92 students from Newbury College recently spent the day getting a taster of what it’s like working in a variety of Media, IT, Art and Design professions. This formed part of a series of sector specific careers events organised by the Education Business Partnership West Berkshire (EBPWB).

Vectorworks, MAXX Design, Arra Design, Brighton Institute of Modern Music, George Olney (actor) and independent BBC producer Judith Bunting spoke about the variety of careers available in their respective areas and their reasons for choosing their careers.

The students were then given the chance to have hands-on experience of, or debate the issues surrounding, the challenges faced by these professionals.  Activities included learning how to build a portfolio to show to prospective clients, how to tackle a design brief using the latest software to design the interior of a house and looking at what happens behind the camera in order to produce a film or TV show.

Complemented by British Institute of Modern Music, students were also able to have discussions about the qualifications and routes into careers within media, music and event management.

One Newbury College student said Spotlight was “Very helpful. Has shown me what I need to focus on for my future job.”

Lesley Stewart from EBPWB commented, “It is difficult to get a true feel of any business or profession until you can experience it for real. So giving these students the opportunity to talk face to face with business professionals is really important. It’s this that can really motivate and inspire them to follow their dreams and see how their studies translate into jobs in the future. Thanks go to all our volunteers for giving up their time to help our future workforce.”

Something ‘en vogue’, valuable for their future, one considered ‘easy’?
Should it be a traditional language such as French? A rather fashionable one such as Mandarin? One to travel the world such as Spanish?
I have been in the language industry for 13 years now and things have evolved over time, yet simply being bilingual truly is what matters. Research suggests that speaking and therefore thinking in any foreign language will help your children with their cognitive skills and have quite profound positive effects. Children are born with the ability to learn any language in the world! So go for something you like the sound of, something that will be useful if you spend a lot of time abroad, something which you might feel a connection to, perhaps even a language that your children’s friends have started to learn so they are encouraged to follow in their footsteps and share the fun!

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E: learn@thevici.com

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Based outside the historic village of Odiham, Hampshire, the hotly anticipated Jay Archer Floral Design Flower School, provides career and hobby courses for all ages and abilities.

As one of a new generation of exciting florists, Jay’s award-winning style and methods challenge the industry’s status quo. In classes taught personally by Jay, students will be encouraged to forget the norm, experiment and explore their creativity, using predominately oasis-free methods and locally sourced, seasonal, British flowers where possible.

Recognised internationally for her natural, abundant and eclectic designs, Jay is a huge advocate for British growers and the Slow Flowers movement. The Flower School has partnered with Claire Brown at Plant Passion and Rosbie Morton, owner of The Real Flower Company, in a bid to show its commitment.

Winner of the Hitched Breakthrough Award for Best New Wedding Florist (2012), in 2014 Jay was shortlisted for three awards: New Covent Garden Market Awards ‘Florist of the Year’, Perfect Wedding ‘Florist of the Year’, and the National Wedding Awards.

She recently became part of the internationally renowned Chapel Designers, a collective that brings together the highest calibre of floral design talent from around the world.

Jay hopes the school will not only inspire and empower students but also educate new and existing florists about the British flower industry and the huge variety of home-grown and seasonal alternatives to classic blooms: “There’s such a wonderful community of growers and wedding florists, in particular, should use this as an opportunity to support them by recommending seasonal alternatives to brides who insist on peonies in November.

“There are so many unknown varieties of flora and fauna grown in this country, as well and exciting grasses and even moss, which can be used to create dramatic, beautiful arrangements. It’s just that many people aren’t aware of the options.

Jay continues: “At the Flower School, we’ll show students how to get creative with all manner of materials so they can see the huge potential in ethical and contemporary flower arranging. We hope by spreading awareness that demand will increase and more growers like Rosbie and Claire can expand and diversify.”

For more information about The Jay Archer Floral Design Flower School visit www.jafdflowerschool.com

Courses start in September 2015. Pre-booking is available now by visiting the website.

Over the past eight years, the programme run by the Education Business Partnership West Berkshire has given 400 students, aged 14 to 15 years, the chance to benefit from the knowledge and experience of business volunteers, as well as to explore behind the scenes of Vodafone HQ in Newbury.

