BackHow to... use the Placements tool as a 'regular' teacher
Become a pro at Unifrog's Placements tool
If you're a 'regular' teacher who helps with placements at your school or college, this guide is for you!
NB: This guide is not for placement coordinators who are in charge of coordinating placements (they need this guide), it’s for ‘regular’ teachers who are helping with placements admin.
The guide covers:
- What Unifrog’s Placements tool is for
- How to do a check-in
- How else you can help
WHAT THE PLACEMENTS TOOL IS FOR
- It’s a series of forms which together handle the admin behind running a placements programme, where each form needs to be completed by specific people at specific times. As soon as one person fills in a form, the next person gets notified, so the whole process runs smoothly and automatically.
- Teachers have a dashboard so that they can see at-a-glance the status of every placement for students in a year group, and they can filter by other things - like form groups.
- At the end of each placement, we ask the employer if they are up for hosting another student in the future. This creates a tailored database for your school/college of employers who are up for hosting placements.
HOW TO DO A CHECK-IN
Check-ins are for when a placement has already started, to check that everything is going okay.
At lots of schools and colleges, regular teachers help with the placements admin process by doing these during placement check-ins.
If you’re involved in this:
- Go to the Advanced view of the Manage page
- Sort by one of the placement options (eg ‘Placements: by start date’)
- Use filters to drill down to find the students you need. For example:
- Filter by Form name or a particular Tag, if you are only doing check-ins for specific students
- Filter by Outstanding check-in to see students with placements that are missing check-ins
- Filter by Form name or a particular Tag, if you are only doing check-ins for specific students
WHICH PLACEMENTS NEED A CHECK
The school/college’s role is to take reasonable steps to assure themselves that the employer is taking seriously their responsibility to keep the young person on the placement safe. There is no law that says that every placement needs to have a check-in, and there is also no requirement to have had specific training (for example in Health & Safety) in order to do a check-in.
Most schools and colleges prioritise check-ins for placements where the young person is more at risk (for example - they might have special needs, illnesses, injuries, or be immature), or where the workplace is above average risk (for example - at a car mechanics).
Most schools and colleges only do in person checks for the most risky placements, and do check-ins by phone for others, again prioritised in order of riskiness.
If you want to know more, check out our guide, Placements: the legals explained.
WHAT TO LOOK OUT FOR IN A CHECK-IN
Firstly: Most important is that you check that the young person on the placement is safe. If you have any safety or safeguarding concerns, raise them right away with appropriate colleagues at your school/college.
Secondly: Next in priority is to check that the placement is going well. Here are some things to ask about:
- Some basics: Is the student turning up on time every day, and giving a good impression? Is the student getting on okay with their host?
- What’s the student trying to get out of the placement? Do they feel like they’re getting out of it what they wanted?
- Does the student have an independent project to work on during the placement?
- Is the student getting to observe what people’s jobs are really like?
Thirdly: The third thing to consider is whether the employer is enjoying hosting the placement. If they are, they’re much more likely to be up for supporting your school/college in the future by hosting another student, and maybe also being involved in other activities.
A QUICK OVERVIEW OF HOW THE PLACEMENTS TOOL WORKS
If you’re a teacher and want to know the basics, this video is for you:
HOW ELSE YOU CAN HELP AS A NORMAL TEACHER
- Potential placement hosts
One of the trickiest parts of running a placements programme is finding enough hosts. Do you have any friends or family who would be interested in hosting a placement?
- Sending the Placements tool to students
To get students started with using the tool, you can send it to them in two ways:
1. Using the ‘+comment’ button on the Advanced view of your Manage page
Do this if you want to send the tool to students in the same tutor group, subject class, or those with the same tags or interests.
Go to the Advanced view on your Manage page. Find the group you want to send the tool to and click the ‘+comment’ button:
Do this if you want to attach a tool to a task or event.
Go to the Advanced view on your Manage page. In the same way as using the ‘+comment’ button (above), find the group you want to send the tool to and click the ‘+interaction’ button:
- Getting the pre-placement admin done
Another tricky part to running a placements programme is getting the pre-placement admin done - for students to fill in their initial form, then for employers to complete the second form, and then to have the parent / guardian agreement completed. You can help by nudging students to keep on top of the process.
On Unifrog, students can see the progress of all the forms for their placement, and you can too.
You can see the status for multiple students at a time on the Advanced view of the Manage page (sort by one of the placement options, eg ‘Placements: by start date’). You can filter to see only particular groups of students - for example only the students in a specific form group, and you can see the status of each form:
