Birkenhead High School Academy

“Unifrog has helped our school overall by raising aspirations and allowing our students to have the best possible information to help them in their future pathways."

Kate Holleron, Assistant Head of Sixth Form

 

Getting started

“When we started using Unifrog we weren’t using anything else that was similar, but we loved the sound of what Unifrog could offer us. We wanted something to help us show our students more about the range of pathways available to them; the fact that Unifrog could do that all on one site was exactly what we needed.

To implement Unifrog properly we made sure the right staff were trained in how to use the platform, and that students had their logins and lessons on how to use it. Unifrog staff have been brilliant at running training sessions, and helping us to sort out the admin to get us up and running.

As we grew more confident with using the platform, we moved from just using it with Year 12 students to using it with students in Year 10, 11, 12 & 13. We expanded the training to include staff and students in these other year groups. Unifrog is now a key part of our guidance processes for both Key Stages 4 and 5."

 

Everything in one place

“Our students found it awkward to have to look through each university’s individual prospectus for their chosen university courses, and so being able to find all of that information on Unifrog made life so much easier for them.

We also found it difficult to advise students about the precise details of each university course without directing them to lots of different websites (which often didn’t have the information they were looking for) and an increasing amount of our students wanted to take a different pathway to university study but we didn’t have access to the latest apprenticeship opportunities – until we joined Unifrog.

It has helped the staff in our school by allowing them to easily show our students what opportunities are available to them, all in one easy website.”

 

Independence and support

“Unifrog has really helped to nurture our students’ independent learning skills too as they have been able to access MOOCs through Unifrog and have really seen the benefit in doing so. Staff can easily monitor the courses and universities that our students are looking at, which in turn makes it easier for us to direct them towards residential courses etc. that may suit their future pathways. Unifrog has reduced the need for more contact time and has therefore encouraged the independent learning skills of all our students.

The whole of Year 12 are now also using Unifrog to create their personal statements which is helping to cut down on printing costs and makes it much easier to pastoral staff to monitor the process too.”

 

Raising aspirations

“Unifrog has helped our school overall by raising aspirations and allowing our students to have the best possible information to help them in their future pathways. Being able to see all the university courses available to them in one place rather than in a pile of prospectuses or hundreds of websites makes things so much more interesting for them and shows them the scope of opportunities available to them. We have found that a lot of our students are starting to look further afield for their university choices which is very encouraging to see.

Also, when our Year 10/11 students use Unifrog, they may realise that they need higher grades than those predicted in order to do their dream job, and so this may be the factor that drives them to work harder during Sixth Form. Being able to see what is expected from them in the future helps them to focus on their goals.”

 

Beginning Early

“If I was to offer advice to other schools, I would encourage them to start using Unifrog with their students from at least Year 10 so that they can fully experience the positive impact Unifrog can have. Being able to project your predicted GCSE grades to Sixth Form and beyond helps them to realise how hard they need to work to achieve their goals and may prevent them reaching Sixth Form and finding they don’t have the qualifications they need to achieve a degree in their chosen field. Allowing Year 10 and Year 11 students to use Unifrog also helps them to choose their A level course more easily as they can see exactly what grades/courses are required in order for them to follow their chosen career path.  

We feel very lucky to have access to the Unifrog software and feel our students benefit greatly from using it.”