A 'below the surface' look at our awards ceremonies...

Tonight's the night! The first of our primary Gold award ceremonies will take place in the City Hall Ballroom so it's time to to roll out the red carpet, ready to welcome our fantastic award winners and their families! 

As a team, we often get queries about the award ceremonies, how they work, and why they are as they are! We know that many people are unaware just what goes in to making them happen so we wanted to give you an insight behind the scenes. 

Of course, it would be wonderful if it all just came together in a short period of time but in reality, it take months of planning! So we want to take this opportunity to share the process with you, using an iceberg to help explain that what you see is far from the whole picture!

Introducing our new Sheffield CU Patron...

We are delighted to announce our brand new Sheffield CU Patron!

Chris Brailsford will take up this role and is very excited to be attending one of our Award Ceremonies this week as his first official engagement.

Chris comes from the Parson Cross area of Sheffield so already has a connection to many of our Sheffield CU members and their families. From an early age his passion was for English. Initially, he trained as a teacher, sharing this passion with many pupils over the years, something which he still does today. He particularly loves Shakespeare, poetry and storytelling and it was this that led Sheffield CU to Chris – our very own Helen was lucky enough to be taught a few English lessons in school by Chris, and those lessons inspired her to share this love of English ever since.

Chris is keen to share this story of ‘learning in his own time’, just like all our CU members. Later on in life, by now working in the Council's Housing Dept., he decided to do an evening course in drama, and this extra learning led him to his other passion, acting! Whilst Chris is keen to remind people that he is no ‘Hollywood superstar’, he has appeared on popular TV shows and in films but also on our very own Crucible stage too!

Chris said ‘I’m really inspired by the works of Sheffield CU and by all the fantastic children and young people in Sheffield. They are putting in the extra time and effort to learn more about something they love, and that’s a brilliant attitude to have.’

Planning your October half term fun?

There are some spooky happenings all across Sheffield this October half term - have you planned your holiday fun yet?

The October Children's University Passport to Learning newsletter which includes details of activities across Sheffield happening during the October half term is now available! Click HERE or the link on the side of these page to start planning now!

Children and young people who take along a Passport to Learning will be able to earn additional CU credits at these activities. There's also a list and contact details of our validated Learning Destinations.

During October 2016, there will be a number of FREE CU LIVE! activities as part of the Off the Shelf Festival taking place in the Winter Garden. Please see the newsletter for more details!

Looking back over 50 Gold Award ceremonies...

Celebrating such a fantastic milestone this evening has given us a brilliant opportunity look back on all the amazing ceremonies we have had over 8 years at Sheffield CU. We are so proud to have welcomed over 6,500 children and young people who have taken part in at least 100 hours of out of school learning to receive their awards at both the Town Hall and the two Universities.

We are thrilled to be hosting our Gold Gold ceremony at the Diamond building and can't wait to welcome our new batch of award winners tonight, who are just as special as those that joined us for our very first ceremony back in 2009. At this ceremony, there were 70 children from 5 schools who attended. Now, we have nearly 1500 primary children, and over 400 secondary and Passport to Learning children and young people receiving their Gold Awards each year!

As always, we couldn't do it alone and want to say a HUGE thank you to all our schools, Learning Destinations, the Universities, Town Hall team and all the children and families who have joined us celebrate their achievements and who support our work every day. A very special thanks also to Penny Rea and Anita de Brouwer who championed CU in our city and along with Katie, hosted that first ceremony all those years ago. Here's to the next 50!

CU LIVE! - Free fun activities in October half term!

Have you started planning your October half term fun?

As part of this years fantastic Off The Shelf,
we will be hosting some fab FREE CU LIVE! activities in the Winter Garden during the October half term holiday.

• Monday 24th October - Museums Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam University
• Tuesday 25th October - Sheffield Volunteering
• Wednesday 26th October - Imagination Gaming
• Thursday 27th October - Sheffield Hallam University

10am-4pm in the Winter Garden, Surrey Street, S1. All activities are drop in, so come on down!

Children and young people with a Passport to Learning will be able to collect credits for taking part, and there is lots of fun to be had with some of our brilliant Learning Destinations. Make sure its in your diary!

Sheffield CU Participation and Performance Analysis 2015

We are very pleased and proud to share with you the 2015 Sheffield Children’s University Participation and Performance Analysis report which provides detailed evidence of the impact of Children’s University in Sheffield.
Any school, or Learning Destination will tell you that being part of CU and being celebrated and rewarded for taking part in out of school activities makes a difference.


Here in Sheffield, we do lots of work looking at the impact of participation in these activities, through lots of data analysis, but also through case studies and evidence collected from schools, providers, parents and the children themselves. With over 35,000 children and young people in our city with CU credits, we have a lot of information to work with!


This builds on our previous report and includes in-depth analysis of the impact of participation in CU activities on attainment and attendance, and progress measures, as well as anecdotal evidence of impact through a number of case studies from individual children and families. For the first time, this report includes a detailed look at prior attainment as well as examining the impact on Pupil Premium, SEN and the most deprived (IDACI) children and young people in the city. It also includes analysis of progression routes for post 16 students which were introduced last year.


To view the full report, please HERE!

Our 50th Gold Award Ceremony!

We're THRILLED to announce that our next ceremony will be EXTRA special as it's the 50th Gold Award ceremony hosted by Sheffield CU. It's our Gold Gold ceremony!!!

This fantastic milestone means that there are now over 6500 children and young people who have received Gold Awards at ceremonies at the Town Hall and Universities since CU began in Sheffield. Amazing!

To mark the occasion, this ceremony will take place in the brand new, £81 million Diamond Building at the University of Sheffield. We've also commissioned the brilliant Snorkelingsheep Illustrations to produce a very special image that will be used for this event!

Letters have been sent to our secondary schools, and Passport award winners and should be received this week. We can't wait to see you there!