Entry to the Uniformed Services (19+)

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There’s never been a better time to study Public Services, in terms of the transferable  skills that we’re offering students, with the activities that you’ll have seen today and with the communication – for many of our students the the ability to listen and listen to members of the general public and learning those skills to work with the variety of different students from all different backgrounds, it’s experience that that really can’t be matched anywhere else.

So some of the activities that we do  here at Leeds City College such as  CPR we’ve been working with the Yorkshire  Ambulance Service and they come in and teach students how to do CPR and save lives and different things.

 

At first a lot of our students  were a bit unsure about it or a bit uncomfortable, but as the course has progressed they’ve become  more confident and some of our students have really enjoyed the opportunity to try new skills. So we’ve got a lot of physical activities  down at the gym and different things,  we do a bit of cooking and the students  can get a real-life understanding about different skills which they can take on to the  future and it’s something big at the moment,  people wanting to get into public  services so I think we’re here to stay.

I want to become a police officer – that’s  my biggest dream ever since I was little.

I’ve never changed my mind, never wanted to  go a different path it’s always been that.

That’s why I joined here because after here I can do the Apprenticeship after this Level 3 course.

I’ve always wanted to do it and I’m chasing my dreams – I’m trying to make my family proud as well,  not just myself, but I am making myself proud in the process and everyone here is helping so much.

We do a lot around student well-being, staff well-being, and students being able to understand staff members where they haven’t previously been able to do that in the past, so all staff members are on first name terms. Suzy’s actual degree is a sport degree but  through working for about 14 years in the  department she has had various training courses  to learn the skills and to do the things  for forensics but we have ex-firefighters,  ex-RAF, ex-Army, we have a staff member  who’s in the process of joining the police  and they’re going to work in the police while  working in the department one day a week.

One of the units that I teach is forensics  which is an absolute passion of mine,  lots of science in there, lots of biology, lots  of mysteries to explore. One of the mysteries we’ve  explored this year is an online mystery which I found from America, and on this we had a virtual crime scene which all students partook in and they looked at a scene, they gathered all the evidence,  from that evidence we then did some scientific experiments in class. At this particular campus  we’ve been lucky enough now to get into  scientific testing such as Kastle–Meyers,  such as our hair analysis, our microscopes, all students wear a forensic suit, they wear their gloves, they become a part of forensic science once that suit is on. Students walk around the  corridors in their suits and other students are mesmerised by what’s going on in the classroom.

It’s amazing the transformation that students make from when they join us in the transition coming from secondary school, looking at the opportunities and the careers that they want five/ten years in the future. We do a lot around resilience when students join us and the ability to deal with change, we see students make brand new friends, meet new people, visit new places.

The opportunities that we offer students enables them to grow in many ways – with students that were traveling as part of a work experience program we have to Finland, some students were the first to get their passport, two students got  their first ever birth certificate, opportunities for students to travel abroad – but also students to meet new people, to work our allotment with people of a different age category of 70/80  year olds, maybe wouldn’t have done before.

So Mabgate is basically it’s our new  facility for the gym so we’ve been using the Quarry House which is across the road for swimming and fitness and different things but Mabgate is our actual building, so it’s  going to be turned into I think classrooms in the future, but at the moment we’ve got  our indoor gym in there so we’ve got some weights, some boxing equipment, and a rig which has like a pull-up bars and different things on so it’s just the space that our students  can use for physical activity really.

Yeah i do believe that students from different backgrounds can come have a bright future here at Leeds City College especially  within the Public Service department,  we do have students that come  from Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, inner-cities, so it’s good that we can offer  different opportunities for them here and they can progress and become more confident whilst they’re here with us as well so that’s always good.

So probably one of our main values  or our main ethos within the department is that we can offer an opportunity to anybody, whatever background, whatever your aspirations are,  to ensure that we can offer, hopefully,  a pathway to that career goal.

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