Hello and welcome to the first Springboard Project blog of the new academic year.

Firstly, a very warm welcome to all our new students and their families who maybe reading this for the first time and of course all our returning students.

This is going to be a very exciting year for all of our students. Let me tell you why;

We have changed our curriculum so that we are destination led. This means that everything that our students engage in will lead them to a positive destination on leaving us whether it be through employment, volunteering or setting their own enterprise up.

Students will be in one of two pathways; ‘Preparing for Working Life’ or ‘Experiencing Working Life’. Students on the ‘Preparing for Working Life’ pathway will build on their academic achievements and vocational interests based at Springboard Project. Students on the ‘Experiencing Working Life’ pathway will be based at Avro Fc and will experience work in different placements based around Oldham personalised to their interests.

We have employed some excellent new staff to support and help with our student’s development. Mr Chard has joined us as KS4 Vocational Lead from NBS. Mrs Lavery has joined us to become Job Coach on the ‘Experiencing Working Life’ pathway. Ms Hoyle has joined us and become our ICT Teacher. Ms Whittle has joined us as a Teaching Assistant. Mrs Burke has joined us be the school chef and also help develop students culinary interests.

We are building our SLT by bringing in Ms Price as Operations and Business Manager and Mrs Blackburn as our Safeguarding Lead who joins us at the beginning of October.

We have brought in some fantastic new governors such as Anwar Ali OBE who is CEO of Oldham-based social enterprise Upturn Enterprise. Zena Bruder, owner of Zena Bees Café, Jim Clarke, Outreach Director of the Apprentice Academy, a new parent governor, Ms Squires and Andrew Smyth, Oasis Hub Lead and North West Cluster Lead. Each will provide feedback to help develop our provision which will in turn bring the best out of the students. We are incredibly grateful for their time and efforts.

As stated earlier, the ‘Experiencing Working Life’ will be based at Avro FC who we have become partners with this year. Not only are we going to undertaking several work experience projects there, including creating a Forest School to be used by Springbrook Lower School pupils, we will also be using their facilities to deliver our Sport Pathway.

 We are very proud of the great feedback from a work experience placement at Zena Bees Café recently. Jim Clarke commented; ‘Your student has been down at Zena Bees Cafe this week. He has been getting stuck in with various tasks from washing up to helping painting. I chatted to him yesterday and he was talking about life. As a young person I was impressed with his maturity. He just wants to work and get on in life. He got stuck in and has been really helpful. Also fitted in great with the team. He is definitely a credit to the school and work you are doing.’

Mr Khan has been working, experiencing the working life as an administrator and has blossomed. He has had some absolutely fantastic feedback and it has been great to see his confidence grow and grow.

It has been a really promising first week at Springboard Project. Students and staff are really excited about the future.

Let’s make it happen.

Mr Pidlyskyj

Acting Head of Site