Culford School

"Perhaps the biggest impact of the search tools has been felt where pupils have been able to consider courses they might not otherwise have come across."

Stephen Arbuthnot, Head of Sixth Form

 

Implementing Unifrog

“Introducing Unifrog to Culford School was fantastic. Nick is just the most amazing guy, giving up loads of time and coming to the school to support me and all of the sixth form tutors. The regular contact from Unifrog has really helped us gain confidence and take charge of the platform ourselves.

We started Unifrog in the spring term with our lower sixths. I went through the CV tool with each of our form groups in their ‘leadership and life skills’ lessons. In the summer term Nick did an assembly to students on the UK universities tool. He was fantastic at engaging with the students. From that point we’ve been flying on our own!”

 

Staff experience

“Our staff have found the platform both really helpful and really easy to use. A particular strength is the way it has sped up and improved the reference writing process. Having everything in one place - from each student’s shortlists, to their competencies, to their Personal Statement - has made writing both the Subject and Overall References less time consuming, and it has also meant that they’ve been higher quality. Because everything is one place, teachers have been able to pick out details from what students have recorded, and also make sure that they aren’t repeating what the student or another teacher has already said.

Another thing that’s been effective is baking in using Unifrog to our tutorial time. We’ve made it so that Sixth Form Tutors regularly sit with their tutees and filter through university courses and apprenticeship vacancies. This helps students be realistic about their choices. We like that on the Unifrog opportunity search tools students are presented with a range of options, and end up collating a shortlist which spans from ‘aspirational’ to ‘solid’ to ‘safe’.

 

Unexpected opportunities

“Perhaps the biggest impact of the search tools has been felt where pupils have been able to consider courses they might not otherwise have come across. For example, we had a student interested in Economics who discovered an Economics and Biology course at the University of St Andrew’s - without Unifrog, this rather niche course probably wouldn’t have been on her radar, but it ended up being her first choice. In general, I think we probably have a slightly larger proportion of students pursuing joint honours courses as a result of the tool.