College shortlisted for ‘Leading the Learner Voice Award’

Hopwood Hall College logo

Hopwood Hall College has been shortlisted for the ‘Most Improved Provider’ category in the Learning & Skills Improvement Service’s annual ‘Leading the Learner Voice’ awards.

The awards seek to celebrate innovation, effort and action relating to learner representation within Further Education colleges.

The various award categories reflect the different leadership roles that are vital to ensuring learners’ views are actively collected, listened to and acted upon. Awards are available for learners individually and collectively, and for college practitioners, senior managers and whole colleges.

During 2007 the Principal, Derek O’Toole created a new post on the Senior Management Team; the Director of Students was appointed to provide a voice for students at the highest level and ensure that improvements were made based on their valued and vital input.

A new Learner Engagement Strategy was launched in September 2008 and one term into the new strategy, OFSTED visited; they reported that although the strategy was very new and so little impact could be seen yet, nevertheless there was some ‘encouraging work’ and they could see ‘reasonable progress’.

Since then Learner Engagement at Hopwood Hall has blossomed; students across the College are participating fully in a wide variety of innovative and engaging activities aimed at capturing their ‘voice’ including: Principal’s Question Time, themed ‘Focus Weeks’ and an online student forum.

In February this year the Director of Students Kris Skelton received a letter from the Prime Minister, congratulating the College on achieving the ‘Customer Service Excellence Standard’, due to the hard work they had put into capturing the views of its students. Then, in April, OFSTED returned and judged learner engagement within Hopwood Hall as having made ‘Significant Progress’.

Principal Derek O’Toole is delighted, “To be shortlisted for this award is a fantastic achievement. The staff and students involved should be very proud of the progress they have made in a relatively short amount of time. Some exciting developments are also in the pipeline, such as a new ‘Student Leadership Team’ which will work formally with the Leadership Team to further improve learner participation. I look forward to Hopwood Hall winning more awards in the future!”