The College recently hosted a very successful Award Ceremony for the School Plus students who had attended a wide variety of courses including Beauty Therapy, Childcare, Construction, Microsoft Certified Application Specialist, Motor Vehicle Maintenance and Rural Skills. Over 100 pupils, parents, School representatives as well as college staff attended the event at the Scottish Borders Campus, Galashiels.
The event started with Heather Anderson, Vice Principal, giving a warm welcome to everyone. A DVD of the School Plus courses was shown. This DVD was funded by Skills Development Scotland and can be found on the social networking site, You Tube.
Lawrence Alexander, Curriculum for Excellence Manager at Scottish Borders Council, congratulated the pupils on their success and spoke of the close links between Borders College and Scottish Borders Council in the running of the Programme. He thanked the schools for their assistance to the pupils during their time on the courses. He also mentioned that the School Plus Programme meets almost all of the criteria that Curriculum for Excellence hopes to achieve.
Laura Esmer from the Service Industries Department gave a short talk on the Lecturers view point of the School Plus Programme. Laura is a new lecturer to the college and she has enjoyed teaching the Hairdressing groups. She also mentioned that one of the main plus points of attending the classes were that you were treated like an adult and she noticed a change in behaviour and attitude of the pupils as the course progressed.
Jordan McLennan, a pupil from Peebles High School who attended the Construction course, spoke about his experiences on his course and what he had gained from attending college. He felt he had learnt a lot from the experience and was now more confident about working with others and speaking to people. He would encourage anyone to attend a School Plus course as he has made many friends from different schools and has really enjoyed being on the course.
Liz McIntyre, Principal, then presented the prizes to the pupils.
There were also two additional Awards this year:
Firstly a Special Recognition Award was presented to Ryan Gillan from Hawick High School. Andrew Johnson, Programme Leader in the Landbased and Leisure Department explained that Ryan was runner up in the Scottish Lantra awards for School Learner of the Year at a recent event held in Perth.
Secondly, Colin Henderson, Skills Development Scotland Team Leader, presented an Employability Award to Kayleigh Caldwell from Hawick High School who attends the Fashion & Clothing course at Scottish Borders Campus.
