10/11 Learner Services SAR (Version 2)

Department/Area: Learner Services / HoD/Manager: Rosheen Hucker
Date Completed: On-going / Date Validated: 18/10/11
Main Grades
Contributory Grades
* / These grades may limit the Overall Effectiveness grade
A.  Outcomes for Learners
A1. Enjoy and Achieve
At Risk Register
The At Risk register continues to be an extremely useful tool in retaining students who are at greater risk of dropping out of College and potentially becoming NEET. The Learner Liaison Officers (LLOs) targets those students, identified by tutors as being in danger of not achieving. Overall the At Risk register has contributed to the retention and supported achievement of 74 students this academic year
Impact:
The At Risk Register provides students with the best chance of succeeding by removing as many barriers as possible and helping them to develop coping strategies e.g. problems at home, financial difficulties, drug & alcohol related issues, and bullying concerns.
Strengths:
The success of the At Risk register was enhanced this year by the development of the Marking records system. This provided useful information shared by tutors on the background of each student, identifying their specific needs. This allowed the LLOs to be more direct in supplying the relevant support.
Weaknesses:
However not all tutors supplied the relevant information on marking records which made the task of offering support more time consuming in some cases, as LLOs had to investigate the students background. Sometimes the issue is more of a disciplinary nature rather than a support issue which consequently means that the LLO has spent time investigating a disciplinary matter when they could have been helping students in greater need of support.
Table 1 - Students who have been supported by LLO's 2010/11
No. Of students contacted for support / Completed & Achieved / Completed & No Achievement / Withdrawn / Retention / Achievement / Success
74 / 57 / 1 / 16 / 78% / 98% / 77%
Withdrawn / Male / Female / White / Black / Mixed Race / Asian
16 / 5 / 11 / 14 / 1 / 1 / 0
In order to further increase the success of the At Risk register, LLO’s will work collaboratively with the Connexions team, (beginning Sept 2011). A referral system will be implemented which focuses on the 16-18 year olf South Glos cohort, who will be referred to a Connexions Personal Adviser for 1-2-1 advice. This will ensure that a greater number of At Risk students are offered specialist support.
The LLO team have developed a “to do form” for tutors to complete for those students who require a home visit. The purpose of this form is to provide the learner with a set of specific and clear targets of the work that they need to complete and approximately how long this should take them. Experience has shown that students who have clear set objectives are more likely to engage in completing the work than those who are simply asked to come back into College to finish their work.
To further support tutors in clarifying whether a student needs LLO support or disciplinary action a more detailed roadmap of actions will be designed. This will reduce the number of students who are placed on the At Risk register who actually require disciplinary action and therefore enable the LLO to focus their time and support on students who are most in need.
Work Placement
Supported 394 learners find a work placement during 2010/11. As Early Years and now Health & Social Care students need more than 1 placement per year, 594 placements have been arranged in total. 362 students achieved which has given a 92% success rate.
This high figure has been obtainable due to the increasing number of work placement employers year by year; currently standing at over 570. This has resulted in a varied selection of opportunities for each learner and being able to attend more than one placement.
Dedicated staff committed to safety and welfare of our students. Over 100 new employers have received a visit to complete a H&S check. Informative documentation has been produced to promote the Safeguarding of our students. This has resulted in students feeling safe (no reported incidents whilst on placements) and positive employer feedback.
Pro-active approach to past criticism – students starting placement before CRB checks have been completed. It is now arranged that students complete CRB forms at Taster Days. This has resulted in 99% of students starting placement on time. 210 new CRB checks completed this academic year.
Continuing excellent working relationship with NHS; resulting in a hospital placement for every Level 3 final year learner wishing to pursue a career in Nursing. This has resulted in a higher proportion of students obtaining places on Midwifery and Paediatric Nursing degree courses.
Outstanding success rate of placing students with additional needs; which involves detailed planning and a need to know the students well. This has resulted in the students growing in confidence and formulating a chosen career path. We received 100% positive feedback from students.
Dedicated team who arrange and escort learners lacking in confidence on pre-placement visits. This has resulted in an improvement of placement attendance and therefore a higher number of learners succeeding.
Effective 1:1 time with each learner visited whilst on work placement; resulting in previously undisclosed information relating to learners welfare and safeguarding being indentified and pro-actively responded to ensuring the learners’ needs are fully met.
Highly motivated team giving extensive support and guidance to learners when applying for placements. This includes letter writing and interview techniques. This has resulted in a professional appearance of our learners and an increase in learner placements. It has also resulted in more students being successful at University interviews.
Excellent relationships with students with an ‘open door’ policy in place; resulting in successful matching to most appropriate employer due to the knowledge of each learners’ strengths and weaknesses.
Placement team member with an excellent knowledge of Careers Guidance; resulting in skilled judgement in assisting learners planning for future placements.
Impact:
The impact on students is that they are developing skills through work experience opportunities which increase their employability; from applying for jobs through to professionalism within the work place.
90% of Level 3 Early Years students went into Early Years employment or university.
Areas for improvement and proposed activity for the rest of the academic year
·  Invite more employer consultation and speakers from industry to talk to learners.
Counselling
The Counselling Service benefits from being firmly embedded within the caring culture provided and shared by the Learner Services Teams operating across three college sites. Throughout the year excellent links have been established with local schools, Connexions and external support agencies, resulting in information shared prior to the learner commencing their course.
