The innovative career guidance career programme has transformed how Waltham Forest College prepare learners for the job market through a strategic blend of targeted support, industry partnerships, and curriculum alignment. Funded primarily through their Learner Services budget. This career programme provides a comprehensive career development program that is aspirational. A cornerstone of their approach is the termly Industry Breakfast Collaboration events, which feature over 30 employers per session. These events offer personalised career advice, mentorship, and hands-on experience, equipping learners with essential employability skills required in their future careers. Their sector-specific workshops and webinars further enhance these skills, both online and in person. In June 2024, they held a SEND Job Fair in collaboration with Local London Careers Hub East, engaging over 140 SEND students from local schools and offering tailored career support to meet their unique needs. Their participation in key national events, including Careers Week and National Apprenticeship Week, highlights their commitment to inclusivity and industry relevance. The impact has been substantial: 96% of their learners have been engaged, over 600 unemployed individuals from the local community had the opportunity to access job placements and interviews through our events, and overall career readiness has significantly improved. This project exemplifies their leadership in career education and dedication to providing meaningful, sustainable career opportunities for all learners.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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The college’s ESOL provision has been developed through partnership working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, to include learning and development structured around Shakespeare’s works. This has been in place now for 7 years, and continues to grow in terms of opportunities, engagement and impact. Last academic year there were 235 learners engaged with the project at various levels, but the impact is wider-reaching. ESOL learners have learnt about plays, performance and language, and this has been the underpinning theme for their English language development. As well as language skills learners have learned about themselves, their new community and English heritage in a positive and engaging way that instils pride and a sense of kudos. They have developed confidence, improved their mental health, often after significant trauma, and become empowered by their new found skills. This positive impact has been spread widely across the college through tutorial engagement which positively raises awareness of the issues facing young immigrants and asylum seekers, as well as awareness of the power of Shakespeare and the theatre. The programme is progressive over their learning journey, but includes learning about performance and technical production, dance, costume, history and culture. The pinnacle of the project is the college’s ESOL Shakespeare production, which in 2023/4 was Romeo and Juliet. 37 learners performed in the final production.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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The College “Industry Partners – Workforce of Tomorrow” programme began as strategic employer engagement within the apprenticeship provision, developing into the bedrock of curriculum design across the College Group, embedded into the annual planning cycle. Positioning the College as a strategic talent partner for local businesses, aligned with the Local Skills Improvement Plan. Innovative because: Employers understand their role in The College Strategic and Continuous Curriculum Cycle provides curriculum planning with employers at its heart, ensuring high quality employer engagement is interwoven into the fabric of the College delivery. -A range of planned interventions at scale across all disciplines. -Weaving innovation in the workplace into College delivery. Impact is recorded, evaluated, tested, revised and drives further development. Delivers the “Workforce of Tomorrow” talent pool. -Employer Curriculum Boards with Industry Partners -Shaping Curriculum with Industry Partners Survey Audit of staff workforce - dual professionals. -Analysis of destination data -Industry placements (designated day 7th July) to build relationships and gather intel -Skills and Work Board meetings – (Connections, JCP, CVS, University, Council, College, Employers) Members of local provider network Advisory Board. -In person discussions with Chamber of Commerce/Employment and Skills Advisory Panel (ESAP)/Local Authority -Curriculum Review and Planning meetings -Governor oversight and inclusion of their industry knowledge Employer relationships have developed to inform, innovate and co-design curriculum to provide a talent pool of learners able to progress into work, tackling skills shortages.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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Future Flames Productions (FFP) is the UK’s only college-based commercial production company giving creative media students real live experience of producing high- quality video content. All revenue from client commissions funds students’ academic and personal development, including course-related trips and visits, for example to television studios and/or anything they need to complete their coursework. FFP’s ethos is very much about “doing what we teach in the classroom out in the real world and in real time’, with commissioned work directly contributing to student assessments and shaping their career paths. Since launching in 2021, FFP has seen students work on over 100 films for 18 different external clients ranging from the local council, combined authority, social housing provider and NHS to Co-Op Travel, small businesses and charities. Their films have addressed issues relating to race equality, health and wellbeing, knife crime and child exploitation. As a result: • Students’ progression onto higher education at the college and other universities has increased. • More students have also ventured into freelance work and self-employment as video editors and content creators. FFP continues to evolve and grow by creating work experience avenues for other creative industries students and by increasing their client base.