🔹Principal’s Update
🎉 Celebration Festival Success
It was a joy to see our sixth formers enjoying the Celebration Festival on Friday—and equally heartening to see so many staff there supporting them. A huge thank you to the Events Team, Patrick and the Connect Team, James Bennett for DJing and the Caretakers. Your combined efforts created a truly memorable event for our students. Well done, everyone!
📢 UCJ Head of Department Recruitment
We’re excited to announce that recruitment for the Head of Department at University College Jersey is about to go live. This will be a nationally advertised post, and we’re anticipating strong interest. Please do share the opportunity within your networks!
🤝 Inclusion Workshop & Document Review
On Friday, I briefly attended the Inclusion Workshop. Following discussions with the department and secondary school headteachers, they’ve decided to review the “Ordinarily Available” document. As we’re already well into our inclusion development journey, I’ll be cross-referencing our current practices with the final version to ensure alignment.
🎓 Higher Education Advisory Board
This week, I’ll be attending the Higher Education Advisory Board. We’ll be discussing the formation of a student association for higher education and reviewing the implications of changes to student finance orders—including increased support for online degrees.
🏛️ Governing Body Conference Highlights
We had a fantastic turnout at the recent Governing Body Conference at the Royal Hotel in St. Helier, with 20% of attendees from our own governing body. A key outcome was the decision to review the Scheme of Delegation, which outlines the roles and responsibilities of the Minister for Education, headteachers, and governors. This will be followed by training and development sessions.
At our final full governing body meeting of the academic year, governors asked me to pass on their heartfelt thanks for the incredible work you all do. Your dedication does not go unnoticed.
🗣️ SLT Focus: Oracy & Staff Utilisation
This week’s Senior Leadership Team meeting will include:
- A session on the Oracy Project with Simon McDonald
- A review of staff utilisation in line with the new curriculum plan
- Feedback from education support staff
🔄 Succession Planning – Clarification
At a recent staff representatives meeting, some concerns were raised about the term “critical roles.” To clarify:
- A critical role is one with an anticipated vacancy within a year,
- A role requiring specialist skills that are hard to recruit for, on and off island
- Or a role we’ve struggled to fill in the past.
All roles are valued. This classification is purely operational. If you have any more feedback, please contact Tyler or Raf—both are on the succession planning project board. We’re also updating the FAQs and welcome your input.
🏅 UCJ Academic Excellence Recognised
UCJ has had a strong start to the week with the first two University of Plymouth Subject Assessment Panels (SAPs). External examiners gave glowing feedback, highlighting:
- Rich reflections with clear outcomes for students
- High-quality assessment and feedback
- Excellent communication and support
A huge congratulations to the Sport and Childhood Studies delivery teams—your hard work is deeply appreciated!
📆 Looking Ahead: Planning & Preparation
As we approach the end of term, we know many of you are balancing training, development, self-assessment, quality assurance, and induction planning. We recognise the challenge of compressing 46 weeks of work into 38 weeks. We’ll continue to review the quality calendar with Heads of Department to help ease pressure points where possible.
💬 Final Note
Thank you for your continued energy, creativity, and commitment. Let’s make these final weeks of term as smooth and successful as possible.
Wishing you a productive and positive week ahead!
Jo