Another busy week and only a few left now for our Future Finders students. Our dedicated team of job coaches are working so hard to support some of our remaining students into work. We have decided that to ease the pressure slightly, we will be offering some support over the summer for those still looking for work. You will receive a letter home about this to explain further in the next week or so.

I have spent much of my week balancing the books and planning our staffing and timetables for next year, whilst managing our huge growth in students! On Wednesday, I joined superstar student Ed at the Atrium where we were filmed by ‘That’s TV Manchester’ to celebrate our work at The Atrium. I am so unbelievably proud of Ed and of all of our Atrium staff, as you will see in a moment, the video really shows what a difference our staff and provision make to our students. A huge thank you to Becci, Sammy and Toni who do such an incredible job each and every day!

We also celebrated Armed Forces Day at the Atrium on Wednesday and, like last year, our staff and students pulled out all the stops to make sure it was a great success!

On Thursday I met with Councillor Shaid Mushtaq and Mrs Tootill to tour the new Springboard Project building next door and to show him around Medtia. Next door is looking brilliant and will provide a world class teaching environment for some of the students within our Group! We can’t wait to welcome the students and staff of the Springboard Project onto the campus in September. It was also great to talk to Cllr Mushtaq about our provision – he was extremely impressed and we hope to work with the council in the future to extend our employability offer to students based within mainstream schools in Oldham. More on that soon I am sure!

Now for an update from our job coach, Colin…

Monday at Future Finders was exam day! Students completed their English Functional Skills Reading exam in the morning. The afternoon session was spent adding the finishing touches to complete our Employability portfolios.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday the students attended their placements and also went out into the community with job coaches to hand out CVs and collect application forms to be completed and handed back.

Wednesday also saw one of our Future Finders students doing something a little bit different. Not BBC or ITV but ‘That’s TV Manchester’ came to The Atrium Cafe to meet and interview Edward and the staff..

Edward was interviewed on his thoughts around employability and employment, with his trusty ‘’extras’’ Colette and Tara supporting..

Autographs anyone?? There may be a slight charge……

Once Edward was done being a TV star, he found the time to also have a chat with some of the volunteers from the SSAF as this also coincided with Armed Forces Day..

Monday reminders – Maths exam first thing, don’t be late! And also the ‘Employer Awards Evening’ starting at 6:30pm at New Bridge School – if you haven’t already confirmed your attendance, please do so by Monday morning.

Have a wonderful weekend,

Daniel
Head of College

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