are only at the beginning of this journey and still have lots to learn. Guiding our students to be independent learners is a challenge, but one that we are looking forward to. If you are interested in finding out more about the research we have done, we recommend the following books which are available in the FYi.

We have also welcomed a new member into our group. Alex Taylor replaces Lorraine Linnett as the representative from the Science department. We would like to thank Lorraine for all the help and support that she has given the group over the last year and look forward to working with Alex in the future.

We also encourage you to share your revision ideas. Please pass them via your department champion, or pop directly into the folder in the CPD area. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0cur_SlZbVRRnQ0QUxaOFZ0TnM

Learn to Live.

A college wide research study into the impact of health on academic progress is underway, called Learn to Live. The project is a joint endeavour between the Learning Champions across college departments and the Student Council.

The campaign is about educating our students on how best to fuel their body on the lead up to exams, so they can get the most out of lessons and revision.

As part of the project, 20 students from across the student body volunteered to change their lifestyle choices for 10 days. The students were asked to increase their hours of sleep, increase their water intake and reduce their hours spent on mobile phones and interaction on social media.

In addition, the volunteers adopted a balanced diet with a focus on a healthy breakfast. The students recorded how the changes to their habits improved their productivity, focus, energy, general mood and memory.

The students in the study found that lifestyle tweaks had a major impact on their academic effectiveness and they reported feeling a lot more ‘positive and motivated’ and ‘less stressed with college and life in general’.

Upper Sixth Creative Media student Annie Monaghan said:

“I really noticed a difference in feeling more focused and positive towards college when I was involved in the programme. I slept more and drank more water and my attendance even improved. I would recommend it for other students to try, it really worked.”

Quiz Answers.

1.) 135. This adds up to 27 weeks of teaching that staff have not had to cover and students have been trusted to work independently. Last year, all absences has to be covered by members of the teaching staff.

2.) 39%. Many of these have done no sessions at all…..!

3.) 0. These staff are used wherever possible and always before teachers with full timetable; once they have made up the sessions, they will be treated as though they too have a full timetable.

4.) BSIT. Lorraine’s team have decided that they prefer to do cover within their own department. This means their students will have had the benefit of expert staff during periods of absence although they are able to do this because they are a large department.

5.) VISU. Although this is not because they are a lazy team!

The timetable means that some departments simply can’t cover their sessions, this was part of the rationale behind the cover pool. Helping out departments who can’t cover for their students.

6.) Lorraine. She has covered a remarkable 30 lessons!!!!

7.) Jayne Mills. She works hard to ensure that cover is allocated fairly using the computer system and information given to her by Heads of Department.

8.) £185 per day. This initiative is also saving money for the college. Every little helps!

9.) ‘Cover Lesson’. If you don’t use this, your cover will not be counted against your total and you may get called on more often.

10.) Very positive! ShOW reports and focus groups indicate that students like using Google Classroom and appreciate the fact that teachers are using it to help them to become independent learners. Thanks to Matt Jones for his excellent training on this.

We hope you enjoyed this issue of 6News.

Make sure you follow the college on all social media platforms for all the latest news, events and stories. #BuildingFutures

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