More than 300 Vodafone employees have now taken up the ongoing opportunity to give something back to the local community. After the celebratory event one volunteer said how privileged he felt to be involved in making a difference to young people, while another summed up the positive impact of providing useful building blocks for the students as they go forward to take on the challenges of exams, interviews and their future working lives.

During the final workshop the students expressed gratitude to their Buddies and said how much they valued their experience on the programme. One student described it as, “The best confidence booster ever”, which was backed up by another student who said, “It has been inspirational and incredibly helpful; I feel so much better in myself!”

Looking to the future, the Programme Manager Helen Roy said, “The EBP is delighted with the ongoing success of Take a Chance and that the Vodafone Foundation has agreed to continue its support and funding of £120,000 per year for the programme to be run in 2015-2016 and 2016-2017. This will allow even more young people in West Berkshire to benefit from this outstanding partnership within the business and education communities.”

The photograph above shows the 2014-15 cohort of Take a Chance Students with some of their Vodafone Business Buddies. Take a Chance is supported by the Vodafone Foundation, registered charity number 1089625,

Participating schools:
Park House School, Newbury
St Bartholomew’s School, Newbury
Trinity School, Newbury
Kennet School, Thatcham
The Downs School, Compton
Theale Green School, Theale
Denefield School, Tilehurst
Little Heath School, Tilehurst

Supported by funding from Barclays, this workshop, delivered by Education Business Partnership West Berkshire, is part of a new National Youth Agency programme, delivering employability and life skills training.

Discussions were had about how much food costs, the high price of gas and electricity as well as debates about how much is realistic to spend on clothes and going out…

Comments from students included:

“I had a good time seeing how much it is to live and keep your family healthy.”
“Thank you for helping me realise money doesn’t grow on trees.”
“You have to work hard to earn money and help your family.”

The business volunteers who supported these workshops came from a number of local financial institutions including Lloyds Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest, along with Sainsbury’s and Verizon and a number of local independent business people.

Tony Walker said, “Helping the students to understand budgeting is a valuable lesson.” Darren from Lloyds Bank added, “It was great to see how much the children appreciated this.”  And Sue Hamilton from Sainsbury’s summed up the workshop by saying, “It was a real insight for young people into the true cost of living.”

Jane Grunseid at EBPWB said, “It is great to get the chance to really make a difference to the knowledge and life skills of young people. This workshop meant that the students have learnt some extremely important life lessons in budgeting and spending wisely whilst at the same time getting an appreciation of the financial pressures that many families are under. All done in a fun and engaging way, my thanks go to our business volunteers for supporting us.”

Hopefully an easy question to answer and one that students would love to hear about! We are looking for lots of different speakers over the next few months, so if you fancy talking about what you spend most of your waking hours doing, then please look at the list below to see if your sector is needed.

This spring we have been really busy, in particular, improving the financial awareness of young people. Over 70 volunteers have helped in excess of 1000 students.

Comments from some of the students have included:-

“I have learnt that money doesn’t grow on trees and that you need to spend it wisely”

“It’s made me rethink when I’m going to leave school and the type of job that I’m going to get”

“I didn’t know about the extra costs you have to pay to run a house.”

So, if you have helped us deliver these, a MASSIVE thank you!

Other volunteering opportunities this summer term include:-

• Mentors to help improve interview skills
• Mentors to support a Business Challenge
• Mentors to support our Financial Awareness workshops
• And of course Speakers to talk about your job and your business sector

A full brief or training is given in advance, so if you’re new to volunteering, we will guide you through the process.

If you are interested then contact Jane Grunseid via email at janeg@ebpwb.co.uk.

We hope you can support us and we look forward to hearing from you.

Mentors to give support for interview preparation

Practise your questioning skills to help students discover what makes a good interview, understand their own personal strengths and develop their CVs, all in preparation for a real interview.

• 23rd June, Theale Green School, Theale, all day
• 26th June, Little Heath School, Reading, all day

Business Mentors for Business Challenges

Practise and develop your business, mentoring and communication skills during a business challenge.

• 23rd June, Downs School, Compton, all day

Support for Financial Awareness Workshops

Support students as they work out whether they can afford to leave school at 16, 18 or 21 and live their chosen lifestyle.

