External CPD report

IF staff: Jane Johns
Title, date and timings of external CPD attended:
University of Cardiff Teachers’ and Advisers’ Conference-30/6/17
What you learnt and how it will enhance your work for Inspiring Futures:
Useful up to date information when talking to school staff, parents + during H.E presentations and guidance interviews.
Lots of facts from UCAS.
Extra detail to go with presentations particularly from UCAS session
A useful website helping students look at degree course options-www.sacu-student.com, greatly improved from when I first saw this.
Ideas and content to share with colleagues:
The keynote speaker was Mike Hughes and he talked about what makes a good teacher, but most of it could also be applied to good guidance too as he was talking about how questions are what make good teachers. On average teachers ask 400 questions a day and he was urging staff to think seriously about reducing this number and he gave us the question quadrant to focus our thoughts based on Romeo and Juliet:
One answer / Many answers
From source / A knowing question, e.g. who killed Tybalt? / An understanding question, e.g. who was responsible?
Not from source / Beyond question, e.g. How many deaths were there in William Shakespeare’s plays? / The big question, e.g. Is killing always wrong?
I am sure you could think up 4 questions to help students in a guidance discussion.
He also talked about the importance of assessing ourselves, by video and/ or being watched working to help up improve. Twice a term we need to be given permission to try something different in an activity, or discussion in our cases, instead of always doing something you know works. Being given a risk card he called it.
Summary of external CPD:
James Durant-UCAS
·  2016 cycle overview-highest number of 18years taken on, despite of reduced number of them
·  Chances of entering HE has increased-32.5% of 18 year olds in England and 29.5% in Wales
·  94% received at least one offer and higher and medium tariff providers accepted more students, 30% get 5 offers.
·  What has changed in 2017-EU numbers have dropped, nursing applicants have gone down by 10%, numbers of mature students have fallen because more have been going to HE at 18/19
·  There are large regional differences in entry of 18 year olds, but average is about 30%
·  At 18 women are a third more likely to enter HE than men.
·  In 2016 41% of students getting BBB get a place in a higher tariff university, in 2011 this figure was 19%.
·  So what/ there has never been a better time to apply.
Researching Future options-SACU-Peter Mulligan
·  I saw this website being demonstrating a couple of years ago, and it has greatly developed since then, and certainly impressed teachers as it is free for students to use and does a lot of things.
·  I am not sure how effective the Spartan Test is but the results that are presented look useful for students who have not dob=ne Futurewise!
·  Presented results in several formats-degree cloud, career cloud, and had information linked to individual courses and career suggestions. New information on apprenticeships is there and they are trying to get access to live apprenticeship vacancies.
·  Also available was an A level match to see what different combinations of subjects could lead to in terms of degrees.
Multi-mini interviews-Vicki Roylance from the School of Medicine.
·  Most of their health/medical courses now recruit using MMIs.
·  Students get a detailed letter which gives them a lot of detail so they know what to prepare and what to practice, and what reading to do.
·  The interviews all follow a pre-determined marking scheme, which is very detailed. All interviewers are trained.
·  Poor performance at one station may not affect over all score.
·  The university is looking at the following: suitability for the course, presentation, whether the students are rehearsed, but not necessarily going from a learnt script, that the student can listen to the question and are prepared for scenarios where there is not necessarily a correct answer, that students can demonstrate an answer with examples and reflection, confidence, that they can fill the required time slot (this varied, but was often 6 minutes with two questions to answer.
·  The students were given two minutes to read a question and prepare themselves and then had 3 minutes for the two questions. In the example we saw the student was asked: Give an example of a time when you worked in a team and what made the team successful? And then..What would you do if you were working on a group project and noticed that one member of the team was not contributing?

Please send this form to Jonathan Hardwick (Professional Development Manager) and Natalie Kaplanski (Human Resources Manager) as soon as possible after the CPD.