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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This innovative project uses a new Google ‘no-code development’, to deliver complex App solutions and drive improvements in productivity using AI to reduce workload at affordable cost and at pace. Using Google AppSheet we created a complex Quality of Education App with associated workflows using no-code development techniques within 4 weeks that in normal processes would have taken 2-3 months of development time. The App covers the full Quality of Education process: lesson observations, peer reviews, resource reviews and deep dives. The App simplified existing processes and significantly reduced workloads in completing these reports through effective interfaces and streamlined processes. Web based the App also allows usage across all educational locations and by subcontractors. The tool utilises embedded AI to analyse and identify individualised support needs and notify the support areas through automated workflows. AI also supports identifying broader thematic training & development plans which are used in arranging training sessions and college training days. Finally, the latest derived improvement has been the initial pre-population of self assessment plans with any good practice and areas for improvement identified. All of these initiatives have huge time savings attached and streamline our QA processes.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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#WELLSTUDENT is an initiative that has been created to encapsulate a vast and varied wellbeing offer. Mental health and wellbeing issues pre-date Covid, however, there has been a significant increase in the demand for college services to support learners, with case numbers increasing 4-fold since the pandemic. #WELLSTUDENT focuses on early intervention and prevention, encouraging learners to take ownership of their own wellbeing, developing resilience and in turn reducing the strain on specialist therapeutic, pastoral and safeguarding staff in the college, allowing them to deal with more serious mental health concerns. This has been a shift from a reactive to proactive approach to wellbeing. Supported by staff that have undertaken comprehensive CPD, students are encouraged to take a pro-active approach to mental health and wellbeing through engaging with the fully inclusive #WELLSTUDENT enrichment programme which also serves as an internal social prescribing offer. The programme has four distinct categories, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual and all students are encouraged to participate in activities they feel best meet their needs at any given time. Accompanied by a resilience-based, levelled tutorial programme, #WELLSTUDENT builds a resilient cohort of who are proactive in the care of their mental health at college and beyond.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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The college identified increasing demand for independent living skills training among its High Needs students, as well as increasing numbers of students with identified sensory processing differences and high levels of expressed anxiety within college. Engaging the advice of external expertise, we developed our understanding of sensory processing needs within a trauma-informed context, reviewed our curriculum offer and reviewed the physical environment of our specialist high needs provision. The result was the construction of a suite of very high specification, fully accessible training rooms, with a design ethos intended to raise students’ aspirations for independent living and meet their access and sensory regulation needs. The facilities incorporate design features that naturally support sensory regulation, as well as providing specialist sensory regulation spaces. Alongside training our staff we also developed a sensory regulation curriculum for our students, empowering them with the insight and skills to manage their own neurodiverse needs. This has greatly strengthened the learner voice for some of our most vulnerable students, who not only played a very active role in designing the new facilities, but are now also established as a standing body, the Neurodiversity Council, helping to drive further change for the benefit of all students.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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The South West College Climate Action Campaign is a multifaceted initiative designed to integrate sustainability into every aspect of the college’s operations. Central to this campaign is the creation of a comprehensive Net Zero Action Plan and a Sustainability Action Plan, which guide the college’s strategic efforts toward reducing carbon emissions and enhancing environmental stewardship. Key elements of the campaign include the integration of climate stripes into the Ladies GAA jerseys, symbolizing the college’s commitment to climate awareness and the promotion of girls’ participation in sports. The campaign also delivered free Carbon Literacy training to all staff and students, fostering a college-wide culture of sustainability. Further initiatives include biodiversity enhancement through campus-wide planting projects, supported by the Special Educational Needs (SEN) department, and urban gardening promotion with wildflower seed giveaways. The college also established a baseline for energy usage and carbon emissions to track progress toward net-zero goals, alongside the promotion of electric vehicles with free EV charging stations. This campaign showcases South West College’s dedication to sustainability, with impacts reaching students, staff, and the broader community, making it a model for integrating climate action into educational institutions.

To find out more about this year's awards and how to apply, please visit: https://www.aoc.co.uk/awards/beacon-awards/beacon-awards-2025-26

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