Hi all, welcome back to the final half term of the year.

To be honest, I’m pleased to get back as last week I spent a few days decorating – not my favourite pastime! So back to my “comfort zone”.

Earlier in the week a number of us met to look at the challenge we face at our Medtia building. Many of you will recall we have a number of different groups in our town centre site.

The majority of the young people at Medtia are part of our Horizons provision. In my blog a couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the success of our post 19 offer. So, I was delighted (just for you Lauren) when John told me about our projected growth for this year – another 20 young people. It’s brilliant that we continue to support the young people in a quality assured provision. Visibility is everything. However, this has led to a challenge.

At the same meeting, Daniel briefed us about the success of our pathways, pre-internship and Future Finders offer. These students are also based at Medtia. A couple of years ago there were only about 20 young people based there. This year we have a projection of over 75. These increased numbers are testament to our collective aspirations – more students wanting to move into work, more students wanting to be part of their communities. Students, from all our schools in our trust, are really engaged by our pathways offer and see the pathways as a really positive choice. So, more learners in Pre-Internships, Lumenus, Digit4ll, Activ8 and Future Finders.

We are getting fuller. We need to give this growth some careful consideration.

Continuing with the theme of the town centre, on Thursday we had our Springboard pre-opening Ofsted visit. An HMI joined us to ensure that all our policies and processes are in place so that we can open our doors in September. We were pleased with the way the day panned out and I believe the inspector went away reasonably satisfied. News to follow.

I was also delighted that, last week, many families joined the national demonstrations to protest against the state of funding for our children and young people. You can find information here. Families are quite rightly concerned.

The rest of my week was spent trying to balance our books!!

Blimey – think I might stick to decorating after all.

Have a great weekend everyone,

Graham

You can find all Graham’s previous blog entries here