Rainhill High School

"Unifrog's platform allows us to easily collate Subject and Overall references in one place, and small details like being able to copy all the Subject References into an Overall Reference automatically make the process run more smoothly. It’s made my colleagues very happy!”

Joanne Morrell, KS5 Learning Director

 

Range of options

“I was new to my role as head of progression, and I soon realised that we had no tools in place enabling students to access in one place information about different pathways.

Unifrog’s amazing achievement is that it collates information about apprenticeships, MOOCs, and universities at home and abroad, and presents them alongside CV and Personal Statement writing tools.

There’s often pressure on our students to go to university over any other possibility, and Unifrog helps our students make sense of the wide range of options available to them.”

 

The launch

“The student launch went really well! Matthew came into the school and demonstrated Unifrog for the students in an assembly before getting them straight onto the platform themselves to explore the different shortlisting and researching features.

Our students are using Unifrog mainly in form groups with their teachers, looking at their Plan A and Plan B for their Post 18 destinations.

It’s primarily myself and the rest of the 6th form leadership team who have been using the teacher side of things, to track where students have got to in the progression process, and intervene when necessary.”

 

Customer service

“Matthew has been on call for us whenever we need him, and he has been absolutely amazing! He comes back really quickly with an answer for anything I’ve asked, whether that be on the phone or by email. There was never anything too daft to ask! Matthew has also been really accommodating in terms of us having to change dates for our training sessions, and in helping us with admin.”

 

Personal Statement and Reference tools

“Often the biggest hurdle when writing a Personal Statement is getting started. Unifrog breaks the Personal Statement into three distinct sections, and gives prompts for each section, which greatly reduces the scale of the hurdle! The tool is so well structured and has such good guidance that we’ve also found that it helps teachers who are new to the university application process gain confidence in giving advice to students.

To give you an idea of how students have taken to it - last year a student wrote his statement before we’d even begun to plan them in class. When I asked how he knew what to do, he said, “It tells you on Unifrog”. The way that the tool asks students things like, “Why do you want to study this subject?” or “What have you done in the past which makes you particularly suitable to study this subject” helps students who otherwise may not focus their writing on the right things. On the other hand, the tool’s ‘single box option’ suits students who don’t want or need this structure.

Gathering references for Year 13 students has always been a time consuming process for us. Unifrog's platform allows us to easily collate Subject and Overall references in one place, and small details like being able to copy all the Subject References into an Overall Reference automatically make the process run more smoothly. It’s made my colleagues very happy!”

 

Plan throughout the year

“Looking ahead, we have created a detailed plan which makes clear to all relevant staff how we will be using Unifrog throughout the year.

We’ve decided to use the platform with multiple year groups, and have set specific deadlines for different groups to achieve different things on the platform.