National Award for Shrewsbury's Sixth Form College

Anyone who has been associated with Shrewsbury Sixth Form College knows that it’s a pretty special place and this was recently endorsed when the college won a national award for video conferencing in the specialist schools/sixth form category. SSFC only had video conferencing facilities installed in February 2011 but usage has grown massively across the college and in the county since then. The project at the college has been driven by their video conference co-ordinator Sian Squire, who said that the main focus of video conferencing at the college has dealt with students progressing to and from SSFC. Students and staff currently at the college have also been involved in conferencing, notably to universities in the UK to enhance their current studies – it gives them a taste of the world of Higher Education. They have also been involved with conferencing to businesses which gives students a taste of the world of work.

There have been a number of video conferences that have involved local partner schools in which staff at the college have taught lessons to pupils at the schools who will be future students at the sixth form. It gives students a taste of college life without having to leave the environment of the school in which they are currently studying and helps them to become oriented to life at SSFC. This has been made possible since many of the secondary schools in the area have also been fitted with conferencing equipment through the local authority.

The benefits of video conferencing are that it enables students access to high quality speakers in the area and across the world easily. In fact, the college is currently involved in an e-twinning project with France and has had speakers from as far away as Florida in the last year! It saves travel time and is therefore environmentally friendly. There are plenty of plans to expand the project in the future too as the work done at SSFC becomes more widely known, many other schools and universities want to partner with them and share lessons or events. Sian said “It is now technically possible to link up a number of schools or universities with us from across the world. The future possibilities with this type of technology are very exciting”.

The Video conferencing award was presented to the college at the JANET conference in London – JANET (Joint Academic Network) supports over 3000 schools, colleges and businesses in the UK. The award was presented by Vanessa Pittard from the Department for Education.

5 Jan 2012