This week has been a really emotional week for me, as you might gather if you received a letter from me on Monday…

As you may be aware, having worked for New Bridge for the past 13 years, I have focused most of that time developing our employability strategy. From setting up our Bridging the Gap programme 11 years ago to introducing our pre-internship pathway and opening up our Medtia Square campus and Future Finders Employability College, my passion has always been and will continue to be, to ensure that our students have the best opportunities to be work ready when they leave our schools. As our trust continues to grow, an opportunity recently became available to continue this work more strategically across all of the schools within the trust, and following a recent interview, I will be moving into a new role as Assistant Chief Executive Officer of the trust, with specific responsibility to develop the trust’s work around employability and destinations. In light of this, my last day as head of college here at Medtia will be Friday 29th November.

I am delighted to be able to inform you that our new head of college at Medtia will be Jaina Walton. Jaina has worked for the trust for 5 years and for the last 2 and half years has been head of school at Hollinwood Academy. Jaina is really looking forward to moving to Medtia to lead our outstanding provision. I am sure you will get chance to meet with Jaina in the near future.

Many thanks for your continued support. I should probably stop talking now and pass you over to our staff and students for this week’s updates, starting with our job coach, Diane, who has news of..

• Matthew – Matthew is continuing to impress the staff at the very busy Clean Plate Kitchen where he is continuing to develop his skills. Matthew is able to work front of house and he now helps to serve food, take it to the dining area and talk to customers, as well as making tea and coffee. He is proving a great help to the staff who are very pleased with the progress he is making.
• Jason – Jason always applies himself in a courteous and helpful manner and he is still really enjoying helping out at the new café at The Guinness Partnership. Jason has been busy with stock taking, small food preparation, cleaning and is very good at following guidelines in health and safety procedures. Jason is confident in showing new students where things are and how to operate and re-stock vending machines, which is a lot trickier than it looks. Jason is now applying his skills and learning to use the iPad tills. Great work Jason.
• Zanub – Zanub has a flair for working in customer service at the café where she is able to communicate with the staff and carry out tasks effectively. Zanub really enjoys this side of working in the café and is continuing to develop her iPad skills to enable her to take orders independently.
• Reece – Reece has been learning the systems at dsgnuk where he continues to have a flair for creative graphic design, creating posters, video and interiors. Whatever the area, he definitely works hard throughout his placement and he is thoroughly enjoying the role. Great work Reece.
• Joshua – Joshua is becoming a lot more confident in his various roles in the library. He is building up his skillset in online basics and continues to have a passion for the typing club, this is part of his duties in the library setting. Joshua is very friendly towards the staff and public and is starting to engage in helping in the customer support. Great work Joshua, you are quietly confident and able to do the work independently. Well done this week.

• Fahad – Fahad has returned with great enthusiasm as always, he loves being in the customer support areas – being front of house and working with the public is his forte. Fahad can also work independently following his timetable, and he will also look for additional jobs to keep himself busy. I am really pleased with his work ethic – thanks for your support helping other students, Fahad.

• Liam – Liam is building up his skillset in customer support. This week, he has helped out customers with printing, using email and is now confident enough to work independently in certain areas. Liam also enjoys the online basics club and was delighted to tell me how many he has repaired – 90 this week! Thanks Liam for applying yourself in the role.

Oldham Library have been talking about our Future Finders on Twitter this week – I’m sure you all remember Sam, one of our former Future Finders who proved such an asset at the library that..

It really is wonderful to see how much of an impact our students have in the community. Now we have an update from our job coach Genna on our students down at MMU..

Only three weeks left for our students on their first term’s placement!! (The last week of term is full of exciting activities!)

So down at Manchester University, guess who’s back? Only Mr Lewis O.!! Lewis was with us last year on Bridging the Gap and has been asked to come back until Christmas to help with the workload in the IT department!

Lewis is an asset to the team and is needed to take over the jobs that Kyle used to complete, because Kyle (another former BtG and Future Finders student from 2017) is moving onto a Level 4 IT Engineering Apprenticeship!! Well done Kyle! New Bridge couldn’t be prouder of you and what you have achieved!

In Kyle’s own words..

‘With hard work and perseverance, anything is possible.’

I couldn’t have said it better myself! We have also had a visit from our lovely professional photographer, Sam, who has been out and about in Manchester taking photos of our students.

Dom is working one-one with Paul in Facilities and learning lots of new manual trades. He will hopefully be moving into print services, I’ll update you on this soon!! Here is Dom receiving his Manual Handling Certificate with his trainer!

Here is our worker of the week…Luka!!! He is pictured with his head chef Mr Jack Todd who is training Luka up to be a chef and a Charlie’s Angel by the looks of it!! Well done Luka, very well deserved, you have made an excellent impression on your team and I couldn’t be prouder!

Last but not least, a big thank you and good luck in your new role to our leader and the man who set up our placements in Manchester Metropolitan University many, many moons ago, Mr Daniel Wood. Our students would not be working here today if it wasn’t for you and what you have put in place in Manchester and Greater Manchester to get our students working! Thank you and good luck as the new Assistant CEO (hopefully after this message I will find out he’s responsible for pay rises, haha, or if you don’t hear from me again it means I was fired for the ‘many moons ago’ comment….)

Have a lovely weekend all!

I also have a special ‘Week in the Life of…..’ feature to share with you – not from one of the students this time but from our very own Deputy Head, Mr Pidlyskyj, who started his new role with us in September. Please click here to find out all about his exciting week!

Finally, I would like to thank those families who joined us earlier this week for Parents’ Evening. We had record attendance and it was lovely to chat to many of you in person. If you have not yet had chance to fill in our very short questionnaire about your visit, please could you take a few minutes to complete it here.

As this is my last blog entry, I would like to take the opportunity to say that I have loved every minute of my role as head of college. We really do have the most incredible and dedicated staff team and the most fantastic, capable and talented students. I am looking forward to continuing to support the college and I will certainly still see our staff and students regularly within my new role as I continue to base myself out of Medtia Square.

Thank you again for all your support,

Daniel
Head of College

Click here for this week’s news from Graham

You can view our previous blog entries here