ACTIVE SCHOOLS AND SPORTS
Active Schools is responsible for supporting schools to develop and enhance the quality of sporting opportunities in an extra-curricular environment. The coordinators utilise volunteers such as, teachers, coaches, parents and students in order to get more people, more active, more often. This is where a strong partnership with West College Scotland in key to the delivery of the extra curriculum programmes, through various opportunities that directly link to their course.
Louise Morrison, Active School Lead for the sports students said, ‘Active Schools provide support to schools with all elements of sport beyond the curriculum. We work with clubs and community organisations to make sure that the exit routes are clear and are transitional from school to clubs. Another key element is that we run and organise competitions and as you can imagine this encompasses many other roles and responsibilities.
We get excellent support from the College sports coaching students to help run some of the programme, which is a massive help and it provides tangible and realistic work experience for them.’
Active Schools and West College Scotland have been working together for over 5 years, but this year has seen the development of a partnership agreement so each partner knows what is expected going forward.
Pat Shearer, Curriculum & Quality Leader for Sports within the Care & Life Sciences Faculty commented, ‘We’d been working with Active Schools for a number of years and really were focussing this year on making our relationship more formal. It’s particularly worthwhile for our students as they get real practical experience, as all students use West Dunbartonshire’s Active School team as part of their work experience element.'
How it works is simple. Each sport student at the College at some point over their 3 or 4 years of study is assigned to a Primary School or afterschool programme. HNC Level students complete a formal work placement, consisting of a Lunch time club, support two curriculum lessons and run an after school club on a Wednesday throughout the academic year. For the first time this year HND students undertook a mentoring unit and event management unit in partnership with Active Schools, which gives them real practical hand on experience -something that is invaluable on their CV and that employers look for. The work experience unit balances and complements the theory students learn in college, but allows them to freedom to organise and run their own event.
Louise added, ‘The HND and HNC students are actually classed as a member of Active Schools, so they have to be professional. It’s not voluntary, its work experience and the students need to work hard for their course success. It’s a lot to think about having to plan, activities, timings, scenario planning, and run the full day from start to finish.'
ACTIVE SCHOOLS AND MEDIA
With the success of the partnership with the sports department, Active Schools were keen to enlist the help of other college departments to promote the partnership out with the College.
In October 2015, the HND Media students were approached to help put together a promotional shortfilm of the Clydebank Active Schools partnership highlighting the successful College Student Work Placement. The idea was be that this would be used to show to new sports students so they see what kind of projects they’d be involved with over their studies. It would also be given to Sports Scotland to showcase Active Schools Good Practice.
David Molloy Active Schools Coordinator said, ‘We are constantly looking at way to improve and promote the excellent work that we are doing for the schools across West Dunbartonshire. We needed the support of the College to showcase this superb work and we were keen that is was more than an article in the paper; it needed to be something that people could really engage with.’
David got in touch with the Creative Industries and Essential Skills Media Lecturer Kate Cotter, and steps were taken to start the next phase of the partnership approach.
Twenty year old Media Student James Boyce from Clydebank put his name forward and has his work highlighted at the recent School West Dunbartonshire Schools Games Awards in June.
David added, ‘We’ve been delighted with James work, he understood the important elements we wished to highlight with regards to the relationship. James managed to put a quality video together from all his footage with very little input from Active Schools; and managed to capture the essence of the programme
This project has been hailed such a success that there are already plans in place to involve the HNC Media students from this August to provide footage for the next West Dunbartonshire Schools Games Awards. The West Dunbartonshire Schools Games is a yearlong competition where each school gets points for entering competitions upon there finishing positions. Active Schools are running an awards evening to present the winning schools whilst showing a montage of all the school games events throughout the year.
Kate Cotter added, ‘This is a fantastic project for our students to be involved in. they will seek to collect footage throughout the year and produce this into an inspirational video for the awards evening next year.’
There is a lot of scope for the future as well as the possibility of a class project around compiling online resources that can be uploaded to onto the new WD School Games website, which would take the form of video demonstrations and interactive teaching resources for primary school teachers to use.
ACTIVE SCHOOLS AND WELDING
With two out of the three faculties in the College involved with Active Schools, it didn’t seem fair to leave the Faculty for Business and Technologies in the dark.
David’s last project was to enlist the assistance of our welding department in April for the WD Torch Relay Project. This project involved every school in West Dunbartonshire running a relay format, where a select group of pupils will run to the next school carrying a Flag and a Torch. The Torch was to be designed and built by the Fabrication & Welding Department through Lecturer David Docherty and Fabrication BAE apprentices Lauren Reid and James McMeeking.
On the 15th of June the Torch relay left from the College to kick start this 3 day relay by running to Our Holy Redeemer School and from there onto 40 other primaries.
Twenty year old BAE Sheet Metal Apprentice Lauren Reid from Linwood said, ‘I loved being able to get involved in such an unusual project. It looks a few months to come up with a suitable design that was achievable, but we are all very pleased with the finished result.’
David commented:
All departments have been very accommodating and my experience with West College Scotland can only be seen as a positive one. Long may this partnership continue and thanks to all those staff and students who have worked hard to make it the success it has been to date.
