Torpoint Community College

“The impact on how we go about the personal statement writing process has been phenomenal. It has been so much easier for students to write and edit them, and for staff to give feedback."

Becky Lear, Head of Sixth Form

 

Setting up

“We had nothing like this in place before we began using Unifrog about three years ago. In particular apprenticeships were a huge challenge - we had trouble knowing where to find information, especially information that was up to date.

To get us launched a Unifrog representative came to deliver face-to-face staff training. Everyone got detailed training, which included us practicing using it. From there the platform quickly became a part of our school.”

 

Finding opportunities

“Well known, ‘standard’ university courses were easy enough to find, but finding ‘unusual’ and highly specific courses was very difficult through UCAS. Unifrog’s university search tool is really smart in the way it suggests courses to students that they might not have thought about previously.  

More generally Unifrog has raised the aspiration and motivation of all our students in pursuing post-secondary employment and education.”

 

Statements and References

“The impact on how we go about the personal statement writing process has been phenomenal. It has been so much easier for students to write and edit them, and for staff to give feedback.

In addition it has been absolutely brilliant having everything in one place when tutors are collating references. Instead of spending hours and hours chasing up bits and pieces from individual students and subject teachers, Unifrog’s slick system has made the job much easier.

One other thing - having the staff able to view and compare each other’s references has really improved the quality of the references.”

 

Top tip

“My top tip is to work in Unifrog to pastoral periods such as ‘tutor time’. For example, during the personal statement process we make students log on to Unifrog at specific periods to update and add to their personal statements. Having students do this together has given them greater confidence in their ability to use it independently from us as well - either at home or at school.

Overall, I think the only issue I’ve ever had is students forgetting their ‘logins’!”