To further raise awareness and visibility, the Counselling team held their own stand at the College’s Fresher’s Fair displaying promotional material across a wide range of issues, and made face-to-face contact with learners in order to promote the service, how they can access it and answer any queries. To follow this theme through, the team also attended Learner Services Induction sessions for new learners.
Learner referrals have been taken from across the college environment, e.g. personal tutors, student administrators as well as self-referral at the Learner Services Reception. This has been enhanced by cross referrals to and from other Learner Services support areas such as welfare, careers and finance. Learners have been able to gain access to emotional support alongside the more practical benefits all within a centralised and accessible location.
The Counselling service has continued to provide emergency support in curriculum areas whose learners have had to cope with sudden crises e.g. sudden loss or bereavement etc.
This year has once again seen an increase in demand and take up of the service. As a result of the highly responsive and re-active service to the learner, the counsellors were able to support all requests by responding flexibly to timetable demands to suit tutor and learner needs. Improvements in the publicity of the Counselling service, together with the use of texting to issue reminders to learners have all led to an increase in the attendance rate at Counselling appointments. The increase in figures may reflect the influence of the introduction of college wide “safeguarding” training and raised awareness of issues surrounding abuse etc. This has encouraged and enabled staff to refer learners more easily. The Counsellors work closely with individuals, enabling the learners to move through to a more content disposition and experience clearer thinking to allow the learner to be able to focus on learning and achieve their academic success. This year has seen a significant increase in levels of mental health disturbances and emotional distress in student, including several attempted student suicide attempts.
·  The total number of individual Students who came for counselling = 269
·  Students who did not achieve their qualification = 20 (all of whom were withdrawn)
·  This equals a Success Rate rate of 92.5% (or 249 students).
Impact:
The Counselling service employ self-assessment questionnaires to ascertain impressions of student satisfaction and counselling efficacy. A consistent finding demonstrates that in excess of 90% of student responses make an explicit link between their positive experience of the counselling service and their capacity to stay engaged with their college studies. The above highlights the connection between the provision of emotional and psychological support (together with other sources such as personal tutors) and the ability to fully engage with their academic and development tasks associated with being a student. For the College the benefits are improved retention and achievement.
Table 2 – Breakdown of Counselling Appointments 2010/2011
Total Number of Appointments Made / Students Who Attended Given Appointment / Students Who Did Not Attend / Cancelled Appointments
788 / 562 / 172 / 41
Ethnicity / Gender
Black / Black and White African / Black Caribbean / White and Black Carribean / White and Asian Other / Other Mixed / White British / White Other / M / F
9 / 1 / 26 / 1 / 1 / 717 / 33 / 227 / 561
Age Range / Course Level / Disability
Pre16 / 16-18 / 19+ / 1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / Physical / Learning / Sensory
1 / 554 / 233 / 141 / 234 / 395 / 16 / 2 / 35 / 35 / 61
Issues
Family / Depression / Bereave- ment / Anxiety / College / Anger / Relation-ships / Mental Health / Drugs/Alc / Stress / Bullying / Self Harm / Self Esteem / Confidence
289 / 73 / 32 / 109 / 154 / 55 / 302 / 51 / 30 / 38 / 14 / 16 / 40 / 28
By Faculty
Mgmt,
Skills for life,
Art, Media,
Perf Arts, Hair and Beauty (1) / Gas and Construction (2) / Land,
H&S Care, Child Care, Foundation, Public Services (3) / Sport and Travel (4) / Sixth Form,
ICT,
Vocational Business (5)
294 / 8 / 292 / 60 / 134
Enrichment
The Enrichment programme in 2010/11 has been organised in the traditional format of activities e.g. Football, Basketball, Photoshop, Cooking etc that take place on a Wednesday afternoon when the majority of students have a free slot in their timetable. Alongside this traditional provision there has been a move to organise bespoke activities for individual Curriculum areas which fit in with the course material and therefore enhance the development of the learners on that particular course. These department led activities have proven to be highly successful, engaging a greater number of learners due to the commitment and support of the tutors in organising their learners to attend the activity, as it meets a number of learning goals. This means that a greater number of students are gaining additional qualifications e.g. First Aid that can be added to their UCAS application/CV as well as developing a variety of personal and social skills that enhance their future career prospects.
Bespoke activities have included: First Aid, Spanish, Ski slope trip, Make up presentation (Travel & Tourism), British Sign Language, First Aid, Face-painting, Sing up (Childcare), First Aid (Health & Social Care and Sport), Taekwondo/ Streetwise (E2E & In Gear), Road Safety/ Go Karting and First Aid (Construction), Envision/ Volunteering (A-Levels), DIY Cooking (EFL/ International students).
This evolution of bespoke activities has resulted in an increase in students attending the Enrichment programme. Between the period; Oct 09-Dec 09 - 5010 learners were engaged in Enrichment, the bespoke activities have increased this figure to 6055 for the same period Oct 10-Dec 10. See below for Jan-Apr & May-June figures.
Table 3 – Enrichment Additionality Activities learners have taken part in
What kinds of enrichment/additionality activities have learners taken part in?
/
Academic Year / Activities
10/11 / ·  6055 learners participated in 64 activities between October and December 2010 (see detailed print-out A).
·  2405 learners participated in 61 activities between January 2011 –April 2011
·  851 learners participated in 31 activities between May 2011- June 2011
·  Students who attended 2 activities have been counted twice, hence the large numbers