Strategic Report
Support services As a centre of excellence, National Star is committed to sharing best practice and our expertise. We do that in myriad ways across the UK, Europe and the wider world.
Our charitable activity National Star provides a range of support services for individuals and their families, as well as delivering professional development opportunities and training, consultancy and working collaboratively with other organisations to develop capacity and improve quality of provision for people with disabilities.
What we achieved Throughout 2020 – 2021, National Star shared best practice through a range of opportunities and settings. Our National Lead for Safeguarding supported the specialist sector by delivering webinars in partnership with Natspec (the membership association for specialist providers). During the pandemic, we supported colleagues across the specialist sector, leading the way in remaining open and sustaining a quality curriculum, putting health and safety at the centre of our activities. National Star and Balcarras Academy supported schools and colleges using technology to deliver remote learning as part of the Department for Education EdTech programme. Working in partnership with Balcarras, an outstanding comprehensive secondary school based in Cheltenham, National Star delivered training and online advice and guidance to 75 schools. National Star provided 80 online technology assessments, six online leadership courses delivered to 47 school leaders and 22 ‘EdTech Thursday’ webinars to more than 150 teachers nationally, and created 60 EdTech Champions. 20
National Star helped run the first esports competition for players with disabilities
In November, Vicky Ford, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Children and Families, conducted a virtual visit to the National Star / Balcarras partnership. National Star provided a range of training in the UK for The Education and Training Foundation (ETF). We also offered teacher education with participants from a range of specialist and mainstream further education colleges.
International training Working with the UK Government’s Department for International Development, Skill India, the Indian Skills Council for Persons with Disabilities and with India’s National Skills Development Corporation, National Star developed and delivered training for specialist teachers and employers in India. 2021 marked the end of this four–year programme. Training focused on specialist teaching techniques for vocational trainers working with trainees with disabilities in training institutes across India. Training was delivered to more than 500 trainers across India. A guidance manual for specialist assessment was written for the Department of Government Training and will be used in 14,779 industry training institutes across India. National Star has also advised the Gujarati Government on the building development of a specialist training institute in Rajkot. National Star’s project EmployAble won a prestigious European Innovative Teaching Award from the European Commission and Erasmus+ which was a two–year partnership with Manpower Services College in Thessaloniki, Greece. Students from Greece were engaged in work activities in National Star enterprises, such as working in StarBistro and StarPrint. So successful was the project that Manpower Services has built a print facility modelled on StarPrint in its college and introduced job mentoring roles. National Star Foundation Annual Report and Accounts 2020 – 2021
