Hilton Metropole host Career Academy

Posting by Ranjit Hayer, Career Academy Manager

Year 13 Business Career Academy students visited the Hilton Metropole this week and met with Liz Watson, the firm’s Director of Business Development.

The students were welcomed into one of their meeting rooms to get the idea of what a meeting at the Hilton would be like. They were greeted with tea/coffee and some festive mince pies and chocolate brownies, which went down very well.

The students then listened to a short talk about how the Hilton used to be two hotels called the Warwick & Metropole. The students were taken on a tour and whilst on the tour, we bumped into the new Executive Chef, as he was preparing a big convention for that evening. The students learnt about head-hunting, as the Chef explained how he had been asked to move from the London Metropole to Birmingham, due to all his hard work and experience this term. The students were amazed to hear how many meals are served during busy weeks.

Whilst on the tour, the students saw some of the rooms the hotel offers its business clients, as well as the Executive lounge, which is open to its VIP clients. The students walked through lots of conference rooms and learnt how important it is for the Hilton to keep up to date with changes in the way businesses operate, to ensure the services that they offer are correct.

The hotel has a range of facilities including the largest indoor swimming pool in a hotel and a gym that the students visited. The Hilton also has air hosts/hostess staying from the airport. As such, they have to serve breakfast at all sorts of hours to ensure all their guest get the best experience.

It was an informative visit for the students, who got a real behind-the-scenes taste of what business is like in the hospitality sector. Visits such as these form an important part of the Career Academy scheme, with mentoring, guru lectures and paid internships also forming part of the initiative.

New Capital Experience for Business Career Academy

Posting by Ruth Sharp, Business Career Academy Co-ordinator

The Business Career Academy is new to me this year. The scheme itself was launched at the College last year and the first cohort of students have flourished under the initiative. My job is to bring a new group of Business students through.

That job started by selecting the students who would be part of the Business Career Academy and representatives from Lloyds TSB helped me to do that recently. Then, this week, we had our first trip with the successful applicants and it took us to London to take part in Career Academies UK’s ‘A Capital Experience’.

The students who successfully applied to the Business Career Academy are all on the BTEC Extended Diploma in Business course, which is a course I am very familiar with, having taught on this qualification for many years. For those as new to the Career Academy as me, here’s what that is: it’s part of a national scheme that raises the aspirations and develops the employability skills of young people. Career Academies UK works with the College to secure workplace networks and experiences for students, linking up with both local and national employers.

At ‘A Capital Experience’, students from Career Academies across the country visited London to get a taste of the banking sector. Our students spent the morning visiting Deutsche Bank and in the afternoon attended a conference at the Royal Festival Hall. The morning excursion enabled the students to see merchant bankers “on the floor”, juggling phone calls and banks of computer screens filled with financial information. It was a real eye-opener for the students, not least because of how hectic it is working on the floor in a huge global business like that.

The afternoon included a networking session, in which a bell was repeated rung and students were given a minute to introduce themselves to someone they had never met before and exchange contact details. This was a useful exercise, particularly in that it taught the students how important it is to collect contact details when you are networking, so you can follow up the initial meeting with further communication.

It was a great trip. The students were a credit to the College and they learnt a lot. They will have lots more wonderful opportunities this year, including more visits to local businesses, guru lectures from business representatives, mentoring and a six-week paid internship next summer.

Following hot on the heels of this Business Career Academy, a further four strands of this scheme are being launched, covering IT, Media, Public Services and Science. Any businesses who are interested in becoming involved in the scheme, be it to host students on visits, give talks, provide mentoring or internships, are asked to call Sue Brookes on 0121 704 2581 or email careeracademy@solihullsfc.ac.uk.

Students bitten by Apple bug

Posting by Ranjit Hayer, Career Academy Manager and Business teacher

           

The Apple store in Touchwood played host to me and the second year Business Career Academy students last week and what fun we had when we visited.

The students, all in their second year of the BTEC Business qualification, were on their first fieldtrip since their return to College from their summer internships.

The fieldtrip was hosted by Shiva Patel, who spent the afternoon with us and showed off Apple’s fantastic gadgets. This included the Mac Book Pro and Shiva demonstrated how the students could use it to enhance their BTEC coursework using the ‘Pages’ software. The students used their current coursework assignments for the Market Research unit to design posters that they would then use as part of the market research for their Business Plan unit.

The students experimented with the fast and efficient way the Apple software worked and even had one-to-one support on how their assignments could be improved with a touch of Apple sparkle. At the end of the fieldtrip the students were given a copy of all their posters to take away with them to print off in College

Apple also gave the students their very own Apple t-shirts, which they wore with pride.

