Caludon Castle

"Our careers and university processes were quite good to start with, and Unifrog slotted in nicely with those, without demanding a complete overhaul of what we were already doing.”

Alex Handy, Assistant Head

 

Implementing Unifrog

“We used to use an old software called Kudos which took a student’s subjects and outputted three suggested careers. It was expensive and underused, and Unifrog seemed to be a really good replacement.

Our sixth form is divided into three large houses, who have integrated Unifrog into their systems to varying degrees – it’s currently not a completely ‘all or nothing’ service. Our careers and university processes were quite good to start with, and Unifrog slotted in nicely with those, without demanding a total overhaul of what we were already doing.”

 

Our students

“We’ve found Unifrog has been best for the students who have an idea of the direction they want to go in. We start using Unifrog with a light touch in year nine, so that students will be familiar with the platform by the time they need to start making more decisions in Year 11. The MOOCs tool is something we use in our Year 12 skills lessons. The only problems students have had is forgetting logins or passwords, which is very easy to correct!”

 

Enrichment program

“All of our Year 12 students have to do some enrichment, and what we say is that as part of this programme they can become ‘Unifrog Champions’. In this role they need to complete a certain percentage of the platform, and then they help other students use the service. What we want to do is extend the Unifrog Champions to Year 11, and have some of the students talk at events, and communicate with parents.”

 

Foundation year students

“We have a one-year sixth form group who are resitting Maths and/or English, alongside doing a sort of foundation year. Quite often they’re applying for apprenticeships and jobs to go into next year, and the CV tool is really useful for those applications, and helps us make the most out of the time we spend with those students.”

 

Using Unifrog with parents

“The shortlisting tools have not only been helpful for students, but also for their parents to see how they’re doing. We actually give parents Unifrog sessions where we show them how to use their child’s account and see how their kids are getting on. It really helps that Unifrog is quite device agnostic. We come from quite a low working class area, so having a platform which isn’t reliant on the latest and greatest devices means that our students don’t struggle using it at home.”