Previous projects:

Open Day 2005

John Kelley School – Barnet

Ernest Bevin College - Tooting

Quintan Kynaston School - St. Johns Wood

Westminster Academy - Royal Oak

Westminster City School – Victoria

Highbury Fields School (Consortium with Highbury Grove school and Holloway School) – Islington

Al-Khair Islamic School – Croydon

John Kelly Barnet

Open Day 2005

ULU ISOC held its first annual Open Day on Wednesday 12^th October 2005 entitled: ULU ISOC Presents: University and Student Life. Our aim was to encourage students from Muslim backgrounds and ethnic minorities to progress to university. The event was held at the impressive setting of the Mechanical Engineering Department of Imperial College London in South Kensington. 68 students from 16 boroughs attended the event.

The event started by discussing financial and social issues encountered by Muslim students at university. An A-Z Degrees presentation educated about degree options available.

The students were then divided into groups and rotated around three workshops. The first workshop, study skills, emphasised the importance of gradual continuous study. The second workshop educated about Personal Statements. Do’s and Don’ts of filling in personal statements were presented. The final workshop covered Interview Skills. Humorous role-plays of mock interviews informed about appropriate behaviour in interviews.

The day successfully concluded with an informal Question and Answer session between sixth formers and university students.

“I enjoyed it. It gave me important information that I needed… thank you very much.”

Student, attended event.

“The whole Open Day was very good… It was very insightful. I know a lot more things like how to write my UCAS form.”

Amir Darr, attended event.

“I will tell my family and friends this is the place to come to for the appropriate information.”

Student, attended event.

John Kelley School - Barnet

This was the first Outreach school visit that we did as a project and it went very well. As it was our first experience, we experimented with different presentations and workshops and quickly realised that for a younger demographic of students (ie GCSE students) the interactive workshops were the most effective way of communicating ideas and advice. The feedback from both the students and the staff at the school was very positive and they all found it rather hard to believe that all of the Outreach members for student volunteers! Despite the Outreah being a voluntary session that was held after school finised at 3:30pm we had a very good turn out of over 40 students.

Ernest Bevin College - Tooting

The Ernest Bevin college is a specialised sports college which requested that Outreach visit and speak with AS and A level students to encourage them to pursue academic aspiations. The school was very well equiped and a special seminar room with AV facilities was provided to us to carry out presentations and workshops. The turn out was impressive as the seminar room was packed out with around 50-60 students. The feedback we recieved indicated that the presentations took slightly too long as it was difficult to concentrate on powerpoint slides for over 30 minutes however the workshops, particularly the mock interviews, were very enjoyable and effective.

Quintan Kynaston School - St. Johns Wood

The Quintan Kynaston School in St. Johns Wood contacted the Outreach team and requested that we visit the school a few weeks prior to the UCAS deadlines and help the AS students go over their personal statements. This was a completely different Outreach as there were no presentations or workshops. We set up a line of tables; on one side were the Outreach volunteers and on the other the students rotated, with each of them asking questions and making notes regarding improvements to their personal statements. This school visit indicated the need for Outreach to be flexible and cater for the different needs of students at different times of the year and it also hihglighted one very important point which was diversity within the project. Almost all of the Outreach volunteers that attended this school visit were medics, and although this was very useful for students applying for medicine, our insight into law, accounting, engineering or economics as a group was rather limited. This school visit indicated the importance of having a diverse range of academic disciplines represented within our organisation.

Westminster Academy - Royal Oak

The Westminster Academy, also known as the Naim Dangoo Centre in Royal Oak is a very large academy which invited is to take part in a special UCAS day for AS level students hoping to apply to university in the coming months. Unlike other Outreach school visits we decided to combine certain presentations and workshops to create interactive presentations in which the two people conducting each presentation would ask questions and role play with the audience. This worked very well as we were given three rooms with AV facilities in which we did personal statements, career/course choices, study skills on a 20 minute rotation so that we were done within an hour. Each room had between 10-15 students and everything was well organised, mainly due to the insight of the institution which had printed Outreach presentation information in the leaflets and timetables for all the students.

Westminster City School – Victoria

The Westminster City School is located in central London and as it is an all-boys secondary school a group of 5-6 brothers from the Outreach team went together to visit this school. Despite a rather unprofessionally late start, due to difficulties locating the school, we arrived at the school and met a small group of about 20 students. As we knew this Outreach would have a small number of students, handouts for each workshop (personal statements, career choices, interview skills and study skills) were printed for each student in advance. We decided to split up into small groups of about 4-5 students and had personal one-to-one conversations with the students discussing their goals and advising them. At first the teacher whom organised our visit was rather flustered at our late arrival but at the end of our visit when she recieved feedback from the pupils she was very pleased and Outreach has subsequently been invited to return to the school for the current academic year.

Highbury Fields School (Consortium with Highbury Grove school and Holloway School) – Islington

This was perhaps the largest and of the most successful Outreach school visits we did during the last academic year. Having contacted multiple schools in the Islington area, one of the school coordinators decided to have a consortium in which AS and A level students from 3 different schools/colleges came together to take part in presentations and workshops by ULU Isoc. With well over 100 students it was condcuted in the large assembly hall of the Highbury Fields School and the main feedback we recieved was that once again the students benefitted most from the workshops however felt that too long was spent on the initial presentations. At this school there was a mix of enthusiastic and encouraging students as well as many that were not very keen at all. Although it was difficult at first, the opportunity to talk to and advise the not so keen students is essentially what Outrach aims to achieve.

Al-Khair Islamic School – Croydon

The visit to the Al-Khair Islamic school in croydon was admittedly very last minute and were it not for the committment of Outreach volunteers and their friends this visit would not have gone ahead. We had been hoping to visit an Islamic school for many months and were extremely pleased when we arrived. Simple things like an "Assalaamu Allaikum" greeting from a group of 5 year old primary school students at Al-khair was very heart warming and the ability to complete our Salah before commencing was also very convenient. It was a relatively small group of about 20 students but we thoroughly enjoyed doing both presentations and particularly workshops with them. The ability to talk about issues such as maintaining Islamic principles at university joining the Islamic Society was very nice as this is something that we are not always able to do when we attend mainstream secualr schools. The only disappointing issue is that we have thus far only visited one Islamic school so this is something we hope to expand on in the near future.

John Kelley School – Barnet

The return to the John Kelley School was our first Outreach return since the project began and was important as we aim for continuity. Despite some organisational and communication miscalculations in terms of the ULU Isoc calender we were able to send out a group of sisters to the school who then went on to conduct a series of presentations and workshops. As many of the sisters were new to the project, this school visit did indicate the importance of effective training in presentations and workshops, preferably well before a school visit rather than relying on on-th-day teaching. As we have built a good rapport with the John Kelley school they were happy to let us know that the Outreach was good and the students thoroughly enjoyed it however a better merger between the length of the presentations and extent of the workshops would be more beneficial. This advice has been taken on board and for the coming academic year we plan to focus on more more comprehensive workshops with more interaction between students and minimise the length of presentations.