It is visits such as these that form part of the Career Academy experience. The College is working with Career Academies UK to implement this national scheme which raises the aspirations and employability of young people by offering not only visits, but also guru lectures, mentoring and paid internships. The students on this recent visit all recently completed six-week paid internships at local businesses.

These recent internships saw the students at a range of local businesses, from hotels to building societies, and solicitors to council offices.

For student Sam Wallace, it was Coventry Building Society who offered him an internship. He spent six weeks at the firm and his duties included serving on the counter, processing customer transactions, answering queries and arranging meetings with the advisors. He also took part in a community event in Chelmsley Wood and partially completed his Customer Service Assistant Taskbook, as well as working in the firm’s banking hall as a meet and greeter.

Meanwhile, the Village Hotel offered fellow student Nadia Begum a similar internship. During her six weeks with the firm, the former Langley School student worked in all departments of the hotel.

Chartered Accountants Grant Thornton were also part of the scheme. They offered an internship to Rittika Sharma, who spent time working in the firm’s audit department. This time was split between external audit and government audit and involved checking the clients financial records to source invoices and preparing the income and expenditure statement for the service charge. She also worked on an NHS corporate governance project.

Another accountancy firm, BDO, offered an internship to Ryan Fryer. He worked in the Market, Sales and Clients Department, carrying out data management and cleansing tasks, as well as supporting marketing events. He also performed a number of research tasks, involving researching companies and industries.

Away from accountancy, another student worked with Chiltern Railways. Munib Altaf was employed setting up an inventory programme for the small on-board shops that Chiltern run from Birmingham to London. Whilst he enjoyed the job it took a while to get used to getting up at 5.00am to get the train to London. His internship was also extended by a few days, so he could train other members of the team on how to use the inventory programme he’d been refining.

                                        

Meanwhile, five students went to Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council. Dipesh Sharma, Dipesh Chauhan, Siobhan Williams, Primal Chhaya, Fatima Az-Zahra took on a variety of roles in several different departments at the Council.

I’m really proud of the students for the work they did over the summer. They are now into the second year of the Business Career Academy and I can see how much they have developed in confidence and experience over the first year, which is great to see.

Open Day Tops Hectic Term

Posting by Bev Bishop, Marketing Co-ordinator

What a busy spell we are having at The Sixth Form College, Solihull. Indeed, so hectic is it at the moment, that already today I have sent out four press releases to the local media!

With so much going on, I thought I’d share with you just a taste of what goes on at a vibrant College like this.

The peak of our activity came last Saturday, when we held out Open Day. We were open from 9.30am until 3.30pm and we had just over 1,400 prospective students visit us. All those students brought at least one parent and many brought both parents and brothers and sisters, so we had thousands of people on campus.

It was a wonderful, if exhausting day. Huge thanks go to all the staff and to the students who worked all day to help show our visitors round and answer their questions. We had staff and existing students in every subject area, as well as Principal presentations taking place. The student guides, in particular, were outstanding and spoke with such maturity and enthusiasm about the College as a whole and their particular subjects. Parents were so impressed with them and it made me feel so proud of them all.

We had so many positive comments from prospective students and parents over the course of the day and many said they would definitely be applying to come here next September, which is very encouraging. Already we have had more than 400 applications for September 2012, but students have until 30 March 2012 to get their applications in, so there is no need to panic yet!

We all felt like we needed a rest after Open Day, but there is never time for that at a big College like this. We had a timetable suspension day on Tuesday, so lots of students had no lessons, but don’t think for a minute that we were idle. Teachers were having meetings with their Year 13 students to review progress and these reviews will be made available to parents.

Business students have also been busy this week. The College is entering its second year of the Business Career Academy, which is a scheme which offers students a chance to get real-world business opportunities by way of visits, talks, mentoring and paid internships. Last year’s first cohort of students have thrived on the scheme and they were present as a new intake of students applied to join the scheme. Representatives from Lloyds TSB came into College to help us conduct the selection process and ten students (some of whom are pictured below) have been accepted into the programme.

The College dancers have also had a busy week. They have formed a dance company called Collision and they took part in a dance showcase at the Solihull Arts complex on Thursday evening called Bounce 11. Their performance (pictured above) was called “Time to Waste”, which explored through dance the idea of waiting in its many guises, including the excitement, worry and anticipation that waiting can evoke in people. The piece was choreographed by Dance teacher Jessica Morgan and the students and set to a compilation of music and sound effects.

There is more to come next week and in the following weeks too. On Tuesday next week it’s Autumn Fest, as we celebrate the cultural diversity of the College. Law students will be visiting Birmingham Crown Court on a fieldtrip on Thursday and there will be more student reviews taking place too.

