This week I have spent much of my time planning for September. Our Future Finders students have been based at our Medtia Square campus for two years and it has made a significant impact on learning, progress and achievement for our students. Our students have improved their independence and love being in the town centre. In September we are anticipating growth again of almost 25% in pupil numbers on our pathways. This will mean us creating a second Digit4ll pathway group and a second Pre-Internship group. As you know we also share our building with New Bridge Horizons, which also continues to grow, with an expected 25-30 new young people joining the provision in September. Factoring our joint growth together, we have no option but to explore options around premises. It is anticipated that within the next 6-12 months, the Pathways and Future Finders provision will move to their own campus within the town centre of Oldham. We are exploring appropriate buildings and we will, of course, keep you updated at every stage of this journey. It is really exciting to build upon our successes and I can guarantee that we are absolutely committed to ensuring that our Future Finders students continue to be based in the town centre as this is the most appropriate destination to prepare our students for employment and independence in the future.

Now for an update from some of our staff and students, starting with our job coach, Anne-Marie..

Another fabulous week here at Future Finders, something a little bit different, with more 1-1 support. Monday as always is our classroom day, working on our Functional Skills. We always start off with English and Maths and here is a quick update on what we have been up to with Mr Holland..

“In English and Maths this week we have been working on some past Maths papers and fine tuning our spelling, grammar and punctuation in preparation for our exams, our first one being English on Monday (17th June)”

In Employability this week we have had been working on completing our final unit for our Employability qualification. We have been looking at our own personal well-being and what activities we can do that will help us to promote that in our local area.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday continue to be our placement days. As mentioned in last week’s blog, our placement time is beginning to be slightly different. Those young people that have gained employment have had their first week without any job coach support to ensure that they are completely ready for independent working when they finish with us in July – and they have all done an amazing job! You should all be extremely proud of yourselves for the hard work that you have put in to get you ready for the positions you are in now.

For those students that are still looking for paid or long term voluntary positions, they have had an intensive week of job searching – Oldham and surrounding areas have been inundated with your CVs, covering letters and applications!!!! We have had a few positive leads, so fingers crossed for you all!! Hopefully we will bring you some positive news soon.

Chloe has been at Premier Inn this week, demonstrating her skills to show she is up to the standard that they require to hopefully gain employment with them……again, fingers crossed for Chloe!! For all her hard work, Chloe has been awarded our ‘Worker of the Week’! Well done Chloe!

Sufyaan has also been working hard..

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That’s it for now! Have a great weekend, rest up and we’ll be back to the job searching on Monday!

Finally, our students will be getting ID badges next week. These were requested at student council by the students. They will be compulsory for all students to wear, so please make sure that students have them with them each day when they come to college.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Daniel
Head of College

You can view our previous blog entries here

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