Year 9 Well-Being Day at Sir Herbert Leon Academy November 2019

Overview

Sir Herbert Leon Academy’s Year 9 students participated in a Well-being Day for 100 young people including at least 40 NCOP target students. They were able to experience a range of activities with the overarching theme of ‘Understanding Oneself’. The day was supported by Oxford Brookes University: Gear Up, Buckinghamshire New University: Pack Types and Education Business Partnership: All About Me.

Delivery

Buckinghamshire New University presented an interactive session on ‘Pack Types’ whereby the students were asked to choose 9 terms that accurately described them, e.g. generous, caring, indecisive, sociable etc. Once the words were chosen, the cards were turned around and there were pack types on the other side. Each pack type reflected character traits which the students could relate to themselves as well as having an opportunity to reflect on the accuracy of their personality type.

Education Business Partnership provided a session entitled ‘All About Me’ which focused on skill sets that students could pair with their strengths.

Oxford Brookes University’s Gear Up session introduced students to alternative routes into higher education including having the opportunity to explore their career options on the computer.

Evaluation

Students benefited from these sessions in three main ways; firstly a better understanding of how they would describe themselves; secondly, how to relate their character traits to transferable skills and thirdly, the variety of career options that could be linked to their mix of character traits.

As part of the evaluation students were asked what inspired them on the day. Here are some of their responses:

“Getting to understand myself better and learning some of my many traits”

“I got inspired by talking about the future with jobs and what it’s all about”

“Learning about what jobs that you can do without having to go on further into university. Gear up had given me more of an understanding in the job I am interested in”

“The lessons about jobs showed me that you can do anything if you try”

“The lectures that the guests gave us was inspiring and generally it was great”

“The Study Higher Programme was inspiring because it showed the different paths after secondary school”

Students were also asked what they considered to be the benefits of H.E. with the most popular response being that it would enable them to “get a better job.”

When asked what their next steps would be following the outreach activities they took part in, the majority of students stated that they would “explore the courses they might like to study at sixth form/college and university”.

Shamsa Khan