• 7th July, Willink School, Burghfield, all day

Work experience in the following areas:

• Administration
• Engineering
• Finance, including banking, accounts, IT systems
• Geography and sustainability
• Law
• Marketing
• Media and PR
• Retail and Fashion
• Sport
• Theatre
• Using IT management systems and processes

Speakers

Enthuse students about your business sector by talking to students about what you do, why you like it, what made you choose this career and the types of jobs available.

Members of the team have been in to train staff with headmaster, Mr Paul Dick joining them.  In addition pupils have been shown what the device is, many also trying the training defibrillator themselves and being shown clearly that it cannot be misused.  Nick said that “working with the school has not only allowed us to educate pupils about the defibrillator but highlight to everyone that cardiac arrest is an indiscriminate killer; it can happen to anyone at any time.”  Indeed 12 young people die from Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) a week out of a total of some 30,000 out of hospital cardiac arrests a year.  Survival depends on reaction time and having the right equipment to hand can make all the difference.

Following a training session and the assembly with Year 8, the Headmaster, Paul Dick, said: “Congratulations to Dr Nick Young and his team.  The work they do, in making defibrillators available throughout our community, is outstanding.  Thank you too to Nick for the excellent training he has given both to staff and to pupils, so that we can extend the effectiveness of his programme.  Kennet School is delighted to make a further contribution to the health and welfare of the community we serve.”

Heartstart Thatcham deliver, for free, Emergency Life Support (ELS) training.  This allows a person to cope in a medical emergency until professional help arrives. 

Please note in any medical emergency your first priority is to dial 999.

For a lot those voters, there will be just one pack, giving details of how to vote by post for their parliamentary candidate (the general election) and for their district councillors ( for West Berkshire Council).

Some voters will get two packs – the second one to elect councillors for their town or parish council. Although there are 54 parish or town councils in West Berkshire, there are only elections for Newbury Town Council, Thatcham Town Council, and Brimpton, Kintbury, Inkpen, Stanford Dingley, and Stratfield Mortimer parish councils. This is because the other parishes do not have enough people wanting to be parish councillors to warrant an election.

So the message is, if you have applied for a postal vote, read all the packs you receive carefully and follow the instructions.

Further details about the forthcoming elections can be found at www.westberks.gov.uk

Primary school admission figures for September 2015 have just been published and West Berkshire Council has successfully offered almost 90 percent of parents their first preference.

The total number of children offered their first preference this year was 1772. This is a slight increase on last year’s figure of 86% which equated to 1647 children.

Ian Pearson, Head of Education at West Berkshire Council said, “I am pleased that we were able to give such a percentage of families their first primary school choice. In light of the rising pupil figures, I feel that it is an achievement to see the first preference offers rising year on year.”

foreign-languageHere at the VICI Language Academy we are always telling people about the difference learning a language can make, and for young adults they often want to know if a second or third language is going to make a difference to their career prospects.

Naturally we say it will and through our sister company VICI Language Dynamics where we help business find and train staff with language skills we know there is a growing demand for. However recently Time online published some interesting research.

Wharton and LECG Europe found that studying a second language is correlated with about 2% more in annual income.

Now that might not sound like much, and honestly, anecdotely we have seen language skills command a bigger difference than that, but then as The Economist helpfully points out, allowing for compounding over a career it would just over £40,000. Again we think it would be more.

Of course it does matter what career you choose with everyone from the military through to banks paying more for people with language skills.

Naturally it does depend on the language you learn with Asian languages proving in particular demand although even German will see your earnings attract a 4% premium on typical earnings. In the UK currently, French and German are still the languages most in demand.

Specifically using your language skills is also expected to be a growing sector with the American Bureau of Labor Statistics showing interpreters and translators are among the top five fastest growing occupations, with opportunities expected to increase by 46% between 2012 and 2022. Presumably one of the perks of globalisation will be the need for people fluent in more than one language.

So do you fancy a career in languages? Or how about just increasing your earning potential simply by speaking another language? Rest assured if you come to the VICI Language Academy we can help with a choice of 10 languages on offer and native speakers ready to help you learn.

We can also use our expertise to help you choose a language if you are determined to have a career that is enhanced by being bilingual, so do come and talk to us for the right advice about learning a language.