We are also gearing up for some end of term events too – the College Production this year is “Little Shop of Horrors” and it takes place at 7pm on Wednesday 7, Thursday 8 and Friday 9 December, while the Christmas Music Concert is on Wednesday 14 December. Tickets are available for both events by calling 0121 704 2581.

Before all that, tonight the Leisure Studies students are holding a charity event at College called Race Night and there will be more news on how that goes soon.

Now, hopefully you can see what I mean about what a hectic place The Sixth Form College, Solihull is and this is just the tip of the iceberg. An awful lot of great learning has been going on too, with challenging and enjoyable lessons in each of our 43 A level subjects and 8 BTEC Diploma courses too.

Perhaps the only pause this week has come today – 11-11-11, better known as Armistice or Remembrance Day. The College paused for a period of silent reflection at 11.00am today, to mark the moment that the First World War came to and end and to remember those who lost their lives.

Guru Lecture with the LIVE Group

Posting by Ranjit Hayer, Business teacher & Career Academy Manager

Second year Career Academy students enjoyed a fascinating guru lecture this week, as they were visited by Theresa Crockett from the LIVE Group.

The LIVE Group is an events management company and Theresa Crockett is an account manager with the firm, based in Westminster. Theresa met the students at the end-of-year event at Arup last July, and on this first visit to the College she was eager to find out how their summer internships had gone. The students used the time to tell her all about their experiences, what they enjoyed and what they learnt about the working full-time.

Theresa then told them all about her work, including how her job works and how the world of events management has changed. She brought some of the latest technology that is used by the LIVE Group with her to show how conferences work. The students had a chance to take part in an interactive discussion in which new technology called a palmlet was used to vote on questions, opinions and to even rate speakers during the time they were talking at conferences.

The students were impressed and amazed at how conferences now worked and how important it is for businesses to closely follow new technology, as it is certainly changing at a fast pace.

Real world experiences like this are a valuable part of the Career Academy venture. The students are in their second year of a BTEC Extended Diploma in Business course and are getting unique opportunities with the Career Academy. This includes not only guru lectures like this, but also visits to businesses, mentoring from real business people and six-week paid internships, which the students have just completed over the summer.

More news on the internships coming soon!

Snakes and Ladders

Posting by Ranjit Hayer, Business Studies teacher

My A2 Business Studies students borrowed an idea from A level Law this week by adapting a popular children’s board game to help them with their studies.

Snakes and Ladders was the game and the students split into groups to complete the exercise. They all wrote their own Business Studies-related questions and answers, which focussed on topics like production methods, costings, economies of scale, business objectives and other issues covered in the course. These questions were tested on opposing groups as they shook the dice and played Snakes and Ladders.

It was a really fun way of helping the students to get to grips with the complex subject matter and of course there was more than a little element of chance involved too. The teams were really competitive and more than one roll of the dice saw the teams slipping down the board on a snake!

It was all in good fun, but there’s a hidden agenda too, as it was a good way to get the students to think about their revision without being boring. Fingers crossed it has helped; they now simply need to revise!! Good luck to them!

Applications for September 2012

Posting by Jennifer Lumb, Admissions Officer

It doesn’t seem 5 minutes since we were dealing with applications to join the College in September 2011, but we have now begun the application process for entry in September 2012!

Applications are coming in thick and fast through our website and prospective students are getting quick responses to questions and enquiries from our Admissions department. As always, students are very keen to get their applications in and we are processing them as fast as we can. Do be careful when completing the form that you enter all your details correctly and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ensure you put in all your GCSE/Level 2 subjects and predicted/achieved grades otherwise we cannot process your application until we receive them.

All students who have already applied, will have had an acknowledgement from us and we have requested references from their schools.

Interviewing for provisionally successful students will begin in November for Non-Partner School applicants (i.e. from schools other than Alderbrook, Hall Green, Light Hall, Lode Heath, Lyndon and Yardleys Schools) and we will be informing prospective students about this nearer the time.

This is a very nerve-wracking time for prospective students and we aim to inform them of the initial outcome of their application within 6-8 weeks of receiving it – this also includes interviewing.

Not all prospective students will be invited to interview and we understand that this is disappointing, but stay positive and visit a Connexions advisor to look into your post-16 options carefully.

Don’t forget, we have our Open Day on Saturday 5^th November 2011 – 9:30am until 3:30pm (last entry at 2.30pm), but check our website for more details. It is important that all prospective students come accompanied by a parent or other responsible adult and if this is a problem for you, give us a call in advance on 0121 709 7803 and let us know and we’ll arrange to have someone to show you around instead.

We wish you all the best of luck with your applications and your GCSE’s and look forward to meeting you!