START OF A NEW YEAR!

Post by Bev Bishop, Marketing Co-ordinator

We are one week into the new 2012/2013 academic year and new students and returning students are settling in well.

But before we look at the start of the new year, I just want to reflect for a moment on the year we have just finished. According to the media, A level standards fell for the first time this year, but not at The Sixth Form College, Solihull and our students (not to mention the teachers) deserve huge praise for that.

I won’t quote statistics at you here, but suffice to say results were up on the year before and if you want to see exactly how our students did this summer, check out our Success leaflet, available online now at http://bit.ly/Rm7f3s.

We’ve also added a number of success stories to the College website too so you can get some examples of students success and progression – check them out at http://www.solihullsfc.ac.uk/results/success-stories.

Back to the start of this year and enrolling thousands of students is no easy task, but the College adopted a new system this year and big thanks must go to our Web Development Team, who have created a great online enrolment system.

Students moving from Year 12 into Year 13 were invited for the first time to enrol online and so were able to do this from home or even from abroad while they were on holiday. Many chose to do this and enrolled quickly and easily. Some chose to come into College because they wanted to discuss their options and a few were asked to come in too. For the first time, enrolment was available as soon as they picked up their results and our first online enrolment came at 6.02am on Thursday 16 August – just two minutes after A level results were published!

Inevitably, enrolling new students into Year 12 is a slightly more complex issue, as we have to check GCSE results, gather contact information and provide them with appropriate advice, amongst other things. As such, all new students came into College to enrol and staff enrolled them using the online system, which we have christened Tyber.

Every new student went away with a starter pack this year to set them up for their studies. This included a College draw-string rucksack, a ring binder (with the Student Handbook inside) and a College pen. These materials are already being put to good use in the first week of term.

It’s only the start of a brand new year, but we’re looking forward to the challenge ahead. Keep your eye on the blog for more news from around College.