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