Celebrate - All in a year's work!

The festive season is upon us and the year is drawing to a close, and there is only one thing to do. Celebrate!

Highlights this year include:

·         Over 22,450 children and young people are registered with CU, and have collectively gained 944, 273 credits in total so far. We’re nearly at one million hours and we can’t wait to celebrate!

 

·         We have our first Children’s University Gold Doctorate winner, who has reached and exceeded 1000 hours! This special young person will receive their award at the next ceremony at Sheffield Hallam University in May 2014.

 

·         During 2013, Sheffield CU have given out over 2,905 Bronze Awards, 1,694 Silver Awards and have had a fabulous 980 Gold Award winners who have been invited to the Town Hall or Universities to receive their Award. 

 

·         There are currently 50 schools subscribed to Sheffield Children’s University. New additions include: Sheffield Springs Academy, Greenlands Junior and Infant Schools and Lydgate Junior School.

 

·         This International CU Conference took place in early December and provided us with a very special opportunity to share some of the work we have completed around the impact of Children's University here in our city, and the difference it makes to the children and young people who take part. Colleagues from across England, Scotland, Australia, Hong Kong and China were there, and were very impressed with the data collection and analysis that takes place in Sheffield.

 

·         From Autumn 2013, children and young people who are invited to attend one of our award ceremonies will be given the opportunity to have a professional photograph taken with their certificate in a special Sheffield CU graduation style cap and gown. Tempest Photography will be attending each of our award ceremonies from now on, offering all award winners a free photo-shoot and the opportunity to order prints directly with Tempest following the event. Feedback has been incredibly positive so far and we will continue to consult on this development in the new year.

 

·         Preliminary data has arrived for the last academic year, which looks at CU participation and attainment in both KS2 SATs and GCSEs. This data looks very positive and seems to follow the previous trend showing a clear link between participation in CU activities and attainment. Also, utilising FFT estimates, figures indicate that children and young people who take part in CU activities do better than they were previously estimated. Further analysis of the data will take place in the coming months and the report will be ready in the new year. 

·         Sakina Kingswood, our fabulous apprentice is now our fantastic business support officer as she was successful in her application to join the team on a permanent basis. She also recently raised nearly £200 for Sheffield Children’s Hospital by becoming Snow White for the day. She even recruited some dwelves (dwarves/elves) to join her!

 

·         Our lovely Helen (a level 3 trained Forest School leader) has delivered Forest School activities to 120 Y6’s from Lydgate Juniors and 70 Foundation Stage children and their families from Emmaus Primary. She has also delivered a series of woodland play training sessions to childminders from across the city and there are even more sessions booked in for the new year! As well this all of this, Helen has been working our special CU School ‘project-in-a-box’ which this year is all about Forest Schools. Up to 30 CU schools will receive special CU Forest School toolkits, which enables them to deliver a series of out of school activities. These woodland adventurers will then be brought together at a special jamboree day packed full of activities in one of Sheffield’s parks.

 

·         The Acorn Fund has been officially launched! This is a brand new initiative which gives each CU school the opportunity to bid for up to £250 of grant funding to create, grow or sustain a CU out of school activity. The application must come from students in school, as the idea is to encourage and empower children and young people to become fully involved in the development of activities in school, as well as interacting with school staff and their peers to survey need, identify gaps and consider sustainability. The first round of applications will be received early in the New Year, and we will be giving our first grants out soon after!

·         Free CU LIVE! activities have been taking place during the holidays, with some fabulous activities from Imagination Gaming, Museums Sheffield, The University of Sheffield to name but a few! CU LIVE! will be back next year, and will be coming to a venue near you! The team are currently exploring links with shopping centres, supermarkets and other venues in order to expand the programme.

 

·         February Freebie will be back and bigger than ever in 2014! Over 30 FREE CU activities for children and young people who have a Passport to Learning will be happening across the city during the February half term. Look out for leaflets and posters which will be available early in the New Year!

·         Using the Passport to Learning, children and young people have clocked up over 100,000 hours this year, by visiting 88+ Learning Destinations across the city such as museums, libraries, Heeley City Farm, brownies/scouts and local dance, drama, music and martial arts groups.  

 

And we are sure there will be lots more to celebrate in 2014!
Finally, we want to take this opportunity to say a HUGE thank you to you, along with all our colleagues, schools, Learning Destinations and partners for supporting our work and ensuring the children and young people of our wonderful city are celebrated and rewarded for their achievements.

We hope you enjoy the festive season, have a restful break and look forward to seeing you in the new year. 

Merry Christmas!

Katie and the Sheffield CU Team

 

 

High Hopes - The Children's University's 6th Annual Conference

The beginning of the week saw the Sheffield CU team taking a field trip to Cheshire to attend the annual Children's University Conference at the lovely Shrigley Hall.

The conference is a fantastic opportunity to catch up with our fellow CU's both home and abroad now as CU is active as far away as Australia, Singapore and China!  There were some incredibly inspiring speeches from Jay Griffiths, an award-winning British writer and author, Dr Keith Bartley, former Chief Executive of General Teaching Council, Joel Cadbury, founder and Chief Executive of Longshot Ltd, as well as the Chief Executive of Children's University Ger Graus. 

There were also some fabulous workshops delivered by our lovely colleague Emma from Kent CU, and Debbie from the CU Trust who demystified the social media movement as well as Caroline Gilbert from the CU Trust who gave some very practical advice on income generation and fund-raising.

This conference also provided us with a very special opportunity to share some of the work we have completed around the impact of Children's University here in our city, and the difference it makes the the children and young people who take part.

Delivering our workshop on data and measuring the difference

Through our magnificent database, we have completed a number of studies for over 5 years, and each time we see that children and young people who take part in Children's University do better than children who don't take part. And it's not just the children and young people who are expected to do well too, we look at what each student is estimated to get (an estimate based on their previous results and assessments, as well as their school, gender and age etc) and we see that children and young people who take part in CU also do better than they were expected to do, whilst Non CU students often don't do as well as expected.

Children's University also makes a difference to the most vunerable groups, so for those CU children who are living in the most deprived areas of the city and traditionally don't do as well at school, their results are better than those who don't take part in any activities. The same goes for children and young people with special educational needs and those who have english as a second language.

Whilst we are clear that there are lots of interventions at school that can affect children and young people and their attainment, because of the consistent results we produce, we do feel confident in saying that there is a clear link between Children's University and attainment at school. Raising children and young people's self-esteem and confidence through the rewards and encouragement of CU affects how they feel about learning, and that then impacts on their learning in school.

When you think of how many hours of voluntary learning some of our children and young have taken part it, its very hard to believe it doesn't make a difference! School staff, parents/carers and even children and young people themselves will tell you this, all we try to do is provide the hard evidence.

We are very grateful to the CU Trust for being given the opportunity to share this message with others and hope we have been able to give other local CU's some food for thought at the very least.

The theme of the conference was 'High Hopes'. And here in Sheffield, ours certainly are!

If you would like to read our most recent participation and performance analysis which evidences the impact of Sheffield CU, please click here