Students from Weston College’s Education, Health and Lifestyle faculty have donated 430 Easter eggs to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children’s play unit.

The donation follows a faculty competition which saw the College’s Early Years, Health and Social Care, and Sport and Public Services departments go head-to-head to collect as many eggs as possible in 10 days.

The Health and Social Care department won the competition by collecting a total of 220 eggs.

Delyse Taylor, Subject Area Manager for Weston College’s Health and Social Care courses, said: “It was an amazing team effort from the staff and students who got behind the competition.

“The inspiration to make a difference for the children at the hospital was a huge motivation, and the students were delighted to be able to present the Easter eggs last Friday to the staff in the play unit.”

Weston College is promoting volunteering opportunities to its students and staff with the goal of 2017 hours of volunteering to be pledged across the College this year.

If your organisation has volunteering opportunities it would like to advertise within the College, contact zoe.ashman@weston.ac.uk 

At the Honeytree Day Nursery we invest in apprenticeships as we believe that apprentices are practitioners of the future. We like to train apprentices and support them in gaining their qualification. We do this as we recognise that at times it is difficult for young people to gain the experience required to follow their career aspirations. All we ask for in return is hard work and a commitment to follow our ethos and values.

Apprentices allow us the opportunity to ‘home-grow’ our practitioners and as such we employ 98% of apprentices once they have completed their course. There are clear progression routes for our apprentices and this is evident in one of our Deputy Managers who started off as an apprentice within our business. I myself completed my Level 3 full time at college and if I was to turn back time I would have completed my qualification through an apprenticeship as the benefits are clear, both for apprentices but also employers. A very big benefit of completing an apprenticeship is the fact that you are getting paid as you learn, and you get to know what it's like to work in the industry. Employers see it as the ideal way to form their perfect employee, which is why so many apprentices are offered jobs at the end of their course. Apprentices are also entitled to paid holidays and other benefits.

The things that employers look for in an apprentice are quite simple. We look for people willing to work hard and commit to enhancing the lives of children. We work very closely with Weston College and we know at what stage each of our apprentices are at. This allows us to give support in the workplace.

Another benefit is that our apprentices work with a range of different ages ranging from 6 months to 5 years and in some of our nurseries the children are older as we offer holiday club. This means the apprentices receive a wide range of knowledge and understanding for different age children that may be in their care.

Jay Sparkle,

Lead Manager,

The Honeytree Day Nursery

Weston College has employed Chris Lemin as its new Curriculum Lead for Cyber Security. Cyber security is the process of protecting networks, systems and  data from cyber-attacks. It is a hot topic, with the government estimating that large businesses face an average cost of £19,600 when presented with a cyber-security breach.

Chris brings a wealth of knowledge to the role, having worked for the Royal Air Force and as a commercial cyber-threat intelligence analyst for the past three years. As part of his most recent role, Chris dealt with a wide array of companies, assisting them in defending attacks from the internet.  

In February, Capgemini’s Digital Transformation Institute produced a study based on 1,200 senior executives, which highlighted that 68% of organisations are reporting a high demand for cyber skills. Chris is now writing the Level 4 cyber security apprenticeship standards, and is ensuring that these meet the needs of employers and give students the relevant training to meet these skills gaps. These apprenticeships will offer students the perfect mix of both education and exposure to the cyber security world, while gaining a formal qualification.  

As well as the new cyber security apprenticeship, the College is developing a cyber lab which will be based at the Winter Gardens.  This will allow the students the opportunity to practice a range of scenarios, from testing insecure networks to reconfiguring a network, giving them hands on experience.

Chris said: “Education is the key to cyber security, we are aiming to help organisations to meet the needs of their